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One of the defendants accused of murdering Michael Sandy as part of a hate crime a year ago is now claiming that he is innocent because he himself is a gay man. Michael Fortunato is on trial for the murder of Michael Sandy after he and three friends arranged to meet him in a secluded spot in Sheepshead Bay for a gay tryst. Instead, they ambushed the 29-year-old Williamsburg man who, fleeing his attackers, ran onto the Belt Parkway and was struck by a car and died five days later. The youngest of the four men involved in the attack, Michael Timmins, is 17 years old and pleaded guilty in exchange for his testimony against the other three men, Fortunato, Ilya Shurov and John Fox.
Prosecutors maintain that Fortunato is inextricably linked to the crime, because he previously bragged to Timmins, Shurov, and Fox about setting up bogus rendezvous with gay men online, only to rob them when meeting them in person. Fortunato is also believed to be the person who conducted the online communication with Sandy that resulted in the Sheepshead Bay meeting that led to Sandy's death. Fortunato's defense lawyer Gerald Di Chiara says that nothing went as planned that evening and that his client actually intended to use the meeting with Sandy as an opportunity to come out of the closet to his friends.
Mr. Fortunato, he said, might have planned to smoke marijuana with Mr. Sandy as a means of testing his friends’ sentiments about homosexuality. Or, he said, perhaps Mr. Fortunato had wanted to swindle a gay man, to see how his friends reacted to a gay person.Luring a gay man out to a secluded spot to be met by his friends under the pretense of taking his money was simply part of Fortunato's plan to come out to his friends as a gay person, according to Di Chiara. And the lawyer asserted that the prosecution's witness, Michael Timmins, is also gay.
The lawyer for John Fox posited his client's innocence on the basis that Fox wasn't planning on robbing Michael Sandy, but planned simply on tricking him out of his money: "Basically what you had here was a scam. The plan was to scam Mr. Sandy to get his money."
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This sounds an awful lot like the claim Abner Louima sustained his injuries by consensual sex in jail - a crazy narrative concocted by a desperate defendent and a dirtbag lawyer.
If true, though, it would make Fortunato the evil closet-case loser of the decade. ("Yeah, I wanted to come out to my friends as gay, but instead we conspired to rob this other gay guy, chased him into traffic, and killed him.")
hate crime legislation is gay
If this is true, and not part of some desperate half-ased idea to get a lesser sentence, it's still a hate crime. Targeting anyone solely for a trait, is a hate crime, regardless of who does it.
It's like how some Republicans screw over homosexuals even though they are homosexuals themselves.
Fortunato just made his upcoming prison stay all the more interesting.... =)
Further to #3, just because the defendant is a self-hating homosexual, doesn't change the fact that they singled this guy out because he was gay. Such a lame defense!
i smell Bulls**t- this will be the new "insanity" plea
Tragedy turns to farce. C'mon, you have to laugh.
is he going to go all the way & produce hard evidence that he's gay?
prison life will sort this out.
can't he just go to rehab instead of all this legal mumbo jumbo?
Wow, that's convenient.
this like chuck and larry. But instead of playing gay trying not to get marriage rights, they are trying not to get fucked in jail.
daily news has a photo of him..
i'd tap that ass..
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/2007/09/18/2007-09-18_bias_case_bombshell_outed_in_gay_slay.html
There are plenty of self-hating fags. So what?
"The youngest of the four men involved in the attack, Michael Timmins, is 17 years old and pleaded guilty in exchange for his testimony against the other three men, Fortunato, Ilya Shurov and John Fox."
"Pleaded guilty in exchange for his testimony"? WTF is that supposed to mean? Gothamist will never be legit until you people learn to write.
#15: you'll never be taken seriously until you sign up and post your name.
From the NY Times article linked above:
"Not only was Mr. Fortunato gay, Mr. Di Chiara said, but so was the main prosecution witness, Gary Timmins, 17, who has pleaded guilty to attempted robbery in exchange for his testimony."
So, implausible as the exchange sounds, it has also been reported in the mainstream press. The mystery deepens, though. It now appears that Mr. Timmins has become heterosexual or deceased, and it's unclear which.
Yeah, because "edEx" is your real name? Gimme a break.
Oh, and BTW: whether or not he's gay, and whether or not he's guilty, prison rape is not something that's deserved by *anyone*.
Hate Crimes laws are idiotic. Wy should it matter why a person targets another person. We should only be punishing the act. I'm Jewish but I don't think there should be protected groups.