A federal judge Friday declined a request from prosecutors for a gag order in the high-profile bribery, sex- and drug-trafficking case against a Cheektowaga strip club owner and retired DEA agent.
U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo also declined to reconsider a prior court order that has detained Peter Gerace Jr., the owner of Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club, ahead of the his trial.
Vilardo called a court-ordered gag order “a last resort†that he was not willing to impose, but he warned lawyers in the case he would consider it if he felt the lawyers began “speaking out of line.â€
“This case is not going to be tried in the media,†Vilardo said. “I will issue a gag order if I have to.â€
Prosecutors in June called the gag order necessary, saying that Steven M. Cohen, the lawyer for Gerace at the time, kept making comments to the local media “in order to denigrate witnesses, potentially pollute the jury pool, and to otherwise try this case through the media,†according to their motion.
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Gerace’s current defense lawyers, Mark Foti and Eric Soehnlein, said the government’s motion was based upon comments made by Cohen and premised upon an assumption that Cohen would continue those remarks in the future. But Cohen is no longer an attorney in the case, so the issues raised by prosecutors are moot, they told Vilardo.
“Mr. Foti and I don’t operate that way,†Soehnlein told the judge at Friday’s court proceeding. “We are concerned by what goes on inside this courtroom and not by what happens outside it.â€
Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tripi said Cohen’s departure from the case should not render the substance of a gag order moot when Soehnlein, a member of Gerace’s current defense team, served as co-counsel with Cohen when Cohen made prejudicial statements to the media.
Also, the current counsel for both defendants, Gerace and Joseph Bongiovanni, have also made prejudicial public comments outside the courtroom, including to The Buffalo News, meriting a gag order, Tripi said.
In a separate motion requesting the trial be moved from Buffalo to Rochester, prosecutors cited “the intense spotlight of the Buffalo media.†The judge will consider that motion later this month.
Federal authorities have accused Gerace of bribing Bongiovanni, at the time a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, and conspiring to engage in drug trafficking and human trafficking at Pharaoh’s. Gerace’s charges include maintaining Pharaoh’s as a drug-involved premises where vulnerable young women were exploited through their drug addictions and coerced into engaging in commercial sex acts with him, his friends and associates.
Prosecutors have charged the now-retired Bongiovanni with accepting $250,000 in bribes from drug dealers whom he thought were associated with Italian organized crime and shielding them from arrest, as well as providing them with information about investigations and cooperating sources. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Their joint trial is scheduled to begin in January.
Gerace has not always been locked up since a grand jury returned an indictment in February 2021 charging him with the crimes. But Gerace was arrested and detained this past March after a grand jury found probable cause that he was responsible for threatening Facebook messages in 2019 to a potential witness against him.
The messages were sent, while Gerace was in his home, on another person’s phone and Facebook account. Prosecutors earlier this year said the Facebook threats “exemplify Gerace’s ability to motivate and utilize others to tamper with witnesses.â€
U.S. District Judge John L. Sinatra Jr., who presided over the case until June, ordered Gerace to remain in custody until the trial.
But since Sinatra’s ruling, the witness who was allegedly tampered with has died.
Former exotic dancer Crystal Quinn, 37, died Aug. 1 in the home of Simon P. Gogolack of what authorities suspect was a drug overdose.
Gogolack, a previously convicted drug dealer, now faces two kidnapping and six witness tampering charges in addition to narcotics and firearms charges.
Foti on Friday argued that Quinn’s death was a “changed circumstance†that warranted Vilardo reconsidering Gerace’s detention.
Sinatra’s decision to put Gerace in custody earlier this year “all relates to this witness,†but because of her death, she’s no longer a witness in the case that can be tampered with.
Vilardo said he would not review Sinatra’s decision and rule whether he agreed with it or not, but simply look to see if there was a changed circumstance since Sinatra’s ruling that would warrant reconsidering Gerace’s detention.
“I don’t think you’ve given me enough to change the court’s mind,†Vilardo told Foti in denying the defense team request.
