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New DNA tests to delay stabbing trial
By JONATHAN BANDLER
jbandler@lohud.com
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: April 22, 2006)
WHITE PLAINS — Results of new DNA tests allegedly linking Phillip Grant to a fatal stabbing in a White Plains parking garage will delay the start of Grant's murder trial for at least two weeks.
The tests by the Westchester County forensics laboratory found a mixture of DNA on a swab of Grant's index finger and could not exclude Grant and victim Concetta Russo-Carriero as contributors to the mixture, Assistant District Attorney Timothy Ward said yesterday.
Jury selection was to have started next week, but state Supreme Court Justice Lester Adler is giving the defense extra time to have its own expert analyze the results.
Russo-Carriero, 56, was stabbed as she walked to her car June 29 on the seventh floor of the city garage next to the Galleria mall. Grant was taken into custody moments later and led police to a shirt he had been wearing and a knife believed to be the murder weapon. Tests later revealed that both items had the victim's DNA on them, authorities said.
Also yesterday, a pretrial hearing on the admissibility of Grant's statements to police ended. Those included admissions he allegedly made to a patrol officer who stopped him on Grand Street moments after the stabbing and a videotaped statement he later gave detectives in which he claimed to have killed Russo-Carriero because she was a white woman.
Grant is the first defendant in Westchester charged with murder as a hate crime.
Adler refused to allow defense lawyer Eugene Traynor to call Ward as a witness. Ward was at police headquarters when the statement was recorded and Detective Rick Lee testified that Ward introduced himself to Grant after the defendant insisted that a prosecutor be present.
Traynor contends that Grant should have been given his Miranda warnings against self-incrimination at the time he was first stopped and that the videotape should be suppressed because Grant was coerced into speaking to detectives. The prosecution maintains the initial statements were spontaneous and that Grant had voluntarily agreed to give the videotaped statement.
Adler said he would hear arguments from the lawyers before deciding whether jurors will be allowed to hear the statements.
Grant, 44, is a high-risk sex offender who was released from prison after serving 23 years for raping three women in the Bronx. He faces up to 25 years to life in prison if convicted of murder.
http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060422/NEWS07/604220355/1018/NEWS02
Jewish criminality came way before Herzl founding the ideology of Zionism.
Brett Quinn aka Jett Rink - likes "classy" coke and is a Jew whore lover.
Posted : 22/04/2006 5:50 pm
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Grant's lawyers say interracial relationship proves he's not a racist
By JONATHAN BANDLER
jbandler@lohud.com
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: June 19, 2006)
WHITE PLAINS — Phillip Grant wasn't scared of white people and didn't hate them, despite what he told detectives hours after he was accused of stabbing a white paralegal to death in the Galleria mall garage, his lawyers contend.
And to convince jurors of that, they want to introduce evidence that the homeless ex-convict was involved in a sexual relationship with a white woman.
The second week of Grant's trial begins today at the Westchester County Courthouse. He is charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime in the June 29 slaying of Concetta Russo-Carriero, a 56-year-old White Plains resident.
Grant confessed to the killing in a 45-minute videotaped interview in which he told detectives he set out to kill a white person that day because he was waging a race war. He claimed he was afraid of white people, felt they were stalking him, and that he hated them for a series of perceived injustices.
The tape was played for jurors on Friday. His lawyers are focusing on several false claims in the interview to convince the jury that they shouldn't believe any of it — particularly the parts about Grant being a racist and killing Russo-Carriero.
Defense lawyer Eugene Traynor said Grant had become close with a white woman in the months before the slaying. He said they met near Grace Church, that Grant had helped her carry some bags and that they soon began a sexual relationship. He said it proved that Grant's claims on the videotape that he was scared of whites and couldn't be around them were made up.
Evidence of the relationship "would belie the truth of any pattern of racism," Traynor told state Supreme Court Justice Lester Adler Friday. He asked the judge to allow him to present evidence about the relationship to the jury.
The woman is on the list of potential witnesses. It was unclear whether Traynor intends to call her or just wants jurors to see her picture.
But the lead prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Timothy Ward, said the relationship was irrelevant because it happened three months before the slaying. He said Grant may not have hated whites when he was with the woman. The impetus for Grant's racism — some white people following him around and telling people he met that he was a high-risk sex offender — did not occur until after that, Ward argued.
Adler reserved decision on the matter.
http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060619/NEWS02/606190337/1023/NEWS07
Jewish criminality came way before Herzl founding the ideology of Zionism.
Brett Quinn aka Jett Rink - likes "classy" coke and is a Jew whore lover.
Posted : 26/06/2006 6:16 pm