Detective Jason Arbeeny arrived in court this morning in blue jeans and a navy blue sports coat having no idea that he was about to catch a break from the judge.

He had been on trial for three weeks during which the prosecution had mounted its case alleging that Arbeeny had not only defrauded the department by filing false documents, but he had known that fellow officers had been planting drugs on defendants in order to boost their arrest reports.

Arbeeny’s wife took her seat in the second row of the courtroom. His lawyer was scheduled to begin making the case for Arbeeny’s defense. But first Judge Gustin Reichbach had a ruling to announce.

Tracy Jarrett / The Brooklyn Ink

“I’m not sure that I see an agreement between the defendant and others,” he said, referring to the connection between Arbeeny and other narcotics detectives on the Brooklyn South Squad who have been accused of planting drugs.

“I’m not sure that there is any evidence that this was an organized practice. People can commit the same crime individually of each other and it doesn’t make it a conspiracy theory,” he concluded.

He then gave the prosecution a chance to summarize its case. Arbeeny’s face turned red and his lips tightened. In a seat behind him, his wife held her hand to her mouth listening intently.

Judge Reichbach leaned back in his chair, poured a glass of water, and continued, “I dismiss counts one and two of conspiracy.”

Conspiracy was the most serious charge against Arbeeny and now he appeared to relax. But Arbeeny was not off the hook–the judge did say that it was not proven beyond reasonable doubt that Arbeeny hadn?t planted drugs on a defendant.

The judge called for a ten-minute break before the defense would begin its case. Arbeeny walked out of the courtroom slightly hunched over, but calm, and signaled for his wife to meet him outside.

The trial of Jason Arbeeny has drawn a great deal of attention in recent weeks, as yet another instance of alleged police corruption. Last week, former detective Stephen Anderson testified that planting drugs on, and then arresting, innocent civilians in order to meet NYPD “buy and bust” quotas is a common occurrence. This practice is known as “flaking.” Anderson’s testimony was followed by that of Melanie Perez, former crack addict and NYPD informant, who accused an officer of giving her crack cocaine in exchange for sexual favors.

Arbeeny is one of eight narcotics detectives under investigation in connection with accusations that a group of detectives in the Brooklyn South Narcotics Squad were not turning in all of the drugs that they confiscated in busts, and instead later planted those drugs as evidence in different cases. While according to a New York Times article, only one witness, Yvelisse DeLeon, has directly implicated Arbeeny in planting drugs on civilians, the testimonies of Anderson and Perez are not being taken lightly.

Gabriel Sayegh of The Drug Policy Alliance issued a statement saying that Anderson’s testimony sheds light on larger internal issues facing the NYPD: “One of the consequences of the war on drugs is that police officers are pressured to make large numbers of arrests, and it’s easy for some of the less honest cops to plant evidence on innocent people.”

In the same statement, Sayegh said, “The drug war inevitably leads to crooked policing and quotas further incentivize such practices.”

Commissioner Ray Kelly and Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Paul Browne have repeatedly denied that the department implements any quota system for arrests or ticketing. But, in 2008, the same year Arbeeny and the eight other officers were charged, police officer Adrian Schoolcraft secretly recorded his supervisors telling officers that they had to make a certain number of arrests, even if that meant manipulating crime statistics.

Arbeeny’s trial comes at a moment when the NYPD is under considerable scrutiny. The recent arrest of Michael Daragjati, a Staten Island police officer accused of falsely arresting an African American man and stating “I fried another N****,” has drawn attention to the department’s stop and frisk policy, as well as to questions of corrupt policing.

Such accusations are hardly new. October 18th marked the 40th anniversary of the Knapp Commission, where detective Frank Serpico became the first officer to testify against police corruption. In 1994, 30 officers stationed in Harlem were charged with falsifying arrest records, selling narcotics, stealing cash, and shaking down drug dealers. And in 2004 prosecutors investigated nine current and former NYPD members allegedly involved in drug related scandals.

