Guy W. Calissi

Guy W. Calissi (November 28, 1909 – December 6, 1980), was an American Democratic Party politician, prosecutor, lawyer and judge, who served for seven years as mayor of Wood-Ridge, New Jersey, 16 years as Bergen County, New Jersey prosecutor and was appointed in 1970 to serve as a judge on New Jersey Superior Court, a post he served in until his mandatory retirement at age 70 in the year before his death.

Born in New York City, Calissi spent his early years in an orphanage in Kearny, New Jersey. Offered a college scholarship, he chose to decline it so that he could earn a living and graduated in 1941 from John Marshall Law School.

He was elected as Mayor of Wood-Ridge, New Jersey in 1947 and served in that position until 1954, when Governor of New Jersey Robert B. Meyner named him as Bergen County prosecutor, the first Democrat in decades to serve in that position.

In a 1964 case that was later overturned, Calissi placed a ban on the sale of the John Cleland book Fanny Hill in New Jersey. New Jersey Superior Court judge Morris Pashman upheld the ban, calling the book "sufficiently obscene to forfeit the protection of the First Amendment of the Constitution." In addition to failing tests of "social value", "prurient interest" and "patently offensive", Pashman ruled that Fanny Hill failed the "hard-core pornography test", noting that the "book may be well-written but still obscene".

As prosecutor, Calissi obtained death sentences for convicted murderers Edgar Smith and Thomas Trantino. Smith was convicted in 1957 of the bludgeoning of a high school cheerleader, a case that Calissi called Vickie's murder the "most vicious, most brutal and the most sadistic I have ever seen". Convicted of first degree murder in the original case and sentences to death, Smith argued successfully for a new trial on the basis that his confession had been coerced. At a second trial, in June 1971, Smith accepted a deal under which he would plead guilty to second degree murder and be released on parole.

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