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Room 8 Ungagged, Dishes On Bronx DA

Here’s a very strange story that not only should send a chill up the spine of any anonymous blog participants, but also could have wide-reaching implications when it comes to the Internet and free speech.

Room 8 has won a legal battle with Bronx DA Robert Johnson, who withdrew a grand jury subpoena demanding the identification of a blogger and commentors and threatening prosecution if anyone dared to breathe a word about the subpoena’s very existence.

The DA’s office wanted details - specifically, the IP address - of a Room 8 blogger who goes by the name “Republican Dissident” and has been highly critical of the Bronx GOP and its chairman, Jay Savino.

Republican Dissident also urged the Republicans to run a candidate against Johnson, a Democrat, and called for him to be removed from an investigation into the party. S/he has since taken down the post in question plus all other writings. Some are cached here.

Room 8, of course, has extensive coverage, plus a copy of the subpoena that was issued in January.

The Times posted a story last night that has some choice quotes from - and a dapper photo of (so, THAT explains why he was wearing the Bar Mitzvah suit!) - the site’s co-founder and my predecessor here at the DN, Ben Smith, now with Politico.

Smith told The Times Jonathan Glater that he’s not adverse to assisting prosecutors in certain cases, but was concerned in this instance that sharing information about Republican Dissident would have a chilling effect.

“Was somebody found face-down on their keyboard and the I.P. address was going to help identify the killer?” Smith said. “We’re not free speech absolutists here.”

(Snip)

“If our anonymous bloggers were to learn that we’d been handing out their identities to politicians whom they’ve been criticizing, I think they’d be much less likely to write on the site,”

Smith and his fellow Room 8 co-founder, Gur Tsabar, received pro bono legal representation from the Public Citizen Litigation Group, a public interest law firm. Attorney Paul Alan Levy, who filed a motion to quash the subpoena, said the DA’s office refused to tell him why they sought Republican Dissident’s identification. (Documents in the case are available here).

A spokesman for Johnson, Steven R. Reed, told The Times the DA hadn’t been aware either of the conent of the comments or even that the subpoena with the gag order was sent until after it was already issued.

Which sort of makes one wonder what the heck is going on over there in the DA’s office.

If this was a politically motivated effort - and it’s hard to see what else it might have been - isn’t it a clear abuse of power and taxpayer funds? And shouldn’t the DA be concerned about that?

Over at The Daily Gotham, Bouldin raises some of the same questions and suggestes this might be a case for AG Andrew Cuomo.

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A construction worker’s bid to curse the New York Yankees by planting a Boston Red Sox jersey in their new stadium was foiled Sunday when the home team removed the offending shirt from its burial spot.

After locating the shirt in a service corridor behind what will be a restaurant in the new Yankee Stadium, construction workers jackhammered through the concrete Sunday and pulled it out.

The team said it learned that a Sox-rooting construction worker had buried a shirt in the new Bronx stadium, which will open next year across the street from the current ballpark, from a report in the New York Post on Friday.

Yankees President Randy Levine said team officials at first considered leaving the shirt where it was.

“The first thought was, you know, it’s never a good thing to be buried in cement when you’re in New York,” Levine said. “But then we decided, why reward somebody who had really bad motives and was trying to do a really bad thing?”

On Saturday, construction workers who remembered the employee, Gino Castignoli, phoned in tips about the shirt’s location.

“We had anonymous people come tell us where it was, and we were able to find it,” said Frank Gramarossa, a project executive with Turner Construction, the general contractor on the site.

It took about five hours of drilling Saturday to locate the shirt under 2 feet of concrete, he said.

On Sunday, Levine and Yankees CEO Lonn Trost watched as Gramarossa and foreman Rich Corrado finished the job and pulled the shirt from the rubble.

In shreds from the jackhammers, the shirt still bore the letters “Red Sox” on the front. It was a David Ortiz jersey, No. 34.

Trost said the Yankees had discussed possible criminal charges against Castignoli with the district attorney’s office.

“We will take appropriate action since fortunately we do know the name of the individual,” he said.

A woman who answered the phone at Castignoli’s home in the Bronx on Sunday said he was not there. Read more..

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Bronx Hardware Store Delivery Driver Delivering More Then Hardware

Bronx - District Attorney Robert Johnson announced Thursday that a 30-year-old Bronx man selling illegal drugs while making legitimate deliveries for the hardware store that employed him.

A grand jury has indicted Luis Fernandez, of 1584 East 172nd Street, the Bronx, on two counts of Criminal Sale of a Controlled Substance in the 1st degree, a Class A-1 felony offense, four counts of Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in the 3rd degree, a Class B felony offense, and two counts of Criminally Using Drug Paraphernalia in the 2nd degree, a Class A misdemeanor offense.

Fernandez is facing a maximum sentence of eight to 20 years imprisonment on each count if convicted of the most serious charges, Criminal Sale of a Controlled Substance in the 1st degree. Fernandez, whose bail was set at $50,000 bond or $25,000 cash, was arraigned on the indictment before State Supreme Court Justice Robert Seewald.

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