This year, the New York City comptroller’s office reported that police action claims filed against the police jumped to 3,987 in 2010, from 3,390 in 2009. The report shows that as a result of this leap, the cost of police action claims has increased by 15 percent in just one year, totaling $56.4 million.

In the case of Stephen Anderson, who testified at the Arbeeny trial and who was charged with flaking, the two men who were wrongfully charged settled their suit for $300,000. The Daily News reports that it has cost approximately $1.2 million to settle claims related to “flaking” this year, with each settlement ranging between $1,500 and $300,000; a record high.

Meanwhile, in the Brooklyn Supreme Court Arbeeny, his wife and his lawyer returned to court looking confident. Asked if he was scared, Arbeeny looked at his attorney, Michael Elvaz, who quickly answered “No.”

Arbeeny shook his head in agreement.

“No,” Elvaz said again, and shared a laugh with Arbeeny.

Bedlam erupted in a Kings County courtroom this afternoon, drowning out the last of three guilty verdicts against Jarelle Washington.

Washington’s relatives and friends, some of them too hysterical to be understood, were escorted out of Judge Alan Marrus’ courtroom at 320 Jay St. Others followed soon after to console or commiserate. Within seconds, the defendant-turned-convict’s side of the courtroom was empty.

Washington, 24, was convicted of one count of second-degree murder and two counts of attempted second-degree murder in connection with a shooting on July 18, 2007.

Washington had been riding in a car with one or two unidentified persons when he opened fire on Reheem Johnson, then 16, Keith Meyes, then 18, and Meyes’ father, Corey Sharpe, then 39. The bullets left Sharpe paralyzed from the waist down and Johnson fatally wounded. Meyes, also wounded, made a full recovery.

As the jury deliberated, a woman stalked the hallway of the twenty-first floor, proclaiming Washington’s innocence. The jurors meanwhile paused their deliberations to hear Corey Sharpe’s testimony read back to them by Judge Marrus and a court reporter.

Sharpe had recounted how he and Meyes had driven to Sharpe’s sister-in-law’s house and been joined by Johnson. Hearing gunshots and seeing a car bearing down on him with a gunman leaning out the passenger-side window, Sharpe dove behind his minivan, but not before sustaining a crippling gunshot wound to the back.

Sharpe testified that he saw his son lying on the curb next to him, and didn’t find out until hours later that Meyes had survived.

Sharpe also testified that, while he was in the hospital, Washington came to visit him. Washington, Sharpe testified, told him , “I’m sorry I shot you,” and that Washington gave Sharpe a telephone number, telling him to “call this number if you need anything.”

The jury then returned to its deliberations, but returned after only a few minutes’ discussion. In anticipation of an emotional verdict, four additional court officers had joined the two already stationed inside the courtroom.

As the foreman read the verdict—guilty on all counts—two women on Washington’s side of the courtroom began to wail and were immediately removed, followed soon after by the rest of the entourage.

A bailiff repeated the verdict, speaking loudly to be heard over the sounds of screaming and slapping from outside the courtroom. Before excusing the jury, Judge Marrus offered congratulations to the jury and instructed them to “Never be afraid to introduce yourself to me as one of my jurors.”

Reheem Johnson’s parents, George Hunter and Ozella Thomas, sat silently as the verdict was read once by the jury foreman and then again by a bailiff.

Waiting for the chaos outside the courtroom to subside, Hunter lamented that only Washington had been convicted. He said that Washington was just taking the fall for his two cohorts.

“It just hurts,” said Thomas, unable to say anything else.

“No one wins,” said Margaret Brewer, Johnson’s cousin.

After several minutes, one of the court officers returned to the courtroom to usher out Hunter, Thomas and Brewer from the other side of the aisle. The threesome huddled in a waiting area as scores of uniformed officers monitored the elevator bank.

When one of the escorts announced that all of Washington’s contingent had “left the building,” they shuffled off towards the elevators.

Two court officers rode downstairs as well, discussing the fray.

“It’s always the women,” said one to the other.

