A Brooklyn judge yesterday scheduled the trial of three officers charged with covering up Abner Louima’s torture to start on Jan. 3 – the same day the Amadou Diallo shooting trial starts in The Bronx.
Federal Judge Eugene Nickerson also reserved his decision on a defense motion to dismiss the case against Officers Charles Schwarz, Thomas Bruder and Thomas Wiese in the Louima case.
Schwarz was convicted this year in the first case arising out of the torture of Louima in a Brooklyn station-house bathroom in 1997.
Schwarz was sentenced to life in prison after a jury found him guilty of restraining Louima, while Officer Justin Volpe sodomized him with a stick.
Bruder and Wiese were acquitted of charges that they beat the Haitian immigrant.
Defense lawyers agreed to accept a jury whose members will remain anonymous in the cover-up trial in January.
Ronald Fischetti, Schwarz’s lawyer, said prison life has been hard for his client.
“He’s not doing too well. He’s been in prison now for four months for a crime he did not commit,” Fischetti said.
And Schwarz’s wife, Andra, said: “We’re not going to give up until he’s exonerated.”
Volpe is likely to testify at the second trial.
“He will tell the court exactly what he’s been saying all along, that Schwarz was not the police officer in the bathroom at the time of the incident,” said Volpe’s lawyer, Marvyn Kornberg.
said.