A sniveling, cop-killing thug feebly responded to his death sentence yesterday by sticking his tongue out at the widow of one of two hero NYPD cops he killed in an undercover gun buy.
After the jury foreman informed Ronell Wilson of his fate, the killer rolled his eyes in disgust and turned toward Detective James Nemorin’s widow to make the ugly gesture.
“He’s an unrepentant punk to the end. He has absolutely no remorse whatsoever,” said Derek Williams, a cousin of the other slain detective, Rodney Andrews.
“If he has a speck of class, you know what he’ll do before he goes to bed tonight – he’ll hang himself with his bedsheet.”
Wilson was convicted last month of two counts of murder in the 2003 slayings on Staten Island of Andrews and Nemorin.
The Brooklyn federal jury took just nine hours to reject Wilson’s plea for mercy – which he refused to show the two undercover detectives. One of the slain men begged for his life before Wilson shot him in the head, court testimony revealed.
It was the first death sentence handed down in a federal case in the state in more than 50 years – a fact not lost on the astonished courtroom crowd, which loudly gasped as the verdict was read.
One of the victims’ relatives then let out an emphatic, “Yes!”
The detectives’ kin said the ruling gave them at least a semblance of peace.
“Justice is served. I trust in the Lord and the Lord has served,” said Nemorin’s widow, Rose. “Jim can rest now. Rest, Jim, rest. We love you.”
Andrews’ mom, Patricia Marion, echoed a similar sentiment.
“I’m glad it’s over, and may his soul rest in peace,” she said of her slain son. “I am satisfied.”
Andrews’ widow Mary Ann, who wept after the verdict was read, said, “We have endured so much pain. At least now we have some closure.
“All I can say is that now our prayers have been answered.”
As the jury was being led from the courtroom, chaos erupted when Wilson’s younger brother, Daniel, angrily yelled at the jurors, “F- – – you, motherf- – -ers!”
That prompted the condemned killer’s mom, Cheryl, to slap her hand over Daniel’s mouth as other relatives wrestled him away.
But she also had words for the victims’ families, yelling, “Y’all murdered Ronell!” as they sat across the courtroom from each other.
Nemorin’s mother-in-law, Nicole Edouard, screamed back, “You’re a dead man!” But a detective sitting with the families told her, “Be better than him,” and she quieted down.
The jury voted that Wilson should die by lethal injection. Not a single panelist believed Wilson had any remorse for his depraved action, according to the jurors’ verdict sheets.
The last person sentenced to death in a federal case in New York was bank robber Gerhard Puff in 1954. Puff, who killed an FBI agent, was eventually executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison.
The death penalty was taken off the books in the 1960s but was brought back in 1995. In 2004, the state’s highest court ruled the New York death-penalty statute unconstitutional, prompting federal officials to take over Wilson’s case.
Rose Nemorin said she felt confident that Wilson would ultimately be put to death despite the possibility of lengthy appeals.
“When God starts something, He never stops it,” she said outside the courthouse.
Defense lawyer Mitchell Dinnerstein said that vengeance did not amount to justice.
“This is not justice. It’s the wrong verdict,” he said.
The bloodshed began on a bitterly cold March night in 2003 when Wilson – then 20 – and a 16-year-old accomplice climbed into the back seat of an unmarked police car to sell Andrews and Nemorin an illegal Tec-9 submachine gun.
During the trial, an accomplice testified that he and Wilson were in on a plot by a violent drug gang to rob the undercover detectives, believing they were carrying $1,200 to buy guns.
Wilson pulled out a gun and shot Andrews in the back of the head. He then coldly ignored Nemorin’s pleas for mercy and shot him in the head as well.
The defense contended there was no convincing evidence the men knew their victims were police officers.
Wilson and his partner coldly patted the dead officers’ bodies down, searching for the cash, and dumped their bodies on a dark back street on Staten Island. They drove off in the car, which they later dumped. Wilson and his other accomplices were picked up in the ensuing days.
Prosecutors made their case for execution by presenting emotional testimony from the detectives’ widows about their devastated families. Entered into evidence was the last photo ever taken of Andrews, wearing a leather jacket and posing with his children at a wrestling match at Madison Square Garden.
At closing arguments, prosecutors displayed the jacket, still caked with dried blood from the night he was shot. They also cited rap lyrics that Wilson scratched out after the shootings: “I ain’t gonna stop until I’m dead.”
The defense countered with anecdotal evidence of Wilson’s troubled background as the mentally challenged son of a crack-addicted mother living with a dozen relatives crammed into an apartment at a crime-infested Staten Island housing project.
Authorities said Wilson will now head to death row at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. There have been three people put to death there – including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh – since 2001.