Imperious judge in Rowland trial a closet Yankee fan?

It’s no secret that U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton is a no-nonsense jurist. Just ask Joe Ganim, who thought going to trial on corruption charges was a good idea back in 2003, then got whacked with a nine-year federal prison sentence for accepting half a million bucks in bribes. Or ask Josh Nassi and Robert Braddock, who are behind bars for 28 months and 38 months, respectively, for their roles in accepting straw contributions while they ran Democrat Chris Donovan’s crash-and-burn 5th Congressional District primary campaign in 2012.

Arterton this week made life a little more difficult for reporters covering John G. Rowland’s latest corruption trial in New Haven District Court, when she barred laptops from her courtroom, except for those reporters who thought ahead, called her office and requested permission in writing. This imperious tactic, at a time when courts are supposedly trying to be more “open and transparent,” was an inconvenience, at the least, for a TV reporter, an online reporter and a couple other newspaper reporters who didn’t think far enough ahead. So there they were, scribbling requests on Wednesday, during opening arguments, in attempt to curry permission to use them for the rest of the anticipated three-week attempt by Rowland, the disgraced former governor and convicted felon, to escape more than 50 years in prison on conspiracy and election-fraud charges 10 years after he resigned office in the face of a federal investigation.

So during the afternoon portion of the trial’s first day, Mark Greenberg was describing how Rowland’s offers to do campaign work for him in 2010 were persistent, to say the least. “It was like Rodney Dangerfield said: Deja vu all over again,” Greenberg quipped at one point. His testimony continued until 3 p.m., when Arterton released the jury for the day.

Arterton asked one female juror to hang back and while the rest of the 16-member panel walked to their jury room, Arterton discussed a concern the juror had written her about someone in her car pool discussing the Rowland case. She asked the juror to “refrain from contact” with the car pooler until after the trial, in order to avoid the appearance of a possible violation of rules prohibiting jurors to discuss pending cases.

Then Arterton, showing she is on top of all issues in her courtroom, corrected Greenberg. Indeed, it was Yogi Berra, 89, the Hall of Fame Yankees catcher, former manager and master of the malaprop, who coined the famous “Deja vu” quote, she said. “We need to give credit where credit is due,” she declared, mustering up what was as close to a smile as anyone was going to see that day from her seat on the bench.