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The fiancee of an unarmed man shot to death by police on his wedding day said Saturday that "the justice system let me down" when the three detectives were acquitted of all charges in his killing.
"April 25, 2008: They killed Sean all over again," Nicole Paultre Bell softly told hundreds of people gathered at the headquarters of the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network. "That's what it felt like to us."
1010 WINS VIDEO: Nicole Paultre Bell Speaks
1010 WINS AUDIO: Kathleen Maloney Reports
Paultre Bell, in her first public remarks since storming out of a courtroom Friday after the NYPD detectives were cleared in 23-year-old Sean Bell's killing, said she would seek another decision in the case.
"I'm still praying for justice because it's not over," she said.
Joseph Guzman, who was wounded in the barrage of 50 police gunshots outside a Queens strip club on Bell's wedding day in 2006, also spoke for the first time since Friday's verdict to supporters at Sharpton's Harlem offices.
"We've got a long fight," he said. "We're still in it. ... We're going to struggle. We're going to get through."
Later, Bell's family, Guzman and Sharpton joined more than 300 people marching through more than 20 blocks in Harlem. Fifty demonstrators carried white placards bearing numbers for the shots fired at Bell and his friends.
Sharpton lambasted the judge who acquitted the detectives, saying a jury should been seated to decide guilt or innocence. Sharpton has threatened to "shut the city down" with organized civil disobedience.
If history is a guide, the Bell family may indeed still have a chance at extracting some measure of retribution, but it may be likely to come at the expense of the city and not the officers who pulled the trigger.
Legal experts said Bell's family faces an uphill fight in their attempt to have the officers charged with federal civil rights violations, and might have to settle for attacking them in civil court, where the city, not the officers, would be responsible for paying off any multimillion-dollar verdict.
Peter J. Neufeld, an attorney who represented police torture victim Abner Louima, said he believed that the chances that the U.S. Attorney's office would bring federal charges in the case were ``close to zero,'' based on Justice Department decisions in past police shooting cases.
While federal prosecutors have been willing to prosecute police officers for civil rights violations before, most famously in the case of Los Angeles brutality victim Rodney King, they have hesitated to take on cases where officers have had to make a quick decision whether or not to open fire on a person they perceived to be dangerous.
No civil rights charges were brought in the 1999 case of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant shot to death in the vestibule of a Bronx apartment building by officers who mistook his wallet for a gun, or in the case of Eleanor Bumpurs, a mentally ill, 66-year-old black woman who was killed by two shotgun blasts fired by a police officer evicting her from her apartment in the Bronx in 1984.
``The split-second nature of the decision to shoot,'' Neufeld said, makes it difficult for prosecutors to argue that the officers knowingly acted to deprive someone of a constitutional right.
Bell's family and the two survivors of the shooting may have better luck, though, with their civil lawsuit against the city.
New York has a long history of multimillion-dollar payouts as a result of civil lawsuits brought by the families of men and women slain or beaten by police, including many settlements in cases where the officers were acquitted of criminal responsibility.
Even if the case goes to trial in civil court, Bell's family is in a good position for a victory, said Bob Conason, an attorney who helped Diallo's mother wrest a $3 million settlement from the city.
``This certainly doesn't kill the civil case,'' Conason said of Friday's acquittal.
``Yes, they will have to try the case over again,'' he said, but the standard for proving that the officers used excessive force is much lower in a civil court. ``We had the exact same thing in Diallo, and we were not that concerned about winning the civil case,'' even after the initial verdicts of not guilty, Conason said.
An exoneration in a criminal investigation also wasn't an obstacle for the families of Patrick Dorismond, an unarmed black security guard whose family won a $2.25 million settlement from the city after his shooting by a narcotics detective in 2000, or for relatives of Timothy Stansbury, who settled for $2 million after the 19-year-old was shot by a startled officer on a Brooklyn rooftop in 2004. Grand juries had declined to indict in either case.
That doesn't mean that the road to victory will be easy for the Bell family, even in civil court.
