12393: NY Times: Louima, Day 1 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

June 25, 2002
In New Trial, Defense Calls Louima a Liar
By WILLIAM GLABERSON


Abner Louima was back in court yesterday recounting once
again the attack five years ago that horrified the city and
left him with torn insides while a defense lawyer contended
that a "damnable lie" by Mr. Louima led to charges against
an innocent police officer.

It was the Louima case again, full-bore in a federal
courtroom in Brooklyn. This time, it was stripped of other
police officers who have stood trial before, and its focus
was on just two men: Charles Schwarz, the twice-convicted
defendant, who says he is the victim of a mistaken
identification, and Mr. Louima, who again described being
sodomized with a broken broomstick and feeling pain so
intense that it was impossible to know what part of his
body hurt.

"I was crying," he said, the accent of his native Haiti and
the effect of repeating his old humiliation making his
account sound muffled, like a report of something very long
ago.

Yesterday was the beginning of Mr. Schwarz's trial on civil
rights and perjury charges, and the calculation of the
chief defense lawyer, Ronald P. Fischetti, was on full
display. Cross-examining Mr. Louima, Mr. Fischetti focused
on discrepancies in various versions Mr. Louima has given
at different stages of the case. Mr. Fischetti has said a
theme of his defense will be a more strenuous attack on Mr.
Louima's credibility than defense lawyers have pursued in
the past.

Prosecutors concede that Mr. Louima has corrected
misstatements and mistakes in his many trips to the witness
stand. Mr. Fischetti said in his opening statement to
jurors, though, that "those were not mistakes, they were
outright lies."

One, Mr. Fischetti said, was a falsehood he labeled
damnable, though Mr. Louima has long admitted it was
invented. For months after the assault he maintained that
one of the officers who assaulted him that August night in
1997 said that it was "Giuliani time" — that is, a change
from the antipolice atmosphere that prevailed under Mayor
David N. Dinkins.

The "Giuliani time" statement helped put the case on the
city's political radar, and Mr. Louima has long said he was
coached by a Haitian man he had just met into making it so
that justice officials would take note.

Prosecutors took the defense's vigorous attack on Mr.
Louima as an attempt to distract the jury from what they
see as clear evidence that Mr. Schwarz held down him while
another officer, Justin A. Volpe, pushed the broomstick
into Mr. Louima's rectum.

"Abner Louima is not on trial here," one of the
prosecutors, Lauren Resnick, told the jurors. "He is the
victim of police officers who turned the rule of law on its
head."

Mr. Louima, looking healthy but quizzical, was forced to
acknowledge in more than two hours of cross-examination by
Mr. Fischetti that he had at times given contradictory and
confusing statements about the question central to Mr.
Schwarz's defense, the role of the so-called second officer
in the bathroom of the 70th Precinct station house where
the assault occurred.

Mr. Schwarz is facing two civil rights charges that he
restrained Mr. Louima during the attack and two perjury
counts based on his statements at his last trial: that he
had not led Mr. Louima to the bathroom and that he was not
present during the assault.

Mr. Volpe pleaded guilty and is serving a 30-year prison
term.

Testifying as the first prosecution witness, Mr. Louima, in
a well-cut black suit, recounted the familiar story of a
night of dancing at a Flatbush Avenue nightclub, a
disruption in the street, an officer being hit, and Mr.
Louima's being confused for someone else and being thrown
to the ground.

Except for one odd disruption of yesterday's proceedings —
a man trying to videotape the session, claiming a First
Amendment right to do so in violation of court rules — Mr.
Louima's testimony was delivered in an atmosphere so
subdued it hardly seemed the same case that had once
aroused angry demonstrations.

Underscoring the time that has passed, Mr. Louima
acknowledged that since Mr. Schwarz's last trial, Mr.
Louima had begun collecting payments on the $8.75 million
settlement he won in his civil suit against the city and
the police union.

Under questioning from the chief prosecutor, Alan Vinegrad,
Mr. Louima told the jurors his account of riding handcuffed
to the station house in the patrol car. Then, at the
precinct desk, he said, the driver of the patrol car
loosened Mr. Louima's pants and underwear, letting them
fall to the ground, foreshadowing the attack that nearly
cost him his life.

Mr. Louima has said repeatedly that he cannot identify Mr.
Schwarz definitively, but he has said that the officer who
assisted Mr. Volpe was "the driver." He repeated that
account yesterday. Mr. Schwarz was the driver.

Mr. Louima was succinct. In the bathroom, he said, Mr.
Volpe threw him to the floor and told him that if he made
any noise he would be killed. Then Mr. Volpe kicked him in
the groin, Mr. Louima testified.

When he shouted in pain, Mr. Louima said, he was punished,
but not by Mr. Volpe. "The driver put his foot hard on my
mouth and said, `Shut up,' " he said.

In his cross-examination, Mr. Fischetti asked about Mr.
Louima's sworn statements suggesting that the second
officer in the bathroom did not hold him down and muddying
his identification of the driver.

Mr. Fischetti showed that Mr. Louima had made differing
statements about such details as how many officers were
involved in his arrest and how many times he had been
thrown to the ground. Most damaging, Mr. Fischetti showed
that only days after the attack, Mr. Louima was asked
during sworn grand jury testimony whether anyone was
holding him while Mr. Volpe sodomized him with the stick.

"No," Mr. Louima said then, shaking his head. Mr. Fischetti
played that portion of his videotaped testimony in court
yesterday.

Still, in what appears likely to be a pattern during this
trial, Mr. Vinegrad found examples in the voluminous
history of the case, some from the very same testimony
cited by the defense, in which Mr. Louima had provided
accounts consistent with the prosecution's view of the
case.

"The driver," Mr. Louima has testified repeatedly, was one
of the two officers in the bathroom who beat and kicked him
just before Mr. Volpe inserted the broomstick, Mr. Vinegrad
showed.

Mr. Vinegrad showed that Mr. Louima had testified in three
separate trials involving police officers that the driver
had held him down.

Mr. Fischetti told the jurors during his opening statement
that Mr. Schwarz was an innocent man caught in a "rush to
judgment" by prosecutors. Mr. Fischetti told the jurors he
would prove that there was a second officer in the
bathroom, Mr. Schwarz's partner, Thomas Wiese.

Mr. Fischetti had promised publicly, after the United
States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned
Mr. Schwarz's two prior convictions in February, that he
would call Mr. Wiese to the witness stand. He made no such
promise yesterday.

At times, Mr. Louima seemed buffeted yesterday by the
renditions of his testimony over the years, but
occasionally he showed the resilience of a witness who has
learned how courtroom battles are won.

After unveiling one of the inconsistencies in Mr. Louima's
old accounts, Mr. Fischetti asked if testimony that seemed
to help Mr. Schwarz five years ago could possibly be less
accurate than Mr. Louima's incriminating statements now.

"Does your memory change every time you testify?" Mr.
Fischetti said.

No, Mr. Louima said, mentioning that he was still suffering
from pain and confusion when some of his prior testimony
had been delivered. Now, he said, "my mind is more clear."



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