Defense attorneys for the three police detectives indicted yesterday in the fatal shooting of Sean Bell likely will attempt to have their clients’ trial moved out of the city on the basis that potential jurors in Queens have been exposed to biased accounts of what happened that night and community demands for a conviction, legal experts said.

The four police officers who shot and killed Amadou Diallo in 1999 were granted a venue change after they were indicted by a Bronx grand jury on second-degree murder charges. An Albany jury later acquitted them.

Attempts by the detectives’ attorneys could be hindered, however, by differences between the Bell and Diallo cases, experts said.
While there have been protests and marches since Bell’s death, the uproar after the Diallo shooting was more widespread and included community and elected leaders regularly getting arrested in acts of civil disobedience.

“People have spoken up, but I don’t think it has reached the fever pitch it was with Diallo,” a veteran law enforcement official, Richard Davis, chairman of the Mayor’s Commission To Combat Police Corruption under Mayor Giuliani, said. “I think public officials have been reasonably balanced.”

Race is likely to play a less pronounced role in the Bell case because three of five officers who fired their weapons are black, and two of the indicted men are black. Bell was black, as were his companions. Diallo, a black man from West Africa, was shot by four white officers. The Bronx also has a different ethnographic breakdown than Queens, which is the most diverse county in America.

“You have to ask, do you get a gut feeling that this will preclude these officers from a fair trial,” an attorney who represented one of the officers who shot Diallo, John Patten, said. “Back in the Diallo days, there was a sense not of guilt or innocence, but how much the penalty should be.”

The attorneys for the officers indicted yesterday would have to file a motion with the state appellate court to request the change. In the Diallo case, the attorneys hired a polling firm to test for preexisting bias about the case in potential jurors, which could be a similar strategy in the Bell case.

The president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, Michael Palladino, said the attorneys had not made a decision on whether they would pursue a change of venue.

The Reverend Al Sharpton responded to the idea, saying at a press conference after the indictments were unsealed that neither he nor the victims and witnesses he represents would participate in a trial outside Queens. The Queens district attorney, Richard Brown, said he would “vigorously oppose” a change of venue, asserting that potential jurors in his county were divided equally over the case.

“I don’t think you can find a juror more fair and impartial than in the county of Queens,” he said.

The general counsel for the Sergeants’ Benevolent Association, Andrew Quinn, said he believed the rhetoric of activists such as Rev. Sharpton was contributing to the chance of the case being moved out of the city.

“If that demand for a result poisons the jury or has the potential to poison a jury, it is entirely proper for the venue to change,” he said. “I was listening to the radio all day, and there were a number of commentators saying they would not be satisfied with anything other than these guys going to prison.”

Mr. Brown said the majority of the grand jury came to their decision after three days of deliberation that followed 22 days of testimony. The Queens prosecutors interviewed more than 100 witnesses and reviewed 500 exhibits in the course of the case, he said.

The detectives, dressed in dark suits, listened to the charges without emotion and left the courthouse through a back door.

The undercover detective who first fired on Bell’s Nissan Altima on November 25, Gescard Isnora, 28, and the detective who fired 31 of the 50 total shots, Michael Oliver, 35, were indicted on charges of manslaughter in the first and second degrees, assault in the first degree, and reckless endangerment.

Mr. Isnora was additionally charged with assault in the second degree, and Mr. Oliver was charged with a second count of assault in the first degree, as well as reckless endangerment in the second degree.

They face up to 25 years in prison if convicted. They were released on $250,000 bail posted by the detectives’ union.

The detective who fired four shots, Marc Cooper, was charged with reckless endangerment in the first and second degrees. He faces up to one year in prison if convicted. Judge Randall Eng released him on his own recognizance.

The detectives all pleaded not guilty to the charges.

A veteran state Supreme Court justice, Arthur Cooperman, was selected in a random drawing to preside over the case. He has judged at least three men, Jay Harrison in 1990, George Bell in 1997, and William Hodges in 2004, accused of killing police officers.

Mayor Bloomberg said the city should respect the decision of the majority of the grand jurors.

“Nothing anyone can do will bring back Sean Bell,” he said. “But we can resolve to learn what lessons we can from this tragedy.”

The police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said the three indicted detectives were suspended without pay. The other two officers, Michael Carey and Paul Headley, were placed on modified assignment. The department will now begin its internal investigation of whether police policy was broken in the Bell shooting, he said.

At points throughout the day, Rev. Sharpton and Mr. Palladino exchanged barbs during press conferences. Rev. Sharpton accused the Detectives’ Endowment Association of trying to sway the city with radio and newspaper advertisements. Mr. Palladino called the grand jury’s charges “excessive” before saying that Rev. Sharpton’s public comments and marches were “designed to do one thing: take away a level playing field.”

In a slip of the tongue, Rev. Sharpton said during the first of two press conferences, “All five officers should be shot,” and then corrected himself, saying, “All five officers shot.”

Rev. Sharpton, Mr. Benefield, Joseph Guzman, and Bell’s fiancée, Nicole Paultre-Bell, all sat in the third row during the arraignments of the three detectives.

“Today is just a baby step in this long road we have ahead of us,” Ms. Paultre-Bell said afterward.

The mother of Bell, Valerie Bell, said in a statement: “This is truly one of the most challenging and devastating times of our lives. The world has come to know him as Sean Elijah Bell. He will always be Sean to me, and I miss him desperately.”