Discussions Outside Court Are Raised at Fire Trial

A limited view of this dynamic was revealed on Thursday in a Manhattan courtroom, where a construction worker testified about his sometimes uneasy relationship with a prosecutor in the trial of three men charged in the deaths of two firefighters battling a blaze at the former Deutsche Bank building.

And in an awkward moment, the prosecutor, Joel J. Seidemann, had to confront the worker, Diego Marin, just moments after Mr. Marin spoke about the tension.

At issue was whether Mr. Seidemann, a veteran assistant district attorney who can be feisty in legal battles, pressured Mr. Marin into saying certain things.

Under cross-examination, Edward J. M. Little, who represents one of the defendants, Jeffrey Melofchik, asked Mr. Marin if Mr. Seidemann had asked him repeatedly in a private, pretrial interview whether a pipe shown to him in a photograph was a “high-pressured pipe.”

“Yes, because what he was saying was that I had told him that it was a high-pressured pipe,” Mr. Marin said through an interpreter.

But what he actually told Mr. Seidemann, Mr. Marin testified, was that it seemed like a high-pressured pipe. He could not be sure, he said, because he was not a plumber.

The pipe in question is a standpipe in the building’s basement. Its identity is important because lawyers for the defendants — Mr. Melofchik, a site safety supervisor; and two abatement supervisors, Mitchel Alvo and Salvatore DePaola — say their clients did not have the expertise to know what the pipe was.

Prosecutors blame the defendants for severing the pipe less than a year before a blaze in the upper floors led to the deaths of two firefighters.

Mr. Little asked Mr. Marin if he had told investigators that “this prosecutor acted crazy and pushed you around a lot.”

“No,” Mr. Marin responded. “It was just that I was starting to feel uncomfortable.”

Mr. Marin also testified that an unidentified employee of the district attorney’s office slapped Mr. DePaola’s hand out of the way recently when the two were trying to shake hands.

When Mr. Seidemann got up to ask Mr. Marin more questions after Mr. Little was finished, there was a moment of silence.

“You’re smiling, I see,” Mr. Seidemann said.

“I’ve lost two days of work,” Mr. Marin responded.

“I’m sorry about that,” Mr. Seidemann said.

He showed Mr. Marin two photographs on which Mr. Marin had made notations during an interview at the district attorney’s office. The photographs were of pipes in the basement of the former Deutsche Bank building.

Mr. Marin said he had written on them that “it looks like the picture of a high-pressured pipe.”

While it is unusual for prosecutors to be testy with their own witnesses, Mr. Seidemann asked Mr. Marin if he was being honest in what he wrote.

“Yes, I’ve tried to tell the truth,” he said. “I’ve told the truth.”

Then, raising his voice, Mr. Seidemann asked Mr. Marin if he wrote anywhere on the photographs that he was unsure it was a high-pressured water pipe. The defense objected, and the judge told Mr. Marin not to answer the question.