Results tagged “murdertrial”

Just a little over three weeks after the Imette St. Guillen trial began, it is now in the hands of jurors who will decide the fate of Darryl Littlejohn for sexually assaulting and murdering the graduate student from Boston. In closing arguments yesterday, Littlejohn's defense lawyer Joyce David accused police of a conspiracy to protect his boss, bar manager Danny Dorrian, whose brother-in-law was an adviser to Rudy Giuliani. David said, "Darryl Littlejohn was the solution to all their problems: solving the city's biggest crime at the time, protecting Danny Dorrian and protecting Rudy Giuliani from another scandal while he was running for President." David said St. Guillen and Dorrian could have had "a weird bondage thing." Prosecutor Kenneth Taub responded to the vague allegations by calling them "the rankest kind of speculation" and said there is "a mountain of evidence" against Littlejohn. Update: After six hours of deliberation, the jury has found Littlejohn guilty of rape and first-degree murder.

Yesterday, defense lawyers for Darryl Littlejohn, a bar bouncer accused of murdering a John Jay College student in 2006, rested their case. Yesterday, those lawyers put two police detectives on the stand: One said that while numerous items were taken from Littlejohn's Queens apartment, none "were ever linked to [murder victim Imette] St. Guillen and DNA testing failed to yield a match," while the other said that few items from the bar where Littlejohn worked— and where St. Guillen was last scene—were taken as evidence. Littlejohn's defense has suggested that the police should have paid more attention to bar owner Danny Dorrian. Littlejohn has already been convicted and sentenced to 25 years in the kidnapping of a Queens woman in 2005; he is also suspected in a kidnapping and rape that is very similar to St. Guillen's attack. Closing arguments are expected today and the jury will likely get the case shortly afterward.

Yesterday, a woman described a rape and attack very similar to how John Jay College student Imette St. Guillen was attacked. St. Guillen was found dead in 2006, and a bouncer at the bar she was last seen, Darryl Littlejohn, is on trial for her murder. While the woman was unable to pick out Littlejohn in a lineup, a judge allowed her to testify because the attack was so similar to St. Guillen's and another woman's. The Daily News reports that the woman described being "snatched off" Queens Boulevard, and then "the attacker handcuffed her and bundled her into a car," threatening her with a gun. "Warning her to shut up, the attacker drove her to a bedroom that sounded similar to Littlejohn's basement apartment in his mother's Jamaica home. The attacker taped a knit cap over her eyes - a key detail because Littlejohn allegedly taped over St. Guillen's eyes." After raping her, her attacker "forced her to clean up and change into shorts and a T-shirt," which had LIttlejohn's mother's DNA on it.

Yesterday, a young woman told a Brooklyn jury that seeing media coverage of a man suspected of killing Imette St. Guillen helped her realize it was the same man who tried to kidnap her months earlier. Shanai Woodard said, "I was watching the news with my mother and I saw a picture of the van come across the screen. I started freaking out really bad. 'Mom, that was the van I was in. I know it is.'" Littlejohn is on trial for St. Guillen's murder, which took place in February 2006, but earlier this year, Darryl Littlejohn was convicted and sentenced for 25 years for trying to kidnap Woodard in October 2005. Littlejohn had grabbed Woodard off a Queens street, threw her into his van, and "punched [her] in the head two to three times." Woodard, who was also bound, eventually escaped the moving van and managed to find help. The Daily News explains that the judge allowed Woodard's testimony was allowed because the "similarities - a young woman abducted, hands bound behind, hit in the head and her eyes covered - were striking enough to let the jurors hear."

Lillo Brancato Jr., who had a few moments of fame when he starred in A Bronx Tale and appeared in episodes of The Sopranos, tried to explain to a jury that he was not responsible for the murder of an off-duty police officer three years ago. Instead, Brancato chalked up his actions to being "dope sick"—a real junkie that "even my hair was hurting."

Jurors in the harrowing Nixzmary Brown trial say they were divided over handing down a murder verdict, so instead they found Cesar Rodriguez guilty of first-degree manslaughter, as well as "endangering the welfare of the child and criminal possession of a weapon, including a belt used to beat Nixzmary."

The jury deliberating whether Cesar Rodriguez is guilty of killing his 7-year-old stepdaughter is reportedly close to a verdict. Even though the jury is on a break for the weekend, the Daily News suggests the jury's behavior indicates a verdict is near.

The maternal grandmother of a 7-year-old abused girl who died in 2006 testified yesterday the child feared her stepfather. Her stepfather, Cesar Rodriguez, is on trial for Nixzmary Brown's murder; Brown's mother Nixzaliz Santiago will face a separate trial.

During his testimony for the defense, a former Suffolk County medical examiner said 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown was not killed by child abuse syndrome but by a single blow. In spite of her malnourished state and various injuries battering her body, Dr. Charles Wetli said, "If you take away the head injury from this child, there is no reason that the child should have died in that time and place."

The defense for the man on trial for murdering his 7-year-old stepdaughter Nixzmary Brown opened its case by presenting a DNA expert. The Daily News says Dr. Lawrence Koblinsky, who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, "attacked the investigation but seemed to bore jurors."

A city medical examiner spent two days testifying in the trial of Cesar Rodriguez, who face murder charges over his 7-year-old stepdaughter Nixzmary Brown's death. Deputy Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson revealed two things: That the girl only gained one pound in two and a half years and that she was dead for seven hours before 911 was called.

Photographs of a 7-year-old girl's battered body moved jurors in the Nixzmary Brown murder trial to tears yesterday. The prosecution showed crime scene photographs, featuring Nixzmary's dead body. The girl's stepfather Cesar Rodriguez is on trial for second-degree murder.

After almost a week of delays, jurors were back in court for the Nixzmary Brown murder case. A expert said that the malnourished 7-year-old's blood was found under the fingernails Brown's stepfather, Cesar Rodriguez, as well as on his jeans. Rodriguez faces murder charges for the malnourished 7-year-old's 2006 death.