The judge in the Abner Louima case yesterday shot down defense requests for a mistrial following sex-torture cop Justin Volpe’s stunning guilty plea.
Lawyers for Officer Thomas Wiese and Sgt. Michael Bellomo asked Brooklyn federal Judge Eugene Nickerson to pull the plug on the sensational trial, saying Volpe’s plea made their clients look guilty.
Bellomo’s lawyer, John Patten, said Volpe’s defense strategy – which implied Louima’s injuries came from consensual gay sex – was proven false by Tuesday’s guilty plea, and the jury would now have a hard time believing other defense lawyers.
Wiese’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, said the plea would also suggest that his client was part of a group of cops that beat Louima in a patrol car.
Instead of granting a mistrial, Nickerson told the jury Volpe had pleaded guilty in the case – but not to judge the rest of the cops by that plea.
“The fact that [Volpe] pleaded guilty can’t be used by you as evidence in determining whether the other defendants … are guilty of any of the offenses,” the judge said.
Stuart London, the lawyer for Officer Thomas Bruder, said he may ask the judge today to throw out the charges against his client for lack of evidence.
The prosecution plans to wrap up its case against the four remaining cops this morning.
That means Bellomo could take the stand tomorrow afternoon to try to convince the jury he did not cover up for anybody.
Nickerson also rejected a move by Stephen Worth, the lawyer for Charles Schwarz, to have the charges against his client thrown out because prosecutors allegedly withheld key evidence until two days ago.
Schwarz is accused of holding Louima down inside the 70th Precinct station house in Brooklyn while Volpe sodomized him with a stick.
Worth said he had only recently received notes from an Internal Affairs sergeant showing Louima said in his first interview that he was put into a cell for 10 minutes before being taken to the bathroom.
That contradicts later statements by Louima and cop witness Eric Turetzky that Schwarz led Louima directly toward the bathroom.
Worth called the handling of the notes an “egregious” case of prosecutorial misconduct because it was handed over after Louima and Turetzky testified.
“It was a trap set for the unwary,” he said. “Clearly this information should have been provided at the conclusion of Louima’s testimony, and it was not.”
Volpe, meanwhile, spent his first full day behind bars inside a protective custody cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan.
He will remain there while awaiting sentencing for his admitted sodomy attack on Louima. Volpe, 27, faces life in prison without parole.
Schwarz, Wiese, Bruder and Bellomo each face 10 years in prison if convicted.