The New York Times-20080125-Detectives in Bell Shooting Seek to Waive Trial by Jury
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Detectives in Bell Shooting Seek to Waive Trial by Jury
The three detectives charged in the killing of Sean Bell have opted to be tried by a judge rather than a jury, prosecutors said Thursday.
A hearing on the defendants' plan to waive their right to a jury trial -- a legal strategy considered by many to be risky -- before Justice Arthur J. Cooperman is set for Friday at 2 p.m. in Queens Criminal Court. Waiving a jury trial must be done in writing before the judge, though such requests are generally granted.
The announcement came one day after an appeals court denied the detectives' request to have the trial moved out of New York City.
A bench trial promises to cool the tenor of the proceedings. Such trials generally appeal to defense lawyers who may think that jurors in a particular jurisdiction could be biased against their clients.
Detectives Michael Oliver, Gescard F. Isnora and Marc Cooper, their lawyers and prosecutors are expected to attend Friday's hearing, said Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney. The meeting follows a letter to prosecutors and the court from one of the defense lawyers, Steven R. Kartagener, stating the detectives' wish for a bench trial, Mr. Brown said. Defense lawyers declined to discuss the hearing or the new strategy on Thursday.
On Nov. 25, 2006, Mr. Bell, 23, was leaving a strip club in Queens with two friends on the day of his wedding when the detectives and other police officers, working undercover, followed them. The officers have said they believed the group was going to retrieve a gun and shoot at another group at the club. When Mr. Bell seemed to try to flee or ram the officers with his car, the police have said, the detectives opened fire, killing him and wounding his friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, in a barrage of 50 bullets. The detectives have said they believed they were being fired upon, but no gun was found in the car.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has spoken on behalf of Mr. Bell's family and fiancee since the shooting, expressed dismay at the notion of a bench trial in a statement Thursday.
I think that it is stunning that these officers want to do everything but be accountable to the people they serve in Queens, Mr. Sharpton said. Police should be accountable to the people they serve. It is interesting they would be accountable to people in another venue, but in Queens they do not want to face the people.
Mr. Brown, the district attorney, was less inflamed. Defendants have an absolute right under the law to have the case tried by a judge rather than before a jury, he said. Either way, I'm certain that they will receive a fair trial.
It is a strategy that is quite risky, said Gerald L. Shargel, a longtime criminal defense lawyer. There are so many complex elements in an acquittal that are absent when you try the case before a judge, he said. There are many opportunities that are lost.
A recent example of a bench trial under similar circumstances was the second trial of a police officer, Bryan A. Conroy, in the fatal shooting of Ousmane Zongo, 43, an unarmed African immigrant, in a Chelsea warehouse.
On May 22, 2003, Officer Conroy was standing guard over seized counterfeit CDs in the warehouse when he encountered Mr. Zongo, who he said ignored his commands to stop. In the confrontation that followed, the officer shot Mr. Zongo four times, twice in the back. A previous trial ended in a mistrial after two jurors refused to vote with the others to convict Officer Conroy, who was charged with second-degree manslaughter.
At the bench trial in 2005, Justice Robert H. Straus convicted Officer Conroy of criminally negligent homicide, a lesser charge.
In the Bell case, Detectives Oliver and Isnora face charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter. Detective Cooper faces two misdemeanor charges of reckless endangerment.
The waiver could delay the start of the trial, now scheduled for Feb. 4, as several days allotted for jury selection would no longer be necessary.
Mr. Shargel said that a defendant should try a criminal case before a judge rather than a jury only under certain circumstances.
If they think they have a good case, and it's not about credibility, and it's not about sympathy, he said, it's a cold question of the reasonableness of the police reaction, and the reasonableness of the police officers, and you have a judge who's sympathetic to those arguments, I'd still be scared to death.
