Defense in Bell Case Denied Motion To Move Trial

The defense team's hopes of moving the Sean Bell police shooting trial outside of Queens were significantly dimmed yesterday after an appeals court denied a motion to change venue.

The opinion of the second appellate division of the New York State Supreme Court denied the change of venue motion filed by the lawyers of the three police detectives charged in Bell's shooting, but it gave the defense the option to renew the motion after a jury is selected.

"It's disappointing that the appeals court didn't rule in our favor," the president of the Detectives' Endowment Association, Michael Palladino, said. "I think that our arguments had merit and our evidence was powerful."

The lawyers for detectives Gescard Isnora, Michael Oliver, and Marc Cooper had sought to move the case from Queens, claiming the public is prejudiced against the detectives because of widespread news accounts of the shooting outside a Queens strip club.

During the weeks leading up to the decision, the defense and then the Queens district attorney's office presented the court with polling results meant to strengthen their cases.

Lawyers for the detectives said they polled 600 Queens residents and found that 60.5% believed the shooting was unjustified. The district attorney's office later introduced its own poll, conducted by the Siena College Research Institute, saying 15.4% of the people polled thought the officers used excessive force and were guilty of a serious crime.

While yesterday's decision did leave a door open for the defense to push for a change of venue after jury selection, it may have affected the legal strategy.

The defense has the right to call for a bench trial, a move that would place a judgment in the hands of Judge Arthur Cooperman and not a Queens jury, who the defense has already said would be prejudiced. A bench trial, however, would mean the defense couldn't renew its motion to move the case out of Queens.