Blue, Yellow and Green Juries Hear Evidence in Rare Triple Murder Trial
An unusual triple murder trial of three men charged with the murder of a New York police officer during a 2007 traffic stop in Brooklyn is being handled in an unusual way.
Three color-coded juries, referred to as blue, yellow and green, are being shuttled in and out of the courtroom to hear evidence in the first-degree murder case, reports the New York Times. Meanwhile, the defendants, who are differentiated in “semiofficial shorthand physical descriptions” by prosecutors as thin, fat and short, are accused of operating in combination to commit a murder that allegedly involved a traffic stop (the thin man was at the wheel of a reportedly stolen vehicle); a shot by the short man from a rear window that wounded a police officer; and another blast from the front seat, by the fat man, that fatally wounded the officer’s partner.
The prosecution wanted the three tried together, to make the trial process more efficient and preclude the possibility that witnesses would testify differently at different trials, the newspaper reports. The government’s consistent theme is that conduct of the three men, in combination, adds up to a single first-degree murder.
“Conversely, each suspect’s lawyer told their respective jury essentially the same thing,” the Times recounts: “Their client was not one of the gunmen, and, whatever other improper things he might have done before or after the shooting, there is not enough evidence that he acted in concert with the killer to warrant a murder conviction.”