The exterior of the Brooklyn Supreme Court building, where the Tiana Browne murder case was declared a mistrial on Wednesday. (The Brooklyn Ink/Caitlin Kasunich)

A Brooklyn Supreme Court judge postponed attorney arguments until Monday regarding whether or not a new trial should take place in the murder case against 17-year-old Tiana Browne, which ended in a mistrial on Wednesday.

Browne is charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing death of her cousin, 15-year-old Shannon Braithwaite, in September 2008.

The arguments will resume on Monday, Oct. 18, at 10 a.m. under Judge Albert Tomei, who declared a mistrial less than a day after the case was turned over to a jury Tuesday.

New details emerged on the circumstances leading to the mistrial, which was based on the prosecution’s failure to reveal the criminal record of one of its key witnesses, Marva Braithwaite, the mother of the victim.

Defense attorney Douglas Rankin said that he found out about Braithwaite’s record from his client’s grandmother, Jennifer Browne, who is Marva Braithwaite’s first cousin and was also a witness. According to Rankin, Browne heard her own criminal record mentioned when her name was read to the jury among other witnesses and wondered why her cousin’s record had not also been acknowledged.

“She said to me, ‘How come they mentioned my criminal record, but they didn’t mention hers?’ And I said, ‘Who’s her?’ She said, ‘Marva.’ That’s when I approached the DA, and that’s when I contacted the judge,” Rankin said. “The judge ordered the DA to check this out, and then the DA checked it out, and it turned out that she had a felony conviction.”

Braithwaite was the first witness called by the prosecution, and her testimony set the tone for the remainder of the trial. Rankin said that the elder Browne told him that the conviction against Braithwaite was for felony assault. Although prosecutor Mark Hale confirmed to the court the fact of the woman’s criminal record, he did not reveal what it was for. The district attorney’s office did not return calls to comment on this issue.

“The point of her testimony was to bring to light certain facts that, the prosecutor argued, supported the fact that my client knew what she was doing and that this was an intentional murder as opposed to her suffering from a mental disease or defect at the time,” Rankin said.

Rankin said that the prosecutor is required to turn over any criminal records that witnesses may have if he is aware of them after the jury is sworn but before opening statements.

“I made a timely request, and the prosecutor—instead of running a RAP sheet, which is the formal protocol in the Brooklyn DA’s office—spoke to the witness and relied on what the witness told him as opposed to verifying it independently,” Rankin said.

Thursday’s hearing was presided over by Judge John Ingram, who decided to send the case back to Judge Tomei on Monday since he felt that he knew the case best. He also apologized on behalf of the court for the “horrendous waste of assets and time” that the botched trial caused.

Throughout the hearing Thursday, Tiana Browne swayed from side to side in her dark suit and occasionally glanced over her left shoulder at her family sitting in the courtroom to smile at them. Her hair was braided in short pigtails that stuck out of the side of her head, and her hands were cuffed behind her back.

We will continue to bring you news from the courtroom as it happens.

The Brooklyn Supreme Court was abuzz Friday, as people waited for a verdict in the hate crime trial that never came.

By Nate Rawlings

A curious thing happened Friday between the hours of 3 and 7 p.m. in Part 15 of the Brooklyn Criminal Courthouse.

Clerks strayed from their desks and walked around the room. Judge Patricia Di Mango chatted politely with reporters she hadn’t seen for a while. Prosecution and defense lawyers, figurative and actual adversaries, talked about anything but the trial. Reporters, sans notebooks, made conversation purely for the sake of conversation.

For five hours earlier in the day, Judge Di Mango had dealt with the jury’s notes. By law, a judge cannot communicate with a jury except in the courtroom with prosecution and defense counsel present. When the jury is in deliberations, they pass written notes through a court officer.

Notes from a jury contain requests and announcements. Some ask to review testimony; others seek clarification about the law. Judges dread a note from the jury that says they have reached an impasse and cannot agree on a verdict.

