The quality of justice

Last week, the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court overturned the second-degree murder conviction of Wayne Oxley, who was convicted by a St. Lawrence County jury of killing Bernard Trickey in a brutal baseball-bat attack. The decision means the county will have to once again take Oxley to trial for the August 2005 murder.

The court ruled that Judge Jerome J. Richards erred when he refused to allow testimony at trial that the defense claims would have shown jurors there was another, perhaps more likely suspect in the murder. By denying the defense the ability to present an alternative theory to the crime, the appellate court ruled, Oxley was denied the ability to present a full defense.

Without getting into the details, which you can read in the Watertown Daily Times, Oxley's defense team had lined up a number of witnesses who were ready to testify that another man, not Oxley, had threatened to beat Trickey shortly before his death, and that the man had bragged to a cellmate while in jail on an unrelated charge that he had made good on his threat. Judge Richards, however, would not allow the jury to hear the testimony. In his ruling during the trial, the judge said "It will only serve to confuse the jury." Defense attorney Rikchard Manning at that hearing protested that his client's constitutional rights were being denied.

The new trial for Oxley is unlikely to begin until late in the year, if then. And it could be a whole new ballgame for the prosecution, which will have to counter this new testimony that will be allowed based on the appeals court ruling. A second conviction of Wayne Oxley is far from a sure thing.

The decision to overturn Judge Richards in this case appears to be something of a trend for the judge, a former district attorney who became County Court judge in January 2005. A cursory examination of the record shows this is the sixth reversal for the judge. The Appellate Division has also overturned the cases of Ronald Dillon, Ronald LaPage, Anthony Tehonica, John Emerson and Christopher Abar.

Of those, the Abar reversal might be the most galling. Abar was convicted of first-degree depraved indifference to human life and given 20 years in jail for a vicious beating of James L. Ashley, who suffered brain damage from the attack. The appeals judges ruled that the vicious and unrelenting nature of the attack indicated Abar "acted intentionally during the crime, and not with a depraved indifference to human life." The court also threw out the indictment, making a second prosecution much less likely. By allowing the charge to stand, the judge may have given Abar a free pass on the assault.

Other reversals came because the judge would not allow one defendant a justification defense and in other cases dismissed a juror over objections of the defense, withheld parts of a plea agreement from a defendant and reneged on a plea agreement with another defendant.

No judge goes without some reversals; it's part of the job. But to have six cases reversed in just four years on the bench, Judge Richards appears to be well ahead of the curve in reversals. It seems that the judge likes to make rulings that favor the prosecution, based on the reasons his cases have been returned.

The cost of this is high on several levels. At the most basic, it means that St. Lawrence County is paying a high price for trying cases twice. The cost of a murder trial can run to six or seven figures, a tough added expense for a county already strapped for cash. And in cases like that of Mr. Abar, the county may find it cannot put a guilty defendant behind bars.

A more important consideration is this: each time a judge denies a defendant essential rights, it increases the possibility of a wrongful conviction. The system isn't supposed to work that way. The judge is separated from the prosecution for a very good reason: he is an arbiter, not a proponent. He isn't supposed to take sides, he is supposed to govern the trial so the jury can reach a fair conclusion, then mete out the appropriate punishment to the guilty.

Perhaps the six reversals of Judge Richards' trials are an anomaly; maybe he'll be on the bench for 10 years and these will be the only setbacks he suffers. At the very least, perhaps the judge can look at these decisions and make course corrections that solve any problems that might exist. The people of St. Lawrence County – both taxpayers and criminal defendants – deserve no less.

(Reprinted from the former Northern New York Follies blog.)