He killed two NYPD cops in cold blood — but he’s a pussycat with the other convicts.
Defense attorneys for Ronell Wilson say that when defendants are portrayed as dangerous it often sways federal death penalty juries to vote for execution. So they want a judge to bar prosecutors from telling jurors in Wilson’s upcoming penalty phase retrial that the man convicted of gunning down two undercover cops on Staten Island in 2003 poses an ongoing risk — in the hope of him getting life behind bars instead of lethal injection.
“In the almost seven years since he was sentenced to death ... Mr. Wilson has not committed a single act of violence — not even of a minor nature,” attorneys David Stern, Colleen Brady and Beverly Van Ness wrote Brooklyn federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis.
Wilson’s first death sentence was overturned on procedural grounds.
But Brooklyn federal prosecutors have insisted that Wilson still “represents a continuing danger” and poses a “serious threat to the lives and safety of others.”
Last year, the feds say that Wilson was involved in an incident in prison where he refused to leave a recreation area, flashed Bloods gang signs, and made incendiary gang remarks to prison guards. It took a special team of officers to remove him.
Yesterday, Garaufis directed prosecutors to submit a written response detailing their views on the issue.
In 2007, Wilson was sentenced to death after a federal jury found him guilty of the point-blank shooting deaths of NYPD detectives Rodney Andrews and James Nemorin during an undercover gun buy-and-bust operation.
Wilson became the city’s first federal defendant to receive a death sentence since 1954, but an appeals court reversed the death sentence on procedural grounds in 2010.
mmaddux@nypost.com
Cop killer's lawyers angling for life in prison instead of lethal injection
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Cop killer's lawyers angling for life in prison instead of lethal injection