Friday, Judge Di Mango received 13 notes from Keith Phoenix’s jury, each requesting additional information. She brought the jury back into the courtroom four separate times to read transcripts from witnesses and finally to explain the law. A few minutes before 3 p.m., Judge Di Mango sent the jury to their deliberation room. Until she received the most important note, the one saying the jury has reached a verdict, the only thing left was the wait.

In the trial of Keith Phoenix and Hakim Scott, who were charged with attacking and killing Ecuadorian immigrant Jose Sucuzhanay in early December 2008, two juries considered testimony: the red jury and the green jury.

The green jury heard final arguments from lawyers on Wednesday May 5 and returned a verdict after only a few hours of deliberations. Thursday afternoon, they found Scott guilty of manslaughter and attempted assault but not guilty of second-degree murder and of committing a hate crime.

The red jury, charged with deciding the fate of Keith Phoenix, would not be so quick. On Friday, they asked to review the medical examiner’s testimony where he rendered an expert opinion on what exactly caused Sucuzhanay’s death. They listened as Judge Di Mango read a transcript of eyewitness accounts, seeking clarification as to whether Phoenix yelled racial and homophobic epithets.

Judge Di Mango read Kimberly Taylor’s account of the attack, a blow-by-blow description of Phoenix smashing Jose with a baseball bat at least five times. Jose’s brother Romel, who survived the attack, sat in the second row. Di Mango quoted from Taylor’s testimony transcript that Phoenix brought down the bat “on top of Jose’s head with all his might, with all his body so his body jerked.”

Romel leaned forward and cupped his face in his hands. He rubbed his eyes as his brother Diego patted him on the back. Romel has attended nearly every day of the trial and has heard, in vicious detail, more than a half dozen different people describe his brother’s murder. Even after the testimony was complete, he had to endure Taylor’s words, in a different voice, one more time.

The fourth time the jury came back to the courtroom, Judge Di Mango explained the differences between second-degree murder, manslaughter and assault. She re-read the definition of a hate crime. After she was satisfied that the jurors now understood her explanations, Judge Di Mango sent them back to deliberate.

For the next four hours, everyone in the packed courtroom waited. The Sucuzhanay brothers read a Spanish-language newspaper and talked quietly. A photographer watched episodes of “Star Trek” on his Iphone.

At ten minutes to seven, Judge Di Mango announced that she would send the jury home for the weekend. There would be no verdict today.

The Sucuzhanay family walked slowly out of the courtroom. They said little to the assembled press, other than that they missed Jose terribly, and they hoped the entire ordeal would finally be over on Monday.

The Brooklyn Supreme Court. Photo by Jeannette Neumann

Hakim Scott had been riding in the backseat of his friend’s car the night that an Ecuadorian immigrant was brutally beaten just feet from the red Mercury Mountaineer.

On Wednesday, attorney Craig Newman told a Brooklyn jury that Scott also took a backseat in the killing of Jose Sucuzhanay on the night of December 7, 2008.

It was Scott’s friend and fellow defendant Keith Phoenix who repeatedly hit Sucuzhanay with an aluminum bat, inflicting the brain and head injuries that eventually took his life, Newman said.

“Were Keith Phoenix’s actions horrific, horrible and devastating? Yes,” Newman said.

Scott’s actions were minor in comparison, he said. Scott hit Sucuzhanay once over the head with a beer bottle. That blow may have injured Sucuzhanay and caused him to fall to the ground, but it didn’t cause his death, he said.

“If my client Hakim Scott wanted to kill him, there you go – he’s on the ground,” Newman said.

But Newman told jurors that Scott never had the intent to kill Sucuzhanay or even to seriously injure him.

Prosecutors had tried throughout the three-week trial to link Scott and Phoenix as accomplices, but they weren’t acting together, Newman said in his closing statement Wednesday in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

“Guilt by association is not acting in concert. Guilt by association – knowing someone who is guilty – is not the cornerstone of our judicial system,” Newman told the jurors. “This is, ladies and gentlemen, two separate actions by two separate individuals.”

The most serious charge against Scott is murder as a hate crime. The 26-year-old could face life in prison if convicted.

