(Courtesy of The Dallas Morning News) Ray Jackson and his counsel, Mark Werbner, arrived at the federal building Thursday for the trial on contempt of court charges.

"I will express my profound disappointment, at the minimum, at the conduct of both defendants in this case," Lynn told Hill and Jackson after their nearly seven-hour trial Thursday to determine whether they violated her gag order.

"There is no prediction on how the court will rule, but both as experienced attorneys should have known better," she said. "All of you had a responsibility to serve the interests of justice. That order was entered by me to do what I could do to assure that we had an impartial jury panel. You jeopardized it. That was just wrong."

Last fall, after three months of testimony, Hill, himself an attorney, and four others were convicted of shaking down developers for hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks in the largest public corruption trial in city history.

Before that trial, Lynn was concerned that extensive pre-trial publicity could taint prospective jurors. She limited what the lawyers and the defendants could say to the media. The gag order barred statements "about this case, other than matters of public record, that could interfere with a fair trial or otherwise prejudice defendants, the government, or the administration of justice."

"Parties may discuss, without elaboration or any kind of characterization, information contained in the public record; scheduling information; and any decision or order by the court that is a matter of public record," the order stated.

Channel 8 interview
 
In a June 18 interview with WFAA-TV (Channel 8), Hill said: "We can now look in hindsight and see that local Democratic officials were targeted by the FBI and Justice Department under our last president, Mr. Bush," referring to criticisms that the investigation unfairly targeted blacks.

Hill did not take the witness stand Thursday. But his court-appointed attorney, Marlo Cadeddu, argued to Lynn that everything Hill said in the interview was a matter of public record: that he was not guilty and that he had argued in court filings that the Justice Department's investigation was racially motivated.

"There is significant evidence that Hill complied with the gag order to keep his statements within the safe harbor," Cadeddu said.

Jackson testified that he was aware of Lynn's order, which is why he only agreed to what he thought would be a "fluff" piece about how Hill had endured the years-long investigation. Jackson said that when reporter Gary Reaves asked about the case during the interview, he felt uncomfortable and tried to kick and nudge Hill to make him stop answering questions.

Still, in another excerpt from that same interview with Reaves, Jackson said that he was "not particularly" worried about the FBI's mountain of wiretap evidence.

On the stand Thursday, Jackson told Lynn that he had just finished another personal injury case and was "panicking" and "frantic" while cramming to prepare in the days leading up to the Hill trial. He said he reluctantly consented to several interviews slated for June 18, but canceled the others after WFAA's.

Fearing he and Hill had come close to violating the gag order, he said he tried to e-mail Lynn's office to alert her, but his iPhone battery ran out of power. By that afternoon, it didn't matter: Lynn had already seen evidence of the interview online and convened a hearing for the next week to charge him and Hill with criminal contempt.

'Error in judgment'

"I had an error in judgment," Jackson told the judge. "What I did was put myself and my client in a bad position."

Special prosecutor Terence Hart told the judge the evidence was clear.

"The interview was replete with violations," he said. "The whole thing was a fiasco."

Mark Werbner, Jackson's attorney, said Jackson was "blindsided" by the reporter, who was not called to the stand Thursday. A reporter from The Dallas Morning News was also named as a potential witness, but was never served papers requiring him to testify. "I'm not going to say [Jackson] didn't violate the order," Werbner said.

"I'm talking about mental state. To find him guilty of criminal intent, I don't think that has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt."

The judge did not say when she will make a finding of guilt or innocence. If convicted, they face up to six months in jail.

© 2010, The Dallas Morning News, Inc.