Saturday, April 26th 2008, 4:00 AM
Xanthos for News Judge Arthur Cooperman
Jane RosenbergAfter eight grueling weeks, more than 50 prosecution witnesses, blistering courtroom confrontations and radioactive racial tension crackling in the courtroom and hallways, Judge Arthur Cooperman enters the courtroom in his usual unceremonious way, insisting that no one stand.
He takes his seat on the bench.
Then he calls for one final sidebar with the lawyers, who assemble on the steps to Cooperman's bench like disciples at the Sermon on the Mount.
In this instant, in this windowless, oaken realm of jurisprudence, in a nonjury trial, Cooperman is indeed godlike.
He holds in his 74-year-old hands alone the fate of three young police officers faced with manslaughter and reckless endangerment, two of them facing 25 years in prison.
Tension percolates.
At the defense table, the three cops are fidgety, coiled, like jacks in this courtroom box that is ringed with 18 no-nonsense court officers.
Scores more line the hallways; others secure the front and back entrances. Police helicopters circle the baby blue skies over Kew Gardens. Cops clog Queens Blvd.
The city waits.
This is the center stage of New York City, and here in the courtroom these three police officers will momentarily learn their fate when the judge delivers his verdict.
The very word verdict falls from the lips like a marble tablet. Official, final, heavy with joy or doom. A word derived from the Latin verum dictum, or true word.
Now the granite-faced lawyers return to their respective tables. The tension resembles that anxious nanosecond before the timekeeper hammers the opening bell of a heavyweight championship fight. Only this is a thousand times more dramatic.
Then Cooperman begins to read his true word in a precise, professional, unemotional tone appropriate for the tragedy in which an unarmed man was killed and two others wounded in a lead storm of 50 police bullets in the shadow of a poultry slaughterhouse on a miserable side street in South Jamaica.
The judge never loses sight of the human loss at the core of the case, which is also a hole in the soul of the city.
His tone is stentorian, but Cooperman is not verbose. In about a dozen minutes, he quickly determines that:
There was a confrontation about a gun in front of Kalua Cabaret on Nov. 25, 2006, and an undercover cop followed Bell, Guzman and Benefield around the corner. The undercover ordered them to freeze. Instead, Bell slammed his car into him, backed up and raced forward again, hitting a police van. Then the shooting started, but it was not unlawful or excessive.
Cooperman also determines there were too many inconsistencies from the prosecution witnesses, especially Trent Benefield and Joe Guzman. Therefore, he says, the prosecution's case simply does not establish proof "beyond a reasonable doubt."
Cooperman then utters the words: "NOT GUILTY." Clank, clank, like hammer hitting chisel, forever etching the words into the history book.
A warble rises in the courtroom.
The court officers methodically usher out the press, then the police supporters, then the Bell supporters, avoiding confrontation.
Out on sun-splashed Queens Blvd., birds chirp in budding trees, helicopters hover in the blue sky and people express outrage over the verdict.
A young girl carries a sign: PEOPLE'S JUSTICE: PIGS ARE GUILTY AS HELL.
Police break up a brief scuffle, but there are no major confrontations.
Could it finally be over?
My first e-mail after the verdict is from a black man named Stephen Bellinger from South Jamaica.
"What faith can a person have in a justice system that can see no wrongdoing with this incident?" he asks. "Yeah, everyone will say the DA's office dropped the ball, but I believe they played their part very well. And I'm telling you as sure as the sky is blue, and that the sun is out today, within two years, this will happen again!"
Let's hope his is not also a true word.
No comments:
Post a Comment