Closing arguments in the Phoenix case are to be heard on Thursday. The case is likely to go to a separate jury later Thursday afternoon.

The killing is being prosecuted as a hate crime because witnesses have testified that Scott and Phoenix shouted anti-Hispanic and homophobic remarks at Sucuzhanay and his brother Romel as they were walking home, arms linked to shield themselves against the 30-degree weather.

It was nearly 3.30 a.m. and all four men had been drinking.

Scott didn’t testify during the trial, but in video testimony recorded before the trial and shown to the jury, Scott says he jumped out of the back passenger seat of Phoenix’s Mercury Mountaineer after Sucuzhanay spit on him through the window – rolled down because the men were smoking.

Scott and the two brothers faced each other behind the car.

Scott says Sucuzhanay quickly reached for the Budweiser beer bottle he was brandishing. Scott then hit him with the bottle and Sucuzhanay staggered to the ground. Then, Scott says Romel punched him in the face and ran away. Scott chased after Romel for the length of a few cars and then says he turned around to see Phoenix raising an aluminum bat over his head and slamming it down on Sucuzhanay, who was lying immobile on the ground.

Scott said he jumped out of the car because he was offended Sucuzhanay had spit on him, not to seriously injure or kill him because he thought Sucuzhanay was gay or Latino.

“For Hakim Scott this was never about hate. It was never about prejudice,” Newman said.  “He got spit on, stepped out of the car and reacted.”

But Assistant District Attorney Patricia McNeill told jurors that Scott played an integral role in the murder of 31-year-old Sucuzhanay, a father of two. Scott was the instigator and his beer bottle blow was the catalyst for the chain of events that left Sucuzhanay dead, McNeill said.

“Who was the first one out of the car? The defendant. Who led that attack? The defendant,” McNeill said, jabbing a pointed finger toward Scott, who sometimes raised his eyes to glance toward her. Most of the time, he sat with his shoulders slightly hunched, gaze downward.

Scott and Phoenix “identified Romel and Jose as gay Latino men and they pounced on them because of it,” McNeill said.

Scott closed his eyes and shook his head back and forth several times when McNeill said that he and Phoenix went after the Sucuzhanays because they thought the brothers were “lesser people.”

“This wasn’t a fight,” McNeill said. “It was an attack.”

“Do justice for Jose and Romel Sucuzhanay,” McNeill pleaded with the jury, holding up an enlarged photo of the two brothers standing side by side.

McNeill pointed at four circular containers of evidence holding inch-long shards of a broken beer bottle, proof that Scott hit Sucuzhanay with vehement force, she said.

McNeill took pains to poke holes in Scott’s account of what happened the night of the encounter.

She projected a photo for the jury showing blood that had mixed with snow and pooled in the gutter near where Sucuzhanay was beaten. Scott and Phoenix attacked the two men on the sidewalk, not on the street, McNeill said. That means it was improbable that Sucuzhanay had spit from the sidewalk several feet into the open car window, hitting Scott.

“Does that make sense to you? Is that even believable? No,” McNeill said. “He had to come up with a story,” she said of Scott.

“He is responsible for his death,” McNeill said. “He is responsible for everything.”

Jury members are now deciding which story they believe.

Brooklyn Supreme Court. Photo: Kumar/The Brooklyn Ink

By K. S. Nikhil Kumar

Thirty-six jurors, four attorneys, court officers, relatives, and the two defendants waited as Davi Almonte slowly entered the witness box in the Brooklyn Supreme Court yesterday. Early on Dec. 7, 2008 Almonte, a taxi driver, was waiting in his cab for the light to turn green at Stanhope Street and Bushwick Avenue when he saw two brothers, Jose and Romel Sucuzhanay, walking arm in arm and hugging. He then watched as two other men got out of an SUV and things got bloody.

