My first solo jury trial took place in April 1965, in the City Court in Cohoes, an old, decaying factory town in Albany County, across the Hudson River from north Troy. Cohoes, much like the City of Albany, had long been solidly entrenched in the hands of the Democrat party. William Dawson was the political boss of Cohoes, but his organization had recently lost control of the city government in 1964 to the new Citizens Party, led by a local doctor and a group of reformers. Dawson’s leadership was then looked upon with disfavor by the Albany County Democratic organization. Although his legal expertise was title insurance, not litigation, the Citizens Party installed Frank Landry as the City Court judge.
Soon after taking control of the government, the Citizens Party leadership hit upon a plan to further reduce Dawson’s influence in Cohoes. Dawson controlled a local newspaper that was really his party’s main political communication with the voters. It was called “Newsweekly Newspapers”, published by Newsweekly Newspapers, Inc., which Dawson said was owned by him and the Democratic Party of Cohoes. It naturally was very critical of the Citizens Party and its governmental administration.
Paul G. VanBuskirk, the executive assistant to Mayor McDonald, filed a criminal complaint against Newsweekly Newspapers, Inc., charging a violation of New York General Business Law Section 330, which requires that:
“Every newspaper, magazine or other periodically printed publication published in this state, shall publish in every copy of every issue, upon the editorial page or in one of the first four pages of the publication, the full name and address of the owner, owners, proprietor or proprietors of such publication; and if said publication shall be owned or published by a corporation, then the name of the corporation and the address of its principal place of business shall be published, together with the full names and addresses of the president, secretary, and treasurer thereof; and if the said publication shall be owned or published by a partnership, limited partnership, or an unincorporated joint-stock association, then the full names and addresses of the partners, or officers and managers of said partnership, limited partnership or unincorporated joint-stock association shall be published in like manner. The representative capacities of those named shall be indicated in like manner.”
Bill Dawson was friendly with Seymour Fox, the Troy attorney who I had been working for since graduating from law school in 1963. He asked Seymour to defend his newspaper, but Seymour didn’t want to get into a political fracas, particularly one in which the defendant corporation was in clear violation of the statute. Seymour suggested that I handle the defense, and I jumped at the chance.
The prosecutor was William Gray, an Albany County Assistant District Attorney, and Richard Kohn, a law school classmate who had recently joined the District Attorney's Office. From the outset, it was clear that there was not going to be any plea bargain or compromise, and I demanded a jury trial. I had Robert Clark, the nominal president of Newsweekly Corp., file a similar criminal complaint against the Capital Newspapers, part of the Hearst Corporation, since its Albany papers, The Times Union and The Knickerbocker News, also were in clear violation of the statute. (Although the Hearst Corporation appeared to defend the complaint, that case mysteriously died before the scheduled May trial). Judge Landry did not find that Newsweekly Corp. was being selectively prosecuted, even when shown that none of the other newspapers circulated in Cohoes, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, failed to comply with the letter of the law.
A six-person jury was impaneled on Monday evening, April 12, 1965, and the trial went into the late hours and then was continued the following morning. Not surprisingly, Judge Landry denied every motion and objection I made, including one that he disqualify himself as being a member of the Citizens Party. The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and Judge Landry fined Newsweekly Newspapers, Inc. $250.00 on each of the 14 counts of the complaint, for a total of $3,500.00, which was paid.
I filed an appeal in the Albany County Court but did not immediately push the appeal forward. Two years later, when Albany’s affection for the Citizens Party waned, and there was some new blood in the Cohoes Democratic Party, I submitted a brief and finalized the appeal for the now-defunct newspaper. In June 1967, Albany County Judge Martin Schenck granted my appeal and reversed the conviction on the grounds that Section 330 was unconstitutional in violation of the right of freedom of expression. He ordered the fine returned.
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