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Posted on Mon, Jan. 06, 2003 | |
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The corruption trial of 11 Miami police officers accused of shooting suspects, then planting guns and concocting evidence to cover up wrongdoing is scheduled to start today in Miami federal court with jury selection -- a process expected to last a week. Once evidence begins unfolding, prosecutors and defense attorneys will paint starkly different portraits of the defendants. Prosecutors will try to persuade jurors that the defendants were rogue officers who disregarded the lives of unarmed suspects. Defense attorneys, for their part, will portray their clients as dutiful officers who in the pursuit of their dangerous work were justified in opening fire on suspects they claim were armed. 'The officers are `scapegoats,' '' one defense attorney said. ''Our case will offer a completely different picture of these officers from the one painted by the prosecution,'' said defense attorney Richard Sharpstein, who is leading the defense of two of the officers. ''All we need is 12 fair jurors to clear them,'' Sharpstein said. But finding jurors unfamiliar with the department's history of questionable shootings might take longer than a week. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Allan Kaiser and Curtis Miner are leading the prosecution in front of U.S. District Judge Alan S. Gold, who issued a gag order, barring both sides from commenting. The trial is expected to last up to five months and will play out in the same spacious courtroom where former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was tried and convicted on drug-smuggling charges in 1992. The defense table will be crowded. Eleven attorneys will represent 11 defendants. Federal prosecutors are expected to largely focus on four shootings between November 1995 and June 1997 that left three dead and one wounded. Four suspects were black; one was white. CLEARED In each case, police officers on the scene insisted the suspects were armed. In most cases, Miami police investigators and state prosecutors found the shootings justified. But federal investigators focused on what happened after the officers fired and said they uncovered a web of deception. In all, 13 officers, all members of an elite plainclothes street-crime unit, were originally indicted in September 2001. They are charged with conspiring to obstruct justice by planting ''throw-down'' guns, fabricating, altering or moving evidence and giving false or misleading statements to investigators that the civilian victims were armed, all to justify the shootings. Two officers pleaded guilty and are touted as the star witnesses against the others. The case begins with a Nov. 7, 1995, shooting on Interstate 395. Prosecutors say guns were planted after two fleeing tourist robbers were shot to death. They say six officers plotted over a barbecue lunch on their next work day to get their story straight about the deaths of Antonio Young and Derrick Wiltshire, both 19. In a second shooting on March 12, 1996, reputed drug dealer Richard Brown, 73, was killed when a SWAT team fired 123 shots into his house while his teenage granddaughter cowered in the bathroom. Prosecutors say officers planted a gun outside a sealed window. SHOT THREE TIMES In one incident on April 13, 1996, Steven J. Carter, a fleeing purse snatcher was shot at three times, but was not hurt. Officers not involved in the shooting allegedly delivered a ''throw-down'' to the scene. In the final incident on June 26, 1996, Daniel Hoban, a homeless alcoholic schizophrenic, was wounded in the leg in Coconut Grove when officers mistook his radio for a gun. Another throw-down weapon allegedly materialized. The trial gets underway as the department has a new chief, John Timoney, a former Philadelphia police commissioner. Former Miami Police Chief Raul Martinez resigned in November. This report was supplemented with material from The Associated Press. |
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