It was the first day of testimony in the trial of Keith Phoenix, 30, and Hakim Scott, 26, who have both been charged with ten different crimes, including second degree murder as a hate crime. The prosecution charged that Phoenix attacked and killed Jose Sucuzhanay because he was Hispanic and presumed to be gay, while Scott threatened to cause serious harm to his brother Romel.

Almonte, a stout, wiry haired man walked into the courtroom with a look of worry on his face. He wore an oversized shirt, dark slacks and boots and as he took the stand the courtroom grew silent.

During direct examination by Assistant District Attorney Josh Hanshaft, Almonte told the jurors – one panel of twelve for each defendant and six alternates – that he saw the Sucuzhanay brothers walking on Bushwick Avenue and being stopped by an SUV that halted on the walkway of Kossuth Place. Jose tried to touch the vehicle with his leg, but was held back by his brother. Hakim Scott got out of the car and smashed a beer bottle on Jose’s head. Jose fell to the ground. Keith Phoenix then pulled an aluminum baseball bat from the truck and started hitting Jose as he lay on the ground. According to medical examiners and Police Officer Daniel Ludemann, who was the first witness in court as well as the first to respond to the scene, Jose was bleeding from his head and later suffered from blood trauma to his fractured skull.

Almonte, who spoke through a Spanish translator, said that Jose and Romel did not attempt to fight back before or after Scott struck Jose’s head with the bottle. He also said that after a while, he stopped watching Jose being hit with the bat, because he didn’t want to see his head bleeding or explode. He said he heard the “impacts of the hitting” as he sat in his cab.

Almonte, who had been working his shift from 5 p.m. the previous evening, turned left onto Bushwick Avenue and pulled up in front of the SUV. He noted the number of the license plate on a white envelope that was presented as evidence before the court. He testified that he did not call the police because he didn’t have a phone and said nothing to his people at his work place on his cab radio. He gave the envelope to a friend, who notified the police. “I didn’t want to get involved in this,” he said. But he spoke to police the following day, nonetheless.

In his opening statement Hanshaft said that Jose and Romel were walking home in the wee hours of Sunday after drinking at a local bar. They had been out to a party with Jose’s girlfriend, who later dropped the brothers at a bar close to their home in Bushwick. Jose had a lot more to drink than his brother and was struggling to walk home. He was also cold, so Romel put his jacket over him as they clung to each other in the below-freezing weather.

Phoenix, Scott and Phoenix’s cousin, Demetrius Nathaniel, who was 17 at the time, also went out to a party that night, said Hanshaft. On their way up to the Bronx they saw the Sucuzhanay brothers walking on Bushwick Avenue. They stopped their SUV, a 1998 red Mercury Mountaineer Suburban, on the walkway in front of the men on the street.

Hanshaft told the jurors that the occupants in the SUV shouted anti-Hispanic and anti-gay slurs, because, the brothers “were walking like a married couple,” as one witness had described it. “Look at these little fags,” “Faggot-ass niggers,” “Fucking Spanish!” were some of the things that were allegedly spewed at Jose and Romel. It was then that Jose retaliated by trying to kick the SUV, which led to Hakim getting out of the right rear door with a beer bottle in his hand.

Trisha McNeill, the assistant district attorney in the case against Scott, said that after striking Jose’s head with the beer bottle, he chased Romel down the street and tried to cut him with the end of the broken bottle that he was still holding, by swinging it across his throat.

Meanwhile, Hanshaft charged that Phoneix struck Jose with the bat repeatedly and was walking back to his SUV when Jose started to get up. On seeing this Phoenix allegedly went back and hit Jose again, this time targeting the blows to his head.

Medical examiners later found Jose’s skull was broken. Two photographs of the crime scene displayed before the court contained graphic detail of a pool of blood as well as the clothes that were removed by paramedics from Jose’s body. The defense attorneys expressed concern about the prejudice that this might cause in the jurors’ minds. But Judge Patricia DiMango overruled this objection stating that the evidentiary value of the images far outweighed any prejudice that might occur.

