Closing Arguments Held in N.Y. Police Murder Trial

The four white police officers accused of murdering an unarmed black man in a torrent of bullets prejudged him from the moment they spotted him and didn’t follow training procedures, the chief prosecutor charged during closing arguments Tuesday.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Eric Warner told the jury that three of the 19 bullets that struck Amadou Diallo did so while he was already on the floor of the vestibule of his Bronx building. The officers fired 41 shots when they confronted the 22-year-old street vendor on Feb. 4, 1999, in a case that sparked street protests and underlined racial tensions in New York City.

Lawyers for the defendants, however, argued that the officers’ actions were proper. They said that the policemen opened fire after mistaking Diallo’s wallet for a gun and characterized what happened as a tragedy, not a crime.

“Justification is like a knife going through the middle of the indictment,” attorney John Patten said. “It slices it in half. If you find justification, it’s over.”

Officers Kenneth Boss, 28; Richard Murphy, 27; Sean Carroll, 37, and Edward McMellon, 27, have pleaded not guilty to charges of intentional murder, depraved indifference and reckless endangerment. The jury, which is expected to begin deliberations today, also will consider lesser charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.

If convicted of murder, the officers could face 25 years to life in prison.

In trying to make his case, Warner said that Diallo did not match the description of the serial rapist that the officers--members of an elite street crime unit--were seeking.

The prosecutor said that from the moment the four policemen spotted Diallo on the front stoop of what they later learned was his home, they wrongly characterized him.

“With the intent that they had, that man was doomed the minute they saw him,” Warner charged.

The assistant district attorney said the officers didn’t stop to think that Diallo could be “frightened to death” of them.

“They want to write this off as a split-second encounter. They had plenty of time,” Warner told the 12-member jury, which includes four black women.

“He [Diallo] didn’t do anything wrong that night, and they didn’t do anything right.”

During his closing arguments, Patten stood beneath a huge crystal chandelier and clapped his hands together to mimic the sound of shots as he addressed the jurors. The number of his claps was far fewer than 41.

“This case really comes down to the credibility of these four officers,” said Patten, Carroll’s lawyer. “Did the officers truly believe Mr. Diallo was going to use deadly physical force on them?”

Patten quickly answered yes.

Defense lawyers said that Diallo was acting strangely, peering out the front door and then disappearing into the vestibule of the building. The lighting was poor. He appeared to be reaching for a gun.

“He went through every body motion, every nonverbal cue he had a gun,” Patten said, holding up a .25-caliber automatic pistol and Diallo’s wallet, to show similarities when the top part of the wallet is exposed.

“It was a legitimate, honest mistake,” the lawyer said.

“That is not unreasonable behavior on their part,” he added of the police officers. “You cannot ask them to wait and get blasted away.”

Lawyers for the other officers stressed that their clients had an obligation to stop their unmarked patrol car when they perceived Diallo to be acting suspiciously. The defense attorneys said that when the West African immigrant appeared to be reaching for a gun, the officers had just a split second to make a life-and-death decision.

Seeking to defuse the issue of the number of shots that were fired, the lawyers explained that the bullets used--full-metal copper-jacketed bullets--lacked sufficient stopping power and were withdrawn by the New York Police Department soon after Diallo was killed.

“The defense in this case is justification,” said James Culleton, the lawyer for Murphy. “The only issue in this case is: Was it reasonable for my client to believe one of his partners was shot and deadly physical force was used against him?

“A series of events escalated,” he continued. “What we are left with is a serious tragedy. No crime was committed.”

Warner told the jurors that if Diallo was shot when he was down, “he was no longer any threat whatsoever.”

The prosecutor said that Diallo was standing defenseless in the small, box-like vestibule when he was reaching for his wallet.

“Either way you look at it, Amadou Diallo never had a chance,” he said.

The trial was moved to Albany after an appellate court decided the officers could not receive a fair trial in the Bronx because of massive pretrial publicity.

Outside the gray stone courthouse, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who is acting as an advisor to Diallo’s family, asked for calm in New York City once a verdict is reached.

Standing in a space cleared between piles of snow, Sharpton said that an attempt would be made, if the defendants were acquitted, to convince federal prosecutors that a case could be brought for violating Diallo’s civil rights.

“They [the defense lawyers] are arguing the police are the victim,” Sharpton charged. “To kill an unarmed man for no reason is a crime.”

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Times researcher Lynette Ferdinand contributed to this story.