NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- On the night before his wedding, Sean Bell was at a strip club called Kalua Cabaret for a bachelor party. As the groom and two friends left the seedy joint in the early morning hours of his big day, they were confronted by undercover officers there investigating reports of drugs and prostitution.
The rest of the story changes depending on who is recounting it, but the result is the same: Bell, 23, was killed and his two friends were injured in an onslaught of 50 police bullets outside the club on Nov. 25, 2006. Bell died hours before he was to marry Nicole Paultre, the mother of his two children.
1010 WINS AUDIO: Juliet Papa Speaks to Nicole Paultre Bell
The three officers involved in the shooting were indicted on criminal charges. Detective Michael Oliver (far left) fired 31 shots — including the one that killed Bell. Gescard Isnora (center) squeezed off 11 shots, and Marc Cooper fired four times. Detectives Oliver and Isnora have pleaded not guilty to manslaughter; Cooper has pleaded not guilty to reckless endangerment.
Starting Monday, a judge — not a jury — will decide their fate, in a case that has sparked protests as well as debate over excessive force and police conduct in New York.
Police union officials and defense lawyers have said the detectives believed Bell and his friends were going to get a gun; no weapon was found. The officers started shooting after a car the three men were in lurched forward, bumped Isnora and slammed into an unmarked police minivan, authorities said.
PHOTO: Provided by Nicole Paultre Bell
The detectives waived their right to a jury trial after an appeals court turned down a defense bid to move the case out of New York City. Veteran state Supreme Court judge Arthur Cooperman will hear the case.
Without a jury to sway, the trial will likely be less theatrical, but court officials were still expecting big crowds from both sides and a large media presence. It will be tried in the biggest courtroom at Queens State Supreme Court, a ceremonial hall that seats about 190. It was recently outfitted with state-of-the-art technology and flat-screen TVs.
Bell's friends, Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman, who were injured in the shooting, were set to testify as witnesses and won't be in the courtroom. Guzman still has four bullets in his body and was disabled by the shooting, according to his lawyer, Sanford Rubenstein. Benefield has a rod in his leg where the bones shattered.
Bell's fiancee is expected to testify as the first witness in the case. She said she planned to be there every day.
"I feel like I need to know. I need to know why this happened," said Paultre Bell, who had her name legally changed after Sean's death. "I wake up one day and my world is turned upside down. I have to know why this happened, my family deserves to know."
Her two children, 5-year-old Jada and 1-year-old Jordyn, will stay home, she said. The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has served as an advocate for Bell's family and organized demonstrations against police brutality after the shooting, said he would attend parts of the trial. He planned candlelight vigils for Sunday and Monday.
Both prosecutors and defense attorneys did not want to speak in the days leading up to the trial, saying only that the case should be tried in the courtroom and not on the courthouse steps.
Legal experts said the absence of a jury might help the defendants defuse the case of some of its emotional volatility, especially with a 20-year veteran like Cooperman on the bench.
"They don't want to take a chance on a compromised verdict," said Eugene O'Donnell, a professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "The thought is, a judge can simply stare out into the abyss, bite the bullet and do what has to be done."
While jurors do generally believe that police officers are out to help the public, they're also likely to have sympathy for the shooting victims. The result can be a conviction on lesser charges.
Cooperman, 74, has experience trying high-profile police cases. In 1986, he presided over the trial of officers accused of torturing a teenage drug suspect with a stun gun. The officers were convicted and sentenced to six years in prison. He has also presided over trials where police were the victims.
Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association, said a barrage of negative pretrial publicity prompted the detectives to ask for a bench trial.
"The jury pool was poisoned," he said.
He cited a recent ad campaign featuring Bell's fiancee as a model for Rocawear, a clothing line co-founded by hip-hop mogul Jay-Z. 
The ads began running just days before the trial. Palladino said it was a clear attempt to manipulate the public; Rubenstein said it had nothing to do with the case, but refused to say how much she had been paid.
The detectives' union has argued that the case doesn't belong in criminal court because the officers were just doing their jobs. Oliver and Isnora face up to 25 years in prison if convicted; Cooper faces up to one year on the lesser endangerment count.
"I have said from the very beginning the shooting was tragic," Palladino said. "But they didn't act with criminality in their hearts and in their minds, and I think the proper arena for this is civil court."
While comparisons to other police-involved shootings are inevitable, the trial wasn't expected to cause the kind of mass outrage that occurred after the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant hit by 19 of the 41 shots fired by police in the Bronx.
Many New Yorkers, especially blacks, felt Mayor Rudy Giulani wasn't compassionate enough, and said the shooting spotlighted racist stop-and-frisk practices by the NYPD. Thousands marched in protest after the officers were acquitted.
In contrast, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in the days after the strip club incident that he felt the shooting was "excessive." He was hailed by city residents but criticized by law enforcement for speaking out before the facts were in.
"The thing that's missing in this case is that level of vitriol for City Hall," O'Donnell said. "The mayor and the police commissioner have credibility in the city, specifically in the black community," he said.
Plus, the officers involved are Hispanic, black and white. Bell was black, as are the other victims.
"The police department is way more diverse now," O'Donnell said. "The old story of a bunch of white cops in an all-white department completely insensitive to the city is not true today."
TOP PHOTO: by 1010 WINS Reporter Juliet Papa
1010 WINS ARCHIVES:
Accused Detectives Seek Change of Venue (Jan. 23 2008)
Vigil Marks Sean Bell Shooting Anniversary (Nov. 25, 2007)
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