Defense in Bell Case To Waive Jury Trial

A veteran judge in Queens will be responsible for deciding the case against the three detectives charged in the shooting death of Sean Bell.

At 2 p.m. Friday in Queens Criminal Court, lawyers for detectives Gescard Isnora, Michael Oliver, and Marc Cooper will waive their right to have the case against them decided by a jury, the president of the Detectives Endowment Association, Michael Palladino, said. The defense will exercise its right to have the case determined by Judge Arthur Cooperman.

"I think that it is stunning that these officers want to do everything but be accountable to the people they serve in Queens. Now that their motion to change the venue has been denied, they do not want to face a jury of their peers whom they serve and by whom they are paid," the president of the National Action Network, the Reverend Al Sharpton, said in a statement. Rev. Sharpton will be at the court with Bell's fiancé, Nicole Paultre-Bell, and the two other men who were shot on the night Bell was killed, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, he said.

On Wednesday, a motion filed by the defense to move the trial outside of Queens was denied by a state appeals court. The defense argued that the detectives could not receive a fair trial in Queens, claiming the public is prejudiced against them because of widespread news accounts of the shooting outside a Queens strip club.

Now the decision will be in the hands of Judge Cooperman, whom several defense attorneys described as a straight shooter.

In what is widely considered Judge Cooperman's highest-profile case, he sentenced two former police officers to two to six years in prison in 1986 for torturing a teenage drug suspect with a stun gun.