IT’S time to go home. For six weeks, we’ve sat on hard, wooden benches out in Queens and watched, with curiosity and disgust, as prosecutors put on a lame and listless case against three police detectives charged with killing Sean Bell.
I’ve been saying this for more than a month. I’ll say it again: There is no case.
Nearly every prosecution witness – folks obsessed with large lawsuits, long rap sheets and resumes containing items such as “pole dancer” and “crack dealer” – tripped themselves up.
They told transparent lies and contradicted one another. Each one sounded as if he was testifying not for the prosecution, but the defense.
Perhaps lead prosecutor Charles Testagrossa never had his heart in it. His head certainly was never present and accounted for.
We met Marseilles “Trini” Payne – a stripper who claimed the title of “second-best pole dancer in the city.” And Trent Benefield, a pothead who unfortunately got shot, but can’t get straight how many times Sean Bell’s car crashed before shooting broke out.
The only constant was the presence of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, which has doled out many thousands in financial “assistance” to witnesses, whose stories curiously changed as the dollar amounts increased.
The testimony of just one witness, Jean Nelson, had the ring of truth. He said a “hyper” Bell threatened to shoot a man outside the club Kalua just before he died. Nelson said Bell deliberately tried to mow down Detective Gescard Isnora with his car.
He had no reason to make this up.
So tomorrow, as the defense gets its shot at presenting a case, the detectives in this stinker – Isnora and Michael Oliver, charged with manslaughter and reckless endangerment, and Marc Cooper, charge with reckless endangerment – do not need to take the witness stand. Nobody does.
Bell’s death was a tragedy. He was not armed. But cops had reason to believe he had a gun. This was not manslaughter. And it was not reckless.
Prosecutors have proven exactly one thing these past weeks about the men who justifiably fired their guns on the night of Nov. 25, 2006:
They are innocent.
Give it a rest.