Lawyer Says Silberman Needs Professional Help : Justice: The prominent San Diego businessman, who apparently took an overdose of sleeping pills, is said to be worried he won’t get a fair trial.

Richard T. Silberman’s lawyer repeated his contention Wednesday that the prominent San Diego businessman’s right to a fair trial has been jeopardized and said he would oppose prosecutors’ request to revoke Silberman’s $500,000 bail.

But lawyer James Brosnahan said the “first priority” is to make sure that Silberman, who disappeared for two days last week just two months before he was due to stand trial on federal money-laundering charges, gets appropriate professional care.

“I know the world sometimes likes to be cynical,” Brosnahan said in a phone call from his San Francisco office. “But the first priority is to make sure that Mr. Silberman is supported professionally and taken care of, as those needs exist.”

Brosnahan did not elaborate on what sorts of professional attention--medical or psychiatric--might benefit Silberman, or where Silberman has been since leaving a Las Vegas hospital Monday. “Under the circumstances, he’s getting along OK,” Brosnahan said. “And he’s, I think, he’s improving. That’s good.”

The lawyer declined to comment on any non-legal issue relating to the disappearance, saying Silberman’s family would release a statement today detailing “more information about what the situation is and so forth.”

Silberman, who was a top aide to former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., was found unconscious in a Las Vegas hotel room Saturday--two days after he abruptly vanished from San Diego--in what prosecutors have called an apparent suicide attempt. Silberman, due to stand trial April 10, had swallowed an unknown number of prescription pills, Brosnahan has said.

Silberman, reputed mobster Chris Petti and three others are accused of laundering $300,000 given them by an undercover FBI agent who had characterized it as proceeds from a Colombian drug dealer. An FBI report released Friday, the day after Silberman was reported missing, alleges that Silberman confessed to the money-laundering scheme.

In legal papers filed Tuesday, prosecutors claimed Silberman’s disappearance raised the possibility that he would vanish again, this time to evade trial. But Brosnahan said Wednesday that he would contend in a legal brief he planned to file today that there is “no basis” to revoke Silberman’s bail.

Though Silberman did go to Las Vegas after telling his family he was heading to Orange County for a meeting, he “was entitled to travel in the United States” and the request to revoke bail is “not a serious” one, Brosnahan said.

Prosecutors also said Silberman’s departure raised so many questions about Silberman’s mental state that he should be forced to see a psychiatrist to learn if he is still mentally competent to stand trial.

But Brosnahan said Wednesday that might not be necessary. The papers he planned to file today would make it clear that “we’ll be able to deal with that in such a way that won’t become a big problem for anybody.” He declined to elaborate.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles F. Gorder Jr. also said Tuesday that it was “outrageous” for Brosnahan to have contended from Las Vegas over the weekend that Silberman could not receive a fair trial before U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving, who is presiding over the money-laundering case.

In an opinion issued last week rejecting a defense request to block the introduction at the trial of FBI testimony about comments Silberman made to several agents upon arrest last April, Irving characterized those comments as “self-incriminating.”

“My only position with regard to that, and it’s one I’m not going to change, is that reference should not be made,” Brosnahan said. “And, in fact, it should be stricken from his opinion. Whether (Irving) will do that or not, I don’t know. An accurate contention would describe it as the contention of FBI agents. That’s all it is.”

Irving’s comment convinced Silberman that the judge had overstepped his authority and could not be fair, prompting Silberman’s disappearance, Brosnahan said Sunday in Las Vegas.

Irving also ordered the release of the FBI report detailing the alleged confession after finding that disclosure would not jeopardize Silberman’s ability to receive a fair trial. A federal appellate court affirmed that ruling.

However, Brosnahan said, the subsequent “barrage of released information is not conducive to a fair trial. Various materials have come out in connection with various rulings and all that, but the effect of all that is it threatens a fair trial. It makes a fair trial difficult.”

“There should be jurors who are willing to say to themselves, ‘Richard Silberman might well be innocent.’ And you know why they ought to do it in this case? Because he is innocent,” Brosnahan said.