NEW YORK - Three detectives were acquitted of all charges Friday in the 50-shot killing of an unarmed groom-to-be on his wedding day, a case that put the NYPD at the center of another dispute involving allegations of excessive firepower.
Justice Arthur Cooperman delivered the verdict in a Queens courtroom packed with spectators, including victim Sean Bell's fiancee and parents, and at least 200 people gathered outside the building.
The verdict provoked an outpouring of emotions: Bell's fiancee immediately walked out of the room. His mother cried.
Outside the courthouse, which was surrounded by scores of police officers, many in the crowd began weeping as news of the verdict said. Others were enraged, swearing and screaming "Murderers! Murderers!" or "KKK!"
Bell, a 23-year-old black man, was killed in a hail of gunfire outside a seedy strip club in Queens on Nov. 25, 2006 — his wedding day — as he was leaving his bachelor party with two friends.
Officers Michael Oliver, 36, and Gescard Isnora, 29, stood trial for manslaughter while Officer Marc Cooper, 40, was charged only with reckless endangerment. Two other shooters weren't charged. Oliver squeezed off 31 shots; Isnora fired 11 rounds; and Cooper shot four times.
The officers, complaining that pretrial publicity had unfairly painted them as cold-blooded killers, opted to have the judge decide the case rather than a jury.
The judge indicated that the police officers' version of events was more credible than the victims' version. "The people have not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that each defendant was not justified" in firing, he said.
A conviction on manslaughter could have brought up to 25 years in prison; the penalty for reckless endangerment, a misdemeanor, is a year behind bars.
The case brought back painful memories of other NYPD shootings, such as the 1999 shooting of Amadou Diallo — an African immigrant who was gunned down in a hail of 41 bullets by police officers who mistook his wallet for a gun. The acquittal of the officers in that case created a storm of protest, with hundreds arrested after taking to the streets in demonstration.
The mood surrounding this case has been muted by comparison, although Bell's fiancee, parents and their supporters, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, have held rallies demanding that the officers — two of whom are black — be held accountable.
Still, a phalanx of police officers, some uniformed and some in the department's community affairs polo shirts, was stationed outside the courthouse Friday. The building was ringed by metal barricades. Some in the crowd wore buttons with Bell's picture or held signs saying "Justice for Sean Bell." After the verdict was read, some in the crowd approached officers but were held back; the jostling quickly died down.
After the verdict, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly acknowledged that some people were disappointed with the acquittals.
"We don't anticipate violence, but we are prepared for any contingency," he said.
The nearly two-month trial was marked by deeply divergent accounts of the night.
The defense painted the victims as drunken thugs who the officers believed were armed and dangerous. Prosecutors sought to convince the judge that the victims had been minding their own business, and that the officers were inept, trigger-happy aggressors.
None of the officers took the witness stand in his own defense. Instead, Cooperman heard transcripts of the officers testifying before a grand jury, saying they believed they had good reason to use deadly force. The judge also heard testimony from Bell's two injured companions, who insisted the maelstrom erupted without warning.
Both sides were consistent on one point: The utter chaos surrounding the last moments of Bell's life.
"It happened so quick," Isnora said in his grand jury testimony. "It was like the last thing I ever wanted to do."
Bell's companions — Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman — also offered dramatic testimony about the episode. Benefield and Guzman were both wounded; Guzman still has four bullets lodged in his body.
Referring to Isnora, Guzman said, "This dude is shooting like he's crazy, like he's out of his mind."
The victims and shooters were set on a fateful collision course by a pair of innocuous decisions: Bell's to have a last-minute bachelor party at Kalua Cabaret, and the undercover detectives' to investigate reports of prostitution at the club.
As the club closed around 4 a.m., Sanchez and Isnora claimed they overheard Bell and his friends first flirt with women, then taunt a stranger who responded by putting his right hand in his pocket as if he had a gun. Guzman, they testified, said, "Yo, go get my gun" — something Bell's friends denied.
Isnora said he decided to arm himself, call for backup — "It's getting hot," he told his supervisor — and tail Bell, Guzman and Benefield as they went around the corner and got into Bell's car. He claimed that after warning the men to halt, Bell pulled away, bumped him and rammed an unmarked police van that converged on the scene with Oliver at the wheel.
The detective also alleged that Guzman made a sudden move as if he were reaching for a gun.
"I yelled 'Gun!' and fired," he said. "In my mind, I knew (Guzman) had a gun."
Benefield and Guzman testified that there were no orders. Instead, Guzman said, Isnora "appeared out of nowhere" with a gun drawn and shot him in the shoulder — the first of 16 shots to enter his body.
"That's all there was — gunfire," he said. "There wasn't nothing else."
With tires screeching, glass breaking and bullets flying, the officers claimed that they believed they were the ones under fire. Oliver responded by emptying his semiautomatic pistol, reloading, and emptying it again, as the supervisor sought cover.
The truth emerged when the smoke cleared: There was no weapon inside Bell's blood-splattered car.