Officer Ludemann, who was patrolling the 83^rd precinct with his partner, said that when he arrived at the spot he found Romel in a state of shock standing by Jose. An ambulance arrived and took Jose to Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. “He was out of it – slow to respond,” Ludemann said of Romel’s behavior when questioned by Phoenix’s defense attorney Philip J. Smallman.

Phoenix had left the scene by the then, along with Scott and his cousin Nathaniel, who according to the both sides did nothing other than look on at what was happening. Nathaniel is expected to appear in court as a witness for the prosecution on Wednesday.

Hanshaft also told the jurors that Phoenix’s SUV was seen crossing the Tri-Borough Bridge into the Bronx about 20 minutes after the incident. Cameras apparently caught Phoenix and Scott laughing at the toll plaza as they went on to pick up two girl friends and go out to a club later that night. “They went on with their night as if nothing had happened,” said Hanshaft.

Investigators tapped Phoenix’s phone after finding his address through the license plate information provided to them by Davi Almonte. They also used another technology called “cell sight” which tracks a person’s whereabouts based on the signal from their cell phone, through which they confirmed that Scott and Phoenix were together at Kossuth Place and Bushwick Avenue – the crime scene – when the attack took place. They recovered the bat that was used on Jose. It had been tossed in the woods.

Scott and Phoenix were arrested in late February 2009, nearly three months after the incident. Phoenix was found hiding in the bathroom at a friend’s apartment in the Yonkers, with plans to leave town. “So what if I killed someone? Does that mean I’m a bad person?” he said upon being arrested, according to Hanshaft.

The defense attorneys were brief in their remarks, but probed Davi Almonte in significant detail about his account, especially on the moments just before he witnessed the incident. Scott’s lawyer, Craig Newman, asked that the jury determine whether or not his client was an accomplice in the case at all. “Hakim Scott’s actions are separate from those of Keith Phoenix,” he said. “He never intended to harm anyone. He never intended to seriously harm anyone. He is not guilty.”

Smallman, Phoenix’s lawyer, questioned whether or not this was a hate crime. “Who designates what is hate?” he asked. He also ended his opening statement with a question, “Does anything good happen at three o clock on a Sunday morning in 30 degree weather with people with bellies full of booze? No, rarely, if ever.”

Also read:

A Brothers Choice

A Confession Victim’s Brother Did Not Stay to Hear

Advocates mark child abuse prevention week. AP Photo

By Nate Rawlings

The man convicted of not intervening while his girlfriend beat a 3-year-old to death with a pool cue was sentenced in Brooklyn Supreme Court today to 18 years to life in prison.

Lemar Martin, a former city housing guard, who was convicted of second-degree murder on Jan. 27, was sentenced by Justice Gustin Reichbach, who called the killing “a hurricane of pain and brutality.”

“By nature, I’m not a vengeful person,” Assistant District Attorney Cary Fischer said in his pre-sentencing argument, “but when I saw what Mr. Martin forced me to look at in the morgue at Kings County Hospital, photos taken of this little angel’s body, how battered and bruised he was, I started to think, ‘is 25 years enough?’”

The defense attorney, William Martin, argued that Lemar Martin deserved a lenient sentence because he did not commit the actual murder.

“They can’t point to anything to show that he was aware,” William Martin said. “My client’s DNA wasn’t on the pool cue. He didn’t do it.”

According to trial testimony, Martin and his girlfriend, Nymeen Cheatham, lived with her godson Kyle Smith. During the trial, prosecutors argued that Lemar Martin made the 28-pound boy do pushups and calisthenics when he misbehaved.

On June 6, 2008, Cheatham was punishing Smith when she beat him to death with a pool cue. Prosecutors detailed the killing, which medical experts say unfolded over several hours, and Fischer argued that Lemar Martin did nothing to stop the attack. Throughout the trial, Lemar Martin maintained that he had slept through the attack, an argument he made one more time as he asked Judge Reichbach for leniency.

“The only crime I’m guilty of is sleeping too hard,” Martin said, reading a statement before the court. “I loved Kyle. I am innocent of the charges I’ve been convicted of, and I will continue to fight for my innocence.”

