Jury Selection Begins for Trial of Ex-Labor Secretary Donovan

Jury selection began Tuesday for the business fraud trial of former U.S. Labor Secretary Raymond J. Donovan, after prosecutors failed in an effort to conceal some potential witnesses’ names.

Nearly two years after Donovan, nine other men and two companies were indicted, state Supreme Court Justice John P. Collins began questioning potential jurors from a pool of 99. In New York state, the Supreme Court is a trial court.

“I’m pleased that we’re under way. Two years waiting under these conditions has been an awfully long time,” said Donovan, who resigned from the Cabinet in March, 1985, after Collins refused to dismiss the charges.

Donovan, co-owner of Schiavone Construction Co. of Secaucus, N. J., and the others are charged with misappropriating $7.4 million from a New York City Transit Authority subway-tunnel project that was begun in 1979. The defendants have denied taking the money, which prosecutors say should have been paid to a minority-owned subcontractor.

Before jury selection began, prosecutor Stephen R. Bookin asked Collins not to tell the prospective jurors the names of some of the 57 people the prosecution might call as witnesses. He said that those potential witnesses had “expressed concern that their identities not be disclosed until the law requires it.”

Collins denied the motion after a closed hearing and in open court read all 57 names, including those of 21 FBI agents and a reputed mob executioner, Michael Orlando.

No jurors were seated Tuesday because Collins wanted to give preliminary approval to 16 candidates before the lawyers questioned them.