Crime Scene

When victims’ relatives take the witness stand at murder trials, defense lawyers are usually on their best behavior. They have to be careful not to seem insensitive or antagonize the jury by aggressively questioning the still grieving witness, who commands sympathy by the circumstance that brings him or her to court.
That was not the case on Monday at the start of Fred Richardson’s trial in Westchester County Court. Richardson is accused of gunning down 30-year-old Kevin Chambliss on Ferris … Read more of this entry »

The packed courtroom in Delaware went silent yesterday as James Cooke Jr. was led in.  In a few moments he would hear the judge’s decision: should he die for the rape and strangulation of White Plains college student Lindsey Bonistall or spend the rest of his life in prison. 

He and his lawyers knew what was coming. Judge Jerome Herlihy had never gone against a jury recommendation in a death penalty case and Cooke’s jury was unanimous in favor of execution.

But as … Read more of this entry »

WILMINGTON, DE – Of course, 30 minutes after I blogged that the jury in the James Cooke capital murder trial hadn’t sent any notes, they sent one.

Esteban Parra, who is covering the trial for The News Journal here in Wilmington, immediately joked that I should blog about not getting a verdict yet.

The note did not shed much light on where the deliberations stand and did not involve the top count, first-degree murder, that Cooke is facing in the detah of Lindsey Bonistall. It asked the judge whether Cooke … Read more of this entry »

WILMINGTON, DE – So far there’s been no word from jurors in the 26 hours since they began deliberating in the capital murder trial of James Cooke Jr., who is charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of Lindsey Bonistall from White Plains. 

But that isn’t entirely surprising considering how they conduct deliberations here. There is no readback of testimony (jurors took notes during the trial so they rely on those and their recollections)and the jury gets a written copy of the judge’s instructions. ... Read more of this entry »

James Cooke insisted at his Delaware “murder trial”:http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070223/NEWS02/702230384/1017 yesterday that he did not kill Lindsey Bonistall, the White Plains college student who was raped and strangled in her Newark, Del. apartment two years ago.
But he allegedly confessed to the killing during a jailhouse session with a minister last year.
Jurors will not hear of that, however, because Cooke yesterday refused to waive the confidentiality of statements he made to the Rev. James Beardsley.
The so-called religious privilege, or priest-penitent privilege, protects conversations … Read more of this entry »

Steven Wood is a veteran Delaware prosecutor, now leading the team that is trying to convict James Cooke Jr. in the murder of White Plains college student Lindsey Bonistall. He is well-spoken and has a very proper courtroom manner, and sometimes resorts to very fancy words that have some in the courtroom shaking their heads or maybe even heading for the dictionary. 

In some ways, he reminds me of a younger version of George Bolen, the veteran Westchester prosecutor who retired last year. That … Read more of this entry »

The trial of Anthony DiSimone in the 1994 slaying of Louis Balancio was the biggest case of Clement Patti’s career as a Westchester prosecutor.
But he had nothing to say about it this morning when confronted at the courthouse about a federal judge’s decision to throw out DiSimone’s conviction because prosecutors failed to turn hundreds of pages of exculpatory evidence over to the defense.
“I’m not going to talk about that case,” Patti, now in private practice, said without making any other … Read more of this entry »

 When Westchester County got brand new courtrooms for criminal cases two years  they were supposed to be state-of-the-art. But as most of the prosecutors, judges and court officers still try to get the hang of the limited new technology, maybe they could take a lesson from their counterparts in Delaware.

Courtroom 8B at the New Castle County Courthouse in Wilmington – where the man accused of killing Lindsey Bonistall is on trial - has computer screens all over the place: a large one above the … Read more of this entry »

Juror #6 at the James Cooke murder trial in Delaware would have been excused – literally – if he couldn’t focus entirely on the testimony. His mother just died.

But when Judge Jerome Herlihy called him into the courtroom this afternoon to see if he could stay on the jury, he didn’t hesitate for a second.

“My mother was civic minded, she would have wanted me to continue,” he told the judge, adding that he didn’t expect to need an adjournment in the trial because the … Read more of this entry »

Mark and Kathleen Bonistall of White Plains are in Wilmington, Del. this month for the trial of the man accused of killing their daughter, Lindsey. She was a University of Delaware sophomore when she was strangled to death nearly two years ago in her off-campus apartment.

They listened intently, sometimes tearfully, on Friday as the prosecutor  detailed how Lindsey died. I can only imagine what went through their minds later, during the defense’s opening statement, when Lindsey wasn’t even mentioned at all and the only focus was … Read more of this entry »

It was a routine bail application in Westchester County Court this morning, but the man representing Dwayne Aquart was not just any lawyer. It was Kenneth Lange, the former county judge who once presided over some of Westchester’s biggest trials.
Lange had to step down two years ago when he reached the mandatory retirement age of 70. So he took a job at his former law firm in Mount Kisco and now is often seen in local courts, mostly in northern … Read more of this entry »

His fourth DWI conviction in a decade left Vasel Balbona without a driver’s license.
No, the Bronx man didn’t get pulled over again while under the influence. But he is in jail on a felony forgery charge after allegedly trying to use a different name to get a new driver’s permit.
Balbona was arrested last week. Police said that in November he used a relative’s resident alien card that had been altered with a fake name to try to get … Read more of this entry »

Serious crime continues to drop in Greenburgh – either way you slice it.
Police chief John Kapica yesterday released annual crime stats for 2006, reporting that the 903 crimes were the lowest total since the statistics were first reported in the early 1980s – a 1.8 percent drop. Or was it 863 crimes, down 2.4 percent? Depends what crime-reporting method you use.
As always, the announcement about serious or Part I crimes – murder, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, burglary, motor vehicle theft … Read more of this entry »