The lengthy trial of detectives Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora and Marc Cooper produced some moments damaging to the family's claim that the officers had no cause to fear for their safety.
Judge Arthur Cooperman noted in his written decision on the case that some of the prosecution witnesses who had given the most damning account of the officers' conduct had changed their stories regarding the circumstances of the shooting, which he said ``had the effect of eviscerating'' their credibility.
While not mentioning him by name, the judge also seemed to take aim at Guzman as he described a witness with a criminal history and a poor demeanor on the witness stand. Guzman had been combative as he was cross-examined about the shooting and has served jail time. The police detectives said they decided to confront Bell's party as they left the strip club because they believed Guzman was going to his car to retrieve a gun after an earlier argument.
Yet, even considering those factors, Conason said it might be in the city's best interest to settle, rather than risk polarizing citizens by defending the detectives' conduct in court.
``I would hope they figure, 'Enough of this. It's not good for the city. It's not good for the department,''' Conason said. The Rev. Al Sharpton said he would meet with members of Congress in an attempt to elicit their help getting the Justice Department involved in the case.
Regardless of what the city decides to do, Bell's family and his friends say they aren't going to give up.
In his ruling Friday, Justice Arthur Cooperman said inconsistent testimony, courtroom demeanor and rap sheets of the prosecution witnesses - mainly Bell's friends - "had the effect of eviscerating" their credibility.
"At times, the testimony just didn't make sense," the judge said.
The verdict elicited gasps as well as tears of joy and sorrow. Detective Michael Oliver, who fired 31 of the shots, wept at the defense table, while Bell's mother cried in the packed courtroom. Shouts of "Murderers! Murderers!" and "KKK!" rang out outside the courthouse.
Protests followed later Friday, and police said two demonstrators were arrested near the shooting site. One was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge, the other on a charge of obstructing governmental administration, police said.
Oliver and Gescard Isnora were acquitted of charges that included manslaughter, assault and reckless endangerment. The third officer, Marc Cooper, faced lesser charges.
After the verdict, the officers gave brief statements without taking questions. "I'd like to say sorry to the Bell family for the tragedy," an emotional Cooper said.
Bell was killed outside the strip club as he was leaving his bachelor party. The officers - undercover detectives who were investigating reports of prostitution at the club - said they thought one of the men had a gun.
The slaying heightened tensions in the city and stoked long-standing allegations of racism and excessive use of force by police, even though two of the officers charged are black.
The officers complained that pretrial publicity had unfairly painted them as cold-blooded killers.
After the verdict, the U.S. attorney's office said it would look into the case and "take appropriate action if the evidence indicates a prosecutable violation of federal criminal civil rights statutes."
The officers, who had been on paid leave, also face possible departmental charges that could result in their firing.
The case brought back painful memories of other New York police shootings, such as the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, an African immigrant who was gunned down in a barrage of 41 bullets by officers who mistook his wallet for a gun. The acquittal of the officers in that case led to days of protests, with hundreds arrested.
The defense in the two-month trial painted the victims as drunken thugs who the officers believed were armed and dangerous. Prosecutors sought to convince the judge that the victims had been minding their own business, and that the officers were inept, trigger-happy cowboys.
Bell's wounded companions - Guzman and Trent Benefield - both testified.
Guzman, a burly ex-convict who still has four police bullets lodged in his body, grew combative during cross-examination and said of Isnora: "This dude is shooting like he's crazy, like he's out of his mind."
None of the officers took the stand. Instead, the judge heard transcripts of the officers telling a grand jury that they believed they had good reason to use deadly force.
The officers said that when the club closed around 4 a.m., they heard Guzman say "Yo, go get my gun" - something Bell's friends denied.
Isnora claimed that after he warned the men to halt, Bell pulled away in his car, bumped him and rammed an unmarked police van. The detective also said Guzman made a sudden move as if he were reaching for a gun.
Benefield and Guzman testified that there were no orders from the police.
No weapon was found in Bell's blood-splattered, bullet-riddled car.
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