Knew this would happen (the decision). The city's best liars...er lawyers are working for the cops.

Thankfully, no riots because everyone learned from the LA riots. First Diallo, now Bell... soon something small might end up with people going up against cops because of the insecurities many of these people have thanks to this verdict.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by True Father:
NEW YORK - Three detectives were acquitted of all charges Friday in the 50-shot killing of an unarmed groom-to-be on his wedding day, a case that put the NYPD at the center of another dispute involving allegations of excessive firepower.

As a paralegal, I would like to see the court transcripts. Time for me to hit westlaw and my legal resources.

There are ways around the double jeopardy law. They might have been aquitted criminally, but there is still civil action ie wrongful death. and the civil action doesn't require reasonable doubt

Being someone that is trying to get into the law enforcement field, I see this case as just another reason why some people distrust the police.

I bet that had this case gone with a jury trial instead of a bench trial, the police officers would have been found guilty. With all the publicity, it could have been changed to a different venue.

I feel bad for Sean Bell's fiance and family.

What the hell I dont understand is that one of the officers shot him 31 times. He had to reload his gun and start blastin again. Excessive force is an understatement. And exactly what did Sean Bell do to make the officers shoot at him?

My prayers go out to his family and friends....

The problem also stem from the cops' assumption that the suspects have something they don't really have. I would actually call it a form of prejudice. They THINK the people in that club had guns and so any sudden movements they believe they had guns and so one cop would shout "Gun!" and all the cops start shooting. After the shooting stops, they concocted a story to cover their asses by saying the suspects were talking about having a gun. Since the cops actually didn't testify in court, the prosecution can't poke holes in their claim and so it's their word against the witnesses.

Think of it this way...if the cops first look at Sean Bell's friends and think that they had guns (just pre-judging them by the way they look), they'll believe they were shooting when all they were doing was running. Look at the Amadou Diallo case. The cops look at him and think "He looks like he might have a gun!" and then one cop trips and sets off his gun and all the cops would think, "He's shooting at us! Kill him!" and then we have a dead innocent person who died due to the "Keystone cops!" Police and any other form of security need better training. It's also like that at the airports. If you're not white and have computer parts, even if you told them, "Be careful with that, it's a hard drive." They'll still think you have a bomb. Some idiot TSA girl shouted "Bomb!" when she ran my hard drive through the X-Ray machine (and I explained it was a hard drive...and it even says it is on the label) and then security comes guns drawn and a lot of profanity from the idiots with guns. No apologies from them, just a hard drive with 3/4 of my work corrupted by the X-Rays! The worst comment was, "I could smell the booze on his breath!" (wtf? Who'd be dumb enough think someone who doesn't drink (only socially) would have booze on their breath when they clear didn't and speak in perfect English with no slurring?)
Anyways, it goes to show, if they pre-judge you based on the way you look, whatever you do, they'll think you did it anyways! We REALLY need to train these people better!

Dam right, DMD! Its basically assuming that because of what the person "looks like" their gonna get a cap busted in their ass. Its ridiculous and better training and common sense should be put forth. As for your situation at the airport, thats just dumb. Their "trying" to heightened their security but actually makin more mistakes.

This came over one of my legal websites this morning:

Acquittals in Sean Bell Case Point Out Advantages of a Non-Jury Trial
Mark Fass


The U.S. Constitution may guarantee the right to a jury trial, but as the verdicts in the Sean Bell case proved once more on Friday, that does not always make it the best option.

New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Cooperman's verdict of not guilty on all counts for the three police officers accused of killing Bell outside a Queens strip club on the eve of his wedding serves as a reminder as to why many defendants -- particularly those who work in law enforcement -- leave the judgment to the court.

In conversations following Cooperman's decision Friday morning, defense attorneys and former prosecutors cited numerous traditional reasons defendants opt out of a jury trial, as well as a few quintessentially contemporary ones.

The key impetus for opting out of a jury trial, all agreed, is emotion, more specifically the emotions that law enforcement officials continue to stir in certain jurisdictions.

