A federal judge today rejected a plan by convicted NYPD cop killer Ronell Wilson to reconfigure a courtroom where his upcoming special death penalty trial will be held.
Defense attorneys representing Wison had asked a judge to re-arrange tables inside a Brooklyn federal courtroom in an effort to make the convicted double-murderer appear less dangerous and isolated.
But the judge was not persuaded by the argument.
“The court declines to modify its long-standing courtroom configuration. As with every previous criminal matter it has handled, the court is confident that the current placement of the prosecution and defense tables does not prejudice the defendant,” Brooklyn federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis wrote in his order today.
Earlier this week, defense attorneys had argued that the current configuration of furniture places Wilson against the far wall of the courtroom – with the prosecution’s table between Wilson and the jury – making their client look as if he needed to be kept at a distance.
His lawyer, David Stern, wanted the defense and prosecution tables turned 90 degrees so that Wilson, his attorneys, and prosecutors all would have faced the judge and would have been seated at an equal distance from the jury to their left.
“I write to ask that Your Honor reconfigure the courtroom,” Stern wrote, saying he wanted to “avoid the possibility that jurors will misconstrue the defendant’s distance from the jury as a reflection of his dangerousness.”
Brooklyn federal prosecutors did not oppose Stern’s suggestion.
The judge today, however, said he did not see how the placement of tables puts Wilson at a disadvantage.
“The court…does not believe that the current courtroom layout affects the jurors’ consideration of Wilson’s future dangerousness. Moreover, the court has already qualified over seventy prospective jurors with the current configuration in place. Changing the courtroom at this late stage is likely to confuse the jurors and engender speculation as to the cause of the sudden switch,” the judge wrote.
Garaufis also noted that the US Marshals Service had “advised that the court retain the current configuration.”
Law enforcement experts have told The Post that Wilson’s plan could have posed security concerns, because he would have been seated near the spectator gallery and close to the courtroom’s exit doors.
Wilson is in custody after already being convicted of murdering NYPD detectives Rodney Andrews and James Nemorin during an undercover gun buy-bust operation on Staten Island in 2003.
A special trial is scheduled to begin on June 24 where jurors will focus solely on the issue of what punishment Wilson should face – life in prison or execution by lethal injection.
In 2007, Wilson was sentenced to death after a federal jury found him guilty of murdering the detectives – making him the city’s first federal defendant to receive a death sentence since 1954.
But an appeals court reversed that death sentence on procedural grounds in 2010.
mmaddux@nypost.com