Testimony ends in Nassau DWI assault trial
Twelve jurors sat with their eyes closed Thursday as Nassau prosecutor Maureen McCormick asked them to imagine a horrific scene that happened a year ago.
"A police car is stopped at the side of the road," McCormick said, her voice raised. "And then - boom! Hear the crunch of metal and the breaking of glass! Watch as the police car is lifted into the air!"
Baribault, 30, of Nesconset, who has barely been able to speak or move his right side since the crash, appeared in court this week to demonstrate his injuries to the jury.
In one corner of the Mineola courtroom, Danielle Rella, the sister of Kenneth Baribault, the officer who was seriously injured in the May 18, 2008, crash on the Long Island Expressway, wiped streams of tears off her cheeks.
Both McCormick and Gerard Brogdon, the lawyer for Rahiem Griffin, the man charged with driving drunk and recklessly into Baribault's patrol car as it was stopped on the shoulder of the highway, presented their closing statements to the jury.
Their statements ended testimony in what has been an emotional trial.
Baribault, 30, of Nesconset, who has barely been able to speak or move his right side since the crash, appeared in court this week to demonstrate his injuries to the jury.
Griffin took the stand as the sole witness in his defense.
Friday morning Nassau County Court Judge Jerald Carter is expected to instruct jurors on the law in the case before they begin deliberating.
Brogdon told jurors that his client did many things wrong in the hours before the crash. He had been drinking at a nightclub in the Bronx and he was driving with a suspended license, Brogdon said.
But he said what Griffin did does not amount to reckless assault, which carries a prison sentence of up to 7 years.
"Does he seem like the type of person who would turn his car into a torpedo?" Brogdon asked. "His driving record is not good. But that doesn't mean he wanted to hurt Officer Baribault."
Griffin, 28, of Shirley, looked back into the courtroom periodically, smiling weakly at his wife and baby daughter as they listened to the proceedings.
But McCormick told the jury that Griffin's saying he didn't know he was too drunk to drive is "like saying 'I thought it was OK to drive blindfolded.' "
On top of that, he was speeding, exhausted and driving without a license, she said.
"His decision created an inevitability that someone was going to have to pay for his choices," she said.
Posted Saturday, June 13, 2009
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