News In Brief

Jury selection was completed yesterday in the criminal trial of Nora S. Anderson, who in 2008 was elected surrogate in Manhattan. Opening statements will be delivered Friday morning in the trial of Ms. Anderson, 57, and Seth Rubenstein, 82, a well known trusts and estates lawyer, on charges that they masked the source of $250,000 pumped into Ms. Anderson’s campaign in the waning days of a three-way Democratic primary.

During jury selection, lead prosecutor Daniel G. Cort asked Acting Justice Michael J. Obus (See Profile), who is presiding over the expected two-week trial, to override the defendants’ exercise of peremptory challenges against six white, male jurors. He argued the defendants’ use of peremptories to exclude all but one white, male juror violated the prohibition against racial and gender discrimination recognized in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986). Justice Obus found enough substance to the challenge to require the two defense lawyers—Gustave H. Newman for Ms. Anderson and Frederick P. Hafetz for Mr. Rubenstein—to articulate race-neutral reasons for their challenges aimed at white men. But the judge ruled that, despite “so many challenges in this category,” he was “not prepared” to find them pre-textual.