Silberman Jury Selection Finally Yields 12 People for Tricky Case

Two weeks after it began, jury selection in Richard T. Silberman’s money-laundering case finally produced 12 people who said they could be fair and were chosen Friday to hear the complex case against the prominent San Diego businessman.

The panel includes, among others, a U.S. Postal Service letter sorter, a nurse, an insurance company marketing expert, a high school finances clerk and two homemakers.

Immediately after the jurors were seated, U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving scheduled opening statements in the case for Wednesday.

Silberman, 61, who once served as a top aide to former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., is charged with laundering $300,000 that an undercover FBI agent purportedly characterized as the proceeds of Colombian drug trafficking.

His trial is expected to last six weeks. If convicted, Silberman could be sentenced to a maximum of 75 years in prison.

Though the jury that will vote on the case was picked Friday, it is not certain that the case will begin Wednesday.

Claiming that the intense publicity the case has generated has made it impossible for Silberman to get a fair trial in the San Diego courts, lead defense lawyer James J. Brosnahan renewed a request to move it out of town.

Of the 28 people in the pool that produced the 12 jurors chosen Friday, 22 knew something about the case before they reported for jury duty, Brosnahan said in legal papers. Of those 28, 16 knew that Silberman had tried to kill himself in a Las Vegas hotel room last February, Brosnahan said.

Those kinds of numbers would make it impossible for Silberman to get a fair trial because some actual jurors are sure to remember the suicide attempt, ignore the evidence at the trial and decide that Silberman must have been guilty if he tried to kill himself, Brosnahan said.

Irving said he will rule on the request Wednesday, after Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles F. Gorder Jr., the lead prosecutor on the case, has a chance to formally reply to it.

Last month, Irving turned down Brosnahan’s first request to move the case. The judge said then that he thought he and the lawyers could find 12 unbiased people.

Three other men also accused of taking part in the money-laundering scheme with Silberman are scheduled to be tried July 25. One of the three, reputed mobster Chris Petti, was released Friday from a federal prison where he was sent last May after a court finding that he had violated his probation on a bookmaking conviction.

Jack Norman Myers and Darryl Nakatsuka, the two other men scheduled to be tried with Petti in July, remain free on bail.

A fifth man charged in the scheme, Los Angeles-area investment broker Terry Ziegler, pleaded guilty April 10 to one criminal count of violating federal currency laws. He is scheduled to be sentenced June 18.