12434: NYTimes: (Louima)-Schwarz Trial Is Set to End Sooner Than Anticipated (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>
 June 28, 2002

Schwarz Trial Is Set to End Sooner Than Anticipated
By WILLIAM GLABERSON


rosecutors in the Abner Louima torture case yesterday
called their next-to-last witness — a former police officer
who was a confidant of the accused man, Charles Schwarz —
as the trial raced toward a conclusion far earlier than
expected.

After the testimony yesterday, the chief prosecutor, Alan
Vinegrad, told Judge Reena Raggi that he had a single
witness left to call, on Monday, and would then rest his
case. No court session is scheduled today.

Judge Raggi had told the jurors that the trial of Mr.
Schwarz, on civil rights and perjury charges, could last
until early August. But after Mr. Vinegrad, the interim
United States attorney for Brooklyn, said his case would
end Monday, the chief defense lawyer, Ronald P. Fischetti,
said the defense presentation could also conclude next
week.

The lightning pace has surprised some lawyers in the case
who say it is partly a result of Mr. Schwarz's being on
trial alone. He is charged with restraining Mr. Louima
while another officer, Justin A. Volpe, sodomized him with
a broken broomstick. Mr. Schwarz's two earlier convictions
were overturned in February. In both of those long trials
there were multiple defendants.

But at the Brooklyn federal courthouse, where testimony
began on Monday, there has also been speculation that the
speed reflects a kind of simplicity that has come to the
legal battle after years of debate, court decisions and
news articles.

In effect, according to this line of thinking, the case has
been reduced to an uncomplicated question of whether the
jurors believe the handful of witnesses who say there is
evidence that on Aug. 9, 1997, Mr. Schwarz went with Mr.
Louima toward the station house bathroom where the assault
took place.

Yesterday's star witness was Anthony Abbate, the former
police officer who prosecutors have long said played a
sinister role in the case as an adviser to Mr. Schwarz and
other officers trying to confound investigators.

Mr. Abbate, called by the government as a hostile witness,
is one of those interested in persuading the jurors that
Mr. Schwarz remained elsewhere in the station house while
Mr. Volpe took Mr. Louima into the bathroom.

Long before Internal Affairs investigators swarmed the 70th
Precinct station house in Brooklyn to gather evidence, two
days after the assault, Mr. Abbate had left the department.
A onetime police union delegate, he was dismissed in 1996
on charges of discourtesy to an officer and lying under
oath.

Prosecutors say that Mr. Abbate knew how investigations of
police officers worked because he had been the subject of
several of them. They say Mr. Schwarz turned to him for
advice in creating a web of deceptions intended to ensure
that only Mr. Volpe would be convicted.

In testimony from a prior trial that was read to the jurors
yesterday, Mr. Schwarz admitted that he and Mr. Abbate had
remained close friends. He also acknowledged that at 6:24
a.m. on the very day a dozen or more Internal Affairs
investigators were frenetically searching the precinct
house bathroom, he and his partner, Thomas Wiese, went to a
phone booth on the street near Brooklyn College and called
Mr. Abbate.

Phone records show that the call lasted 38 minutes. Just
before that call, there were calls placed from the same
phone booth to Mr. Volpe and Mr. Volpe's partner, Thomas
Bruder.

Prosecutors say that the early hour, the length of the call
and the frenzy at the station house suggest the beginning
of a plan to help Mr. Schwarz. The defense lawyers say it
proves nothing more than a man in a worrisome situation
calling a friend.

The jurors yesterday heard Mr. Abbate repeat the account he
has reluctantly given to prosecutors before. "I don't
remember," he said. "I don't remember the call."


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