"With a jury, there's always a chance that emotion can enter the process," said Mark Bederow of Thompson Hine, who recently represented R. Lindley Devecchio, the former FBI agent who opted for a bench trial in his successful defense of four murder charges.

"With a judge, the expectation is that [the decision] will be purely on the facts and the law, and that extra-judicial influences will not play a role. And I think you saw that specifically in the Bell case."

Cooperman, who was first appointed to the Queens bench in 1982, lived up to his reputation as a veteran judge unlikely to be swayed by extraneous issues.

"An objective consideration of the proof ruled out sympathy and prejudice and any other emotional response to the issues presented. The court did not view the victims or the NYPD as being on trial here," Cooperman said in a statement he issued as he announced the acquittal. "The police response with respect to each defendant was not proved to be criminal, i.e., beyond a reasonable doubt. Questions of carelessness and incompetence must be left to other forums," Cooperman wrote.

The three defendants, Gescard Isnora, Marc Cooper and Michael Oliver, were represented respectively by Anthony Ricco, Paul Martin and James Culleton.

Other reasons for foregoing a jury cited by the attorneys included the reputation of the judge who lands the case, whether the charges turn on a complex legal issue and the still-explosive ramifications of race.

Robert Koppelman, whose client Christopher Aldorasi faces more than 25 years for his role in a ring that illegally sold human body parts to biomedical companies, cited almost all of these factors in deciding to allow Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Albert Tomei decide the case.

"It's pretty simple. It's nothing arcane," Koppelman said. "It's just that the background to the whole [human body parts] case is just kind of ugly, gruesome. I felt that this is something that could be overcome by the judge, but not so likely to be overcome by the jury. The issues in the case were pretty much legal issues, rather than credibility issues ... And especially I thought this was a judge who could be fair and not be overcome by emotions."

One highly charged case mentioned by attorneys Friday was the 2000 trial of the police officers charged with shooting Amadou Diallo, an unarmed street vendor from Guinea, outside his Bronx apartment building. That case was tried before a jury, which acquitted all four defendants. But as one expert noted Friday, there was one significant difference between the Diallo and Bell cases.

As the expert noted, the jury pool in Albany, where the Diallo case was transferred from the Bronx, has likely had "more positive experiences with police officers than [have] jury pools in certain neighborhoods here in New York."

Charles A. Ross, the former chair of the white-collar defense group at Herrick Feinstein and currently the principal of Charles A. Ross and Associates, said that electing a bench trial for police-officer defendants was an entrenched strategy when he first practiced law in the Bronx in 1981.

"The [Bell case] is one in a long line of cases where the strategy was effectively deployed," Ross said. "This strategy will continue, and if you're a defense lawyer, appropriately so."

Like the rest of his colleagues, Ross refrained to list a distrust of juries as a reason for choosing a bench trial.

"I think more often than not, juries get it right," Ross said. "There may be a popular perception that juries can just have the wool pulled over their eyes, but not in my experience."

Though leaving the decision to the judge may be an age-old strategy, at least one new factor may make it an increasingly popular one: the omnipresence of modern media.

"Overall, it's the same strategic call," said Sung-Hee Suh, a litigation partner at Schulte Roth & Zabel and a former deputy chief in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York. But "heightened media attention and the rise of the Internet" cause news to spread ever-more quickly, thereby sensationalizing cases and encouraging "lawyers to think a little more seriously about the route of a bench trial," she said.

On Friday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice announced they will conduct an independent review of the Bell shooting.

If the three acquitted officers do indeed face federal charges, their attorneys likely will not have an opportunity to again opt for a bench trial. In federal courts, both sides need to agree to give up the right to a jury trial, and if recent history is a guide -- see for example the federal trial of the officers charged with assaulting Abner Louima -- prosecutors will be loath to take the decision out of the jury's hands.

"I think the odds are extraordinarily low that federal prosecutors would consent to the waiver of a jury in this case," Ross said. "I just don't think that there's an incentive to do that."

It's all about strategy to win and not about justice.

We did a mock trial in my courts class a few weeks back and granted, we're just students, we had to use similar court strategies.

#1: Don't put your defendant on the stand unless you absolutely have to.

#2: With a bench trial, it's easier to sway one mind than to sway 12+ minds.

Without seeing the trial or reading the court records, my guess is that the Prosecution didn't do an outstanding job in proving the evidence. I'd like to see something come about in Civil Court, except that law enforcement officers have options available to them to aid them incase they do get sued.