Cheatham admitted to the beating and pleaded guilty to manslaughter; she is currently serving 20 years to life in prison. Much of William Martin’s arguments centered on the fact that, because of her plea deal, Cheatham never testified in court and was not available for cross-examination.

In his pre-sentencing remarks, Justice Reichbach acknowledged that Lemar Martin had no prior arrests; however, he said Martin’s inaction during a beating that was “so depraved, so devoid of human concern” was enough to sentence him to 18 years in prison.

Nearly two-dozen members of the St. Paul Community Baptist Church, in East New York, attended the sentencing to support Lemar Martin. Several members said Martin was active in the church and expressed disbelief that he had committed any crime.

“My boy is not guilty of this particular crime,” said John Young, Martin’s stepfather. “The welfare of any child should be in mind at all times, and he exhibited that the whole time.”

Martin’s brother, Jerjuan Easton, maintained his brother’s innocence and vowed that the family would seek an appeal. “An innocent man went to jail today because of malicious acts of the prosecution,” Easton said. “We will continue this fight.”

A prayer in the Court of Justice during a break of the trial against six members of the Jewish Patrol Shomrim. Photo: Pirolo/BrooklynInk

Six members of the Orthodox Jewish patrol Shomrim were back in the Brooklyn Supreme Court yesterday, on trial for allegedly attacking yeshiva students in Crown Heights two years ago.

But among the spectators were those from the ultra-Orthodox community who believed that it was one of their victims who instead should have been on trial – for making his accusation public.

Joshua Gur, known as Shuki, had a long black beard that made him look like older than his 23 years. He wore a skullcap emblazoned, in Hebrew, with the words — “Long life to Rebbe Messiah, he never left the world.” Gur is among those Lubavitcher Hasidim – which is based in Crown Heights – who believe that their late Rebbe, or spiritual leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Scheneerson, who died in 1994, was, in fact, the Messiah. Believers keep an eternal vigil at his grave.

It was the question of the Rebbe’s sacred place that apparently led to a December 2007 fight in a yeshiva dormitory at 749 Eastern Parkway. The Shomrim were summoned to break up the melee. But, argued assistant district attorney David Weiss, they only worsened the violence, beating the students “indiscriminately.” Several Meshichists were taken to the hospital. One suffered a broken eye socket, another a broken finger.

During yesterday’s testimony, one of the defense attorneys, Israel Fried, asked Gur to watch a video shot during the alleged attack. One of the Shomim could be heard saying, “I’m trying to mediate with you.”

“So Shomrim came to calm things down?” Fried asked.

“I don’t think so,” Gur replied.

Among the spectators was Yosef Lifshitz, father of the defendant Benjamin Lifshitz. “He is lying, he is lying,” he said. The seats, in fact, appeared filled with friends and supporters of the defendants; a handful of Gur’s supporters sat together, off to the side, a small pocket of support in a room filled primarily with those who saw his testimony as a betrayal.

“We are not allowed to bring a dispute in a secular court,” said Lifshitz. The matter, argue the defendants’ supporters, should have been taken to a religious court, a Bet Din. In fact, he argued, in ancient times a Jew who testified publicly against a fellow Jew did so at the risk of his own life. “It’s even allowed to kill him,” Lifshitz said. “But we live in this world and of course we don’t do it.”

He was not alone in his disapproval of Gur’s testimony.

“This guy is not even part of the community, they come form the outside,” said Mayer Hershkop, whose three sons are among the defendants.

The risk of being exiled from the community has apparently given several other potential witnesses pause. On Sunday the yeshiva students came before rabbinical authorities in Crown Heights and agreed to not testify. Last Monday, at the opening of the trial, the prosecution asked to the judge to warn the defendants against tampering with the witnesses.

Meanwhile, Hershkop, mixing Yiddish and English words, said that he wished that the case could have been heard by a Bet Din.

But in criminal court, the defendants, if convicted, face up to15 years in prison.

In Crown Heights, the punishment for the witness could be banishment.