When former judge Leslie Crocker Snyder recently ruled out perjury charges against the mob mistress suspected of lying at the trial of an ex–FBI agent, she went out of her way to attack two reporters, the Village Voice’s Tom Robbins and Mafia expert Jerry Capeci, who at the agent’s trial had presented tapes of confidential interviews with the witness contradicting her testimony. The tapes caused embarrassed Brooklyn D.A. Charles Hynes to drop the charges. Snyder’s report said the journalists’ delay in disclosing the tapes “disrupted the trial in a manner that was most likely to bring disrepute on the entire criminal-justice system.” But Robbins says Snyder was retaliating for a 2005 exposé revealing that she had given lucrative appointments to two friends, one of whom later helped her get hired at a law firm. “She had a conflict of interest and should never have taken this appointment” as special prosecutor, Robbins says. Snyder doesn’t buy it: “I stand by my report.”

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