Each Side Arguing Over Councilman Larry Seabrook Retrial The retrial of City Councilman Larry B. Seabrook on federal corruption charges is not scheduled to begin for two more weeks, but defense lawyers and prosecutors are already brawling as if the case were well under way. Last month, prosecutors said in court papers that Mr. Seabrook's lawyers, during the opening statement at the first trial, "inappropriately injected social issues" into a case alleging fraud and corruption. "The defense should be precluded from making improper appeals to sympathy or concerning socio-economic issues in the opening statement," they wrote. On Tuesday, Mr. Seabrook's lawyers responded, filing court papers that accused the government of improperly challenging prospective jurors in the first trial "based on racial grounds." The defense also asked the judge in the retrial, Deborah A. Batts of United States District Court in Manhattan, to bar prosecutors from referring to the councilman by only his last name, an action that the defense objected to in the first trial. "The pejorative use of the term "Seabrook" rather than "Mr. Seabrook" was a blatant attempt by the government to demean Councilman Seabrook in the eyes of the jury," the lawyers wrote. The retrial is scheduled to begin on June 19. The first trial ended in a mistrial in December after the jury deadlocked. Mr. Seabrook, a Bronx Democrat, had been charged in a scheme to funnel city tax money to relatives and friends through nonprofit organizations he controlled. In the government's filing last month, prosecutors also asked Judge Batts to advise Mr. Seabrook's lawyers that their opening statement had to be limited to a discussion of what the evidence at trial would show. They cited the defense's opening statement by the lawyer Anthony L. Ricco, in which he invoked the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other "world leaders" who had faced "the kinds of allegations that were hurled" at his client. "People who have stood up for good have always been accused of wrongdoing, just like Mr. Seabrook this morning," he said. Prosecutors wrote that a review of the trial transcript "failed to find evidence comparing Seabrook to Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela or any other "world leader," and it is difficult to imagine a circumstance in which such evidence would have been admitted." In the defense's filing on Tuesday, Mr. Ricco and his co-counsel, Edward D. Wilford, argued that the government's request for "a blanket prohibition" on what they could say in an opening statement was "inappropriate and unnecessary." Either party could object at the time, they added. The defense had also argued during jury selection at the first trial that prosecutors used race as a basis to try to exclude a black woman from the jury, an assertion that prosecutors vigorously contested, saying they sought to exclude her because she was a social worker who might be predisposed to the defense. A transcript shows that the judge in the first trial, Robert P. Patterson Jr., kept the woman on the jury, but said that he did not believe prosecutors had acted in bad faith or "for racial reasons" in trying to strike her.