Judge to review motions before making them public

Monday, Aug. 29, 2005 | 9:35 a.m.

ERIE, Pa. -- A judge decided against sealing all pretrial motions in the public corruption case involving Mayor Rick Filippi, and will instead review such papers for 48 hours before deciding which ones can remain public without resulting in unfair pretrial publicity.

The Erie Times-News on Thursday challenged Erie County Judge Ernest J. DiSantis Jr.'s initial plan to keep all pretrial motions in the case secret. DiSantis, who has already issued a gag order in the case, had planned to seal all court papers filed before Filippi's trial in response to publicity surrounding a defense motion targeting prosecution witness Greg Rubino.

The mayor's attorneys filed that motion to subpoena FBI records which they said would show that Rubino, a developer, cooperated with federal authorities during drug probes in Erie in the 1980s. They say that could be relevant to his credibility in the Filippi case, because the FBI has helped in the corruption investigation of the mayor.

State prosecutors accuse Filippi, his former law partner and his former campaign manager of concealing Filippi's interest in a real estate firm that bought land near a former paper mill site.