Two sympathetic powerhouse Manhattan lawyers have offered $1 million cash bail and use of their Hamptons spread as a house-arrest venue for a young caddy at their golf club who is on trial for murdering a correction officer, The Post has learned.
Attorneys Marc Wolinsky and Barry Skovgaard are part of a well-heeled group of members from The Bridge golf club in Bridgehampton aiding 26-year-old Anthony Oddone, from paying for his high-powered attorney to bringing him dress shoes to wear at court yesterday.
Oddone, a college student of modest means from Farmingville, LI, is on trial in the August 2008 choking death of off-duty Suffolk County correction officer Andrew Reister, 40, who was moonlighting as a bouncer at the Southampton Publick House bar.
Oddone is facing second-degree murder raps and a maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
Wolinsky, the most high-profile of Oddone’s known supporters, represented World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein after the 9/11 attacks.
Skovgaard heads his own successful Manhattan firm.
Other members of The Bridge, where posh putters like financier Ira Rennert, hip-hop mogul Lyor Cohen and artist Richard Prince pay up to $1 million in initiation fees, agree that the popular caddy is getting a raw deal.
“From what I hear happened that night, the kid was defending himself, not looking to murder someone,” said a club member. “A man lost his life, and that’s unthinkable. But it was self-defense. We really believe that, and that’s why people are willing to help.”
Prosecutors charge that Oddone — who has a prior arrest related to a barroom fight — jumped on the bouncer, a married father of two, who had told him to stop dancing on a table, and the defendant allegedly choked him to death.
In her opening statement, prosecutor Denise Merrifield said Oddone gripped Reister so hard that bones in the victim’s neck broke and he turned purple.
His lawyer, Sarita Kedia, who has defended mobsters John “Junior” Gotti and Alphonse Persico, argues that the 260-pound Reister threw the college student off the table and that her client acted in desperate self-defense. Reister’s death, she said in opening statements Monday, was “a tragic accident.”
Oddone “was trying to protect himself from being hurt by a much bigger guy,” Kedia told jurors.
In an unsuccessful bid to get Oddone out on bail, Kedia on Sept. 28 told the court that Wolinsky and Skovgaard would provide $1 million in cash bail.
Kedia also proposed that during the trial Oddone would stay, under house arrest, at an East End property the two prominent attorneys owned.
Wolinsky did not return a call to his office, while Skovgaard would not comment outside the courtroom yesterday.
Reister’s wife, Stacey, offered little comment on Oddone’s backers. “I don’t even have a paycheck,” she said. “That’s all I can say.”