Defense Seeks to Move Silberman’s Trial : Courts: Financier’s attorneys also request four-week postponement of money-laundering trial, saying their client needs more time to recover from suicide attempt.

Richard T. Silberman’s lawyers asked Friday that his trial on money-laundering charges be moved to Los Angeles, contending that the prominent businessman would not get a fair trial in San Diego because of heavy publicity about his case.

Silberman’s attorneys also asked U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving to put off the the trial--scheduled for April 10--for four weeks, saying the indicted financier needs more time to recover from his February suicide attempt.

The lawyers, who filed their requests late Friday afternoon, asked Irving to schedule a hearing on the two requests as soon as possible. Irving is already set to preside at a hearing in the case on Monday.

The attempt to move and delay the trial followed a ruling Irving issued Thursday5 rejecting the last in a series of defense requests aimed at gaining the dismissal of any or all of the charges against Silberman, who was a top aide to former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.

In a series of rulings over the past month, Irving turned down every significant defense effort designed to strike the seven counts against Silberman.

Silberman, reputed mobster Chris Petti and three other men are accused of laundering $300,000 in cash that an undercover FBI agent allegedly characterized as the proceeds of Colombian drug trafficking.

Since Silberman was arrested last April 7 in a Mission Bay hotel room, there have been 423 newspaper articles and more than 150 television stories about him in the San Diego media, defense lawyer George Harris said in the legal papers filed late Friday.

As early as last April, the case “began to read like a soap opera in the local press,” Harris said, citing newspaper headlines that “were rife with the most sensational allegations and characterizations.” He compared it to a “TV thriller.”

The coverage has been particularly intense over the past months, since the Feb. 16 release of an FBI report alleging that Silberman confessed to the money-laundering scheme and Silberman’s attempted suicide that same weekend, Harris said.

Defense attorneys commissioned a survey to find out the effect of the newspaper and television accounts, Harris said. In a random telephone survey of 398 eligible jurors in the San Diego area conducted from March 8 through 14, 89% were “familiar” with the Silberman case and 27% had already formed an opinion about it, he said.

Harris did not say what the opinions might be.

But, he said, because the news stories, filled with “prejudicial information and speculation,” had “irreversibly contaminated” the San Diego jury pool, the case had to be moved. Los Angeles was the best site, he said, because it posed the least inconvenience for the judge, jurors, witnesses--and the San Diego reporters covering the case.

Even if the case is not moved, Harris said it would make sense to postpone it for four weeks because Silberman, who was unavailable for two weeks after his suicide attempt, needed more time to help prepare defense lawyers.

Silberman disappeared from San Diego on Feb. 15 and was found unconscious two days later in a Las Vegas hotel room. After writing a suicide note, he tried to kill himself with an overdose of sleeping pills, according to his wife, Susan Golding, a San Diego County supervisor.

Immediately after being released from a Las Vegas hospital, Silberman checked into a San Francisco psychiatric hospital. He returned to San Diego in early March.

Harris said delaying the trial would also create a “short ‘cooling off’ period,” during which publicity would subside.

Before filing the papers Friday, Harris said, he had called the lead prosecutor in the case, Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles F. Gorder Jr., to tell him he would seek the four-week extension. Gorder indicated the government would oppose the request, Harris said.

According to Harris, Gorder said prosecutors would not oppose a two-week delay.

Gorder said Friday night that a two-week postponement was OK if it fit with Irving’s schedule. He declined to comment on any other issues connected with Friday’s filings.

Harris could not be reached for comment.