Prometheus 6

The arguments on both sides echoed those from 1999, before the murder trial of four officers who killed Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant, in a barrage of 41 bullets outside his apartment in the Bronx. Appellate judges in that case moved the trial to Albany, where the officers were acquitted in 2000. Critics of the verdict have held that the move to Albany, a much more white area than the Bronx, played a major role in the verdict for the white officers.

Trial in Sean Bell Shooting Will Stay in Queens
By Michael Wilson

A state appellate court has rejected an effort by defense lawyers to move the trial of three New York City police detectives charged in the killing of Sean Bell, who was fatally shot in Queens on Nov. 25, 2006, hours before he was to be married.

Lawyers for the three detectives had argued this month that publicity surrounding the case had “incurably poisoned” the pool of prospective jurors for the trial next month and asked that the proceedings be moved out of New York City.

Prosecutors had fought to keep the trial in Queens. “There’s no reason to believe that a fair and impartial jury could not be found among the 2.3 million people here in Queens,” Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, said this month. “This is a case that occurred here in Queens and it should, in my opinion, be tried by a jury representative of the diversity of Queens.”

In a one-page ruling [pdf] released today, four justices of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn — Thomas A. Dickerson, Anita R. Florio, William F. Mastro, Howard Miller — denied the defense lawyers’ motion to change the trial’s venue. The justices did not explain the reasoning behind their decision.