Lawyers for a man dubbed the “Brooklyn Ripper” for his butchery of two little kids lost a Hail Mary bid Tuesday to get his murder conviction overturned over what they called “racist” terminology prosecutors used to describe the killer.
As expected, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Vincent Del Giudice denied a motion to vacate Daniel St. Hubert’s guilty verdict based on the motion.
That prompted the child killer’s lawyer Howard Greenberg to seethe at prosecutor Patrick O’Connor, pointing at the assistant district attorney and charging, “If the defendant goes to hell, he will see you there, sir.”
Greenberg had argued that O’Connor tried to sway jurors by repeatedly referring to St. Hubert as a “hulking black man” in opening statements.
“The government’s racially charged slurs and race-conscious arguments in their opening statements are prima facie unconstitutional and violated the defendant’s right to a fair trial in this case,” Jonathan Rosenberg, St. Hubert’s other lawyer, said. “It’s a disgusting, disgusting, manipulative way to deal with the jury.”
O’Connor, who is also black, used the phrase when telling jurors St. Hubert was responsible for fatally stabbing 6-year-old Prince Joshua “PJ” Avitto in 2014 inside an elevator in an East New York public housing elevator.
PJ’s pal, Mikayla Capers, now 11, was stabbed 16 times but survived.
St. Hubert was convicted in April.
On Tuesday, O’Connor defended his opening statements, saying they “were in no way racially inflammatory.”
The prosecutor added that he used the phrase “for the express purpose only to establish his identification.”
But Greenberg slammed O’Connor as “desperate for a conviction.”
“It’s never about prosecution in the interest of justice. It’s prosecution in the interest of a conviction,” he said. “All of Mr. O’Connor’s remarks here today are rationalizations.”
The arguments came just before St. Hubert’s sentencing in the case. He faces up to life in prison.