Results tagged “nicholasminucci”

- Great slide show of Weegee photographs to accompany the NY Times review of the ICP show

Jurors began deliberations in the hate crime trial of Nicholas Minucci. Yesterday, Queens prosecutors and Minucci's attorney gave their closing arguments: Prosecutor Michelle Goldstein tried one more time to emphasize that race motivated Minucci to attack Glenn Moore with a baseball bat last summer, while Minucci's defense attorney Albert Gaudelli called his own client "stupid" and a "dope" but not a racist, simply a dumb teen caught up by wanting to nab robbers that had been hitting his neighborhood. (Moore admitted he and his friends had been thinking about robbing a car earlier that night.) Gaudelli also blamed one of the detectives for "conning" Minucci by saying he would get leniency if he confessed.

If you've been following the trial of Nicholas Minucci, who beat Glenn Moore to the point of Moore's skull fracturing, you'll find a NY Times "Reporter's Notebook: Cracked Knuckles, as Loud as Words" article interesting. The local color of the courtroom is described, from Minucci's demeanor to his relatives' support, plus Reverend Al Sharpton's offer to testify. But most interesting to us was elaboration on a point brought up last week - a photograph shown by the defense:

Hinting that Mr. Moore was grandstanding for his civil lawsuit, [Minucci's defense attorney Albert] Gaudelli asked him about leaving the hospital on the back of a motorcycle. When Mr. Moore denied this, Mr. Gaudelli pulled out a New York Post article from last summer with a photograph of a man wearing a helmet on a motorcycle. The caption calls it Mr. Moore returning home. Mr. Gaudelli smelled blood as Mr. Moore looked at the article.

Continue reading "Tabloid Involvement in Hate Crime Trial"

The hate crime trial of Nicholas Minucci, aka Big Nick, began yesterday at the State Supreme Court in Queens. The Queens DA's opening statment argued that Minucci and his friends wanted to intimidate and injure Glenn Moore because he was black, while Minucci's defense lawyer Albert Gaudelli said their dispute was "minor dustup between six young men," especially since Moore and a friend were in the neighborhood to steal. Gaudelli also called the 19 count hate crime trial a politically motivated attempt to bolster black support for Mayor Bloomberg right before reelection. There's a lot of media attention on this case, so much so that the judge had to tell the courtroom "it's not Yankee Stadium, or the movies."

A jury was selected for the trial of Nicholas Minucci, who was charged with a bias attack after beating a black man in Howard Beach last June. The jury includes four whites, four blacks, three Hispanics, and one Asian, but more interesting is how the jury was selected and how the defense seems to be approaching the trial. Prosecutors charged Minucci with a hate crime because he said, "What up n-----" during his attack on Glenn Moore (Moore suffered a fractured skull from the beating administered by Minucci and his friends in the middle of the night). The NY Times says Minucci's defense "is expected to suggest that a young man growing up in a mixed neighborhood in New York City uses 'the N word' as a matter of course and that the word no longer carries the racially charged overtones it has historically." The defense asked potential jurors if they were offended by the "n word" while prosecutors asked the jury pool if they listened to rap music. Minucci's mother Maria said the trial was a way for the Queens DA to get publicity and said of the word of the day, "Every kid in the neighborhood uses it. It doesn't mean the same thing anymore. They all say it all day long, no matter what race. They all grow up saying it now... All of Nick's friends — black, white, Spanish, Chinese — they all use the word. You should hear when they talk on the phone to him in jail. "

The police are saying that a box cutting attack on three Asian men may have been racially motivated. The NY Times reports that three men were heading into the Gramercy Restaurant at 184 Third Avenue (at 17th Street) around 4:30AM when they were greeted with the racial slur for Chinese people (we assume "chink") as well as "mock karate moves" by two Hispanic men on the sidewalk. Then, when the Asian men left the restaurant at 5:15AM, the two men, plus a friend, attacked them , with one of the men slashing them ("one in the face, one in the neck and one in the back"). The victims' injuires were minor, but the police have not been able to find the attackers. Now, Gramercy would be considered one of the safer neighborhoods in the Manhattan, but at 4:30AM, anything goes, we guess. But there is something sadly A Clockwork Orange about these recent stories - Imette St. Guillen's murder, the killing of Edwin Hammond for his cellphone by 13 year-olds. And the Times got a "this stuff doesn't happen in this 'hood" quote from someone who lives upstairs from the restaurant: "I eat here all the time, like three times a week. If it wasn't safe, I wouldn't live here."

The city is still reeling from the racial attack on three black men, which resulted in a serious head injury for one, in Howard Beach. It was revealed that 19 year-old Nicholas Minucci, the first man arrested, had previously been arrested for beating a Sikh man after September 11, allegedly saying, "F---ing Arab! Why don't you blow this up!" Another man, Anthony Ench, was arrested, while the third member of the group, Frankie Agostini, turned himself in with his police detective father and was not charged (he's a witness). The Daily News and Post point out that Minucci aspired to a kind of hip-hop, "blingy" life, wearing a $6,000 Rolex, $4,000 gold chain and driving his cousin's $60,000 car.

Early yesterday morning, three black men who were walking in the predominantly white neighborhood of Howard Beach, Queens, were attacked by white men. Two of the men managed to flee, but one, Glenn Moore, had tripped on a curb was beaten badly by the attacked; he now has a fractured skull. The police are calling this a hate crime, as the attackers allegedly used racial epithets. The three black men, Moore, Richard Pope and Richard Walker, told the authorities they were in the area looking for a Chrysler 300 to steal and wandered into Howard Beach; Nicholas Minucci passed by them in his car, and then returned with his friends. Minucci was arrested and confessed to the crime; the police are still looking for his friends.