The New York Times-20080124-Court Rejects Venue Change In Police Killing
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Court Rejects Venue Change In Police Killing
A New York state appeals court ruled on Wednesday against moving the trial of three detectives charged in the killing of Sean Bell to a location out of New York City, clearing the way for jury selection to begin in Queens on Feb. 4.
Judges at the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, which oversees Queens courts, denied the motion for a change of venue in the trial in the Nov. 25, 2006, killing of Mr. Bell outside a strip club in Queens. But lawyers for the detectives may renew their request after jury selection is completed, a task that is expected to last longer than usual because of the extraordinary amount of publicity surrounding Mr. Bell's death.
Undercover detectives investigating the strip club followed Mr. Bell, 23, who was to be married that day, and his two friends to their car, suspecting them of going to get guns after an earlier argument with another group.
In the confrontation that followed, the officers shot 50 times, killing Mr. Bell, who was driving the car, and wounding his friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield. No gun was found in the car.
Detectives Michael Oliver and Gescard F. Isnora face charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter. Detective Marc Cooper faces two misdemeanor charges of reckless endangerment.
The Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, praised Wednesday's ruling.
Today's decision reflects that which we said all along, Mr. Brown said in a statement, that a fair and impartial jury can be selected from among the 2.3 million residents of Queens County.
Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association, said he was dismayed by the ruling.
Both the evidence and our arguments were powerful and had merit, he said. However, the court has spoken, and we will prepare for trial in Queens. Neither innocence nor guilt of our detectives was decided today.
The decision appeared to dispel fears among supporters of Mr. Bell's family of a repeat of what happened in the murder trial of four officers who killed Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant, in a hail of 41 bullets outside his apartment in the Bronx. That trial was moved to Albany because of pretrial publicity, and the officers were acquitted in 2000.
While Mr. Diallo and Mr. Bell were both black, comparisons between the two shootings have never been neat or simple. The officers who shot Mr. Diallo were all white, but two of the detectives charged in the Bell killing are black, including the one who fired first. And while Mr. Diallo died after reaching for his wallet, Mr. Bell, the police have said, was trying to ram the officers with his car. Thousands of people were arrested during protests over the Diallo shooting.
Nonetheless, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has appeared at rallies at the side of Mr. Bell's family and fiancee, Nicole Paultre Bell, praised the decision as a civil rights victory.
Though this does not give an advantage or disadvantage for any of the involved parties, it does take the stain of an unfair and uneven playing field from at least the geographic questions that surround these trials, Mr. Sharpton said in a statement, calling the trial date Super Monday in the civil rights movement around this country.
Lawyers for the three detectives said that pretrial publicity had hopelessly skewed public opinion against their clients. The lawyers conducted a poll of 600 prospective jurors suggesting that 60.5 percent believed the shooting to be unjustified. In a poll by the prosecutors, only 35.5 percent of potential jurors report having formed an opinion about this case.
The defense must now decide whether to waive a jury trial before Justice Arthur J. Cooperman and seek a bench trial instead.
The four justices of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn who delivered the ruling were Thomas A. Dickerson, Anita R. Florio, William F. Mastro and Howard Miller.
