Reasonable doubt anchors Sean Bell ruling
BY ANTHONY DESTEFANO
newsday.com
The Queens judge who cleared the three detectives in the Sean Bell case found that the state’s case was riddled with problems and that the prosecutors had failed to defeat the cops’ claim that they fired in self-defense on Liverpool Street the night of Nov. 25, 2006.
It took Queens Supreme Court Juctice Arthur Cooperman less than 10 minutes to read his decision in which he acquitted detectives Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora and Marc Cooper of all charges stemming from the 50-shot barrage that killed Bell and wounded two of his friends.
“The prosecution has not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that each defendant was not justified” in using deadly force, Cooperman said.
As their supporters in the Kew Gardens courtroom gasped and cried in relief, the detectives were quickly ushered out of a back door, after having entered through the main public entrance earlier.
Though he praised the efforts of defense and prosecution attorneys, Cooperman didn’t disguise his feeling that the district attorney’s office didn’t marshal a convincing case in the nonjury trial.
“At times the testimony didn’t make sense,” said Cooperman, about the witnesses used by the Queens district attorney’s office to try and make the case. He also said that the proof wasn’t to be measured by any carelessness or incompetence, which prosecutors argued had been the way the cops acted, but rather by the standard of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
[...]
Cooperman said some witnesses had major credibility problems because they had given inconsistent statements on the witness stand, in the grand jury and in meetings with prosecutors, or had an interest in the outcome of the trial because of lawsuits. The latter was an apparent reference to Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman, two friends of Bell who were wounded in the incident and were suing the NYPD.
But what Cooperman said swung him against the prosecution was the defense of justification — self-defense — which he said shifted the burden of proof to prosecutors in a way they couldn’t overcome.
The cops claimed that they suspected based on what Isnora and others witnessed outside the Kalua Cabaret, the scene of Bell’s bachelor party, that Guzman might have had a gun.
Although no gun was ever found, Guzman’s movements in Bell’s Nissan Altima led Isnora, who had been struck by the car as it attempted to drive away, to yell out “gun” and then commence firing 11 shots. That shooting sparked the firing by Oliver, who discharged 31 shots, and Cooper, who fired four times. Other cops who weren’t indicted fired the remainder of the 50 shots. (more…)
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