[1] In 1971 Judge Pashman agreed to a plea bargain that allowed Edgar Smith to go free with a time-served sentence.
However, in 1971 a federal judge vacated the conviction and sentence, holding that Smith's post-arrest statement/confession had been coerced and had to be excluded at retrial.
The State prosecutor was concerned that without that critical evidence the case was significantly weakened and agreed to allow Smith to plead guilty to second-degree murder with time served (14 years).
[5] In the 1978 "Dr. X" murder trial of Mario Jascalevich, Judge Theodore Trautwein had ordered that reporter M. A. Farber of The New York Times be sent to jail for refusing to turn over notes to the defense attorney.
[1] A resident of Clifton, New Jersey who continued his work in the legal profession until days before his death, Pashman died at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center at age 87 on October 3, 1999.