Police Torture Defense: No Proof

The lawyer for ex-cop Charles Schwarz said Tuesday that the government had failed to prove that Schwarz was present when Abner Louima was sodomized in a police station lavatory, or that a flurry of phone calls among Schwarz and other officers afterward was evidence of a coverup.

"Charles Schwarz was never in that bathroom. He just never was," attorney Ronald Fischetti told a Brooklyn federal court jury in an hour-long closing statement.

After a prosecution rebuttal, Judge Eugene Nickerson was expected to instruct the jury.

Once the government decided to accuse Schwarz, he said, "the die is cast. They ain't going to change it and they haven't changed it for 2 1/2 years, and they got the wrong guy."

He said prosecutors had cited dozens of phone calls as proof of a conspiracy without being able to say what any of the conversations were about. Some, he noted, were made by Schwarz from a police lockup after his arrest, where he could not know whether the calls were being monitored.

Fischetti also cited numerous conflicts in the sworn testimony of Louima and a senior police investigator as to the identity of a "second man" in the lavatory at the time of the broom-handle assault, and reminded jurors that Louima had failed to identify Schwarz from a photo.

Although Louima was unquestionably the victim of a heinous attack, "that does not give him the right to make my client a victim, too, for something he did not do," Fischetti said.

On Monday, lawyers for accused co-conspirators Thomas Wiese and Thomas Bruder said the calls and other evidence did not prove that the three conspired to obstruct justice by covering up Schwarz's alleged role as an accomplice in the brutal assault of Louima.

"You've never heard the term `blue wall of suicide.'...You don't put yourself at the murder scene when two people are wanted and they only have one," Wiese attorney Joseph Tacopina said, hoping to show his client had no ulterior motive in telling investigators that Wiese, not Schwarz, was present when another cop sodomized the Haitian immigrant with a broomstick.

The defense contends that since Schwarz was not present, there can be no conspiracy.

Summing up for the government, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lauren Resnick said the evidence proved that Schwarz took part in what she called "one of the most brutal acts ever committed by a uniformed police officer" and that the trio conspired in phone calls afterward to invent a plausible alibi for him.

Schwarz testified earlier that he was outside the building, inspecting his patrol car for possible hidden contraband, at the time Justin Volpe was attacking Louima in the mistaken belief Louima had punched Volpe during a street melee.

Volpe is serving 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to violating Louima's civil rights by ramming a broomstick into his rectum.

Schwarz, 34, who faces a possible lie sentence for having held Louima down during the assault, is now accused along with Wiese, 34, and Bruder, 37, of conspiring to conceal his participation. The latter charge carries a term of up to five years.

Resnick ridiculed Wiese for subjecting himself to "the least amount of personal risk" by volunteering to investigators that he entered the bathroom during the assault and tried to rescue Louima but never saw Schwarz there.

"Why would Thomas Wiese take the risk, risk his family, his career, exposing himself to possible indictment...if he was not there?" Tacopina asked in response.

Bruder's attorney, Stuart London, said the few phone calls and other actions involving his client showed he was not part of any conspiracy.

He said the government glossed over lies and omissions by its own witnesses, including Louima, to make its case against the three officers.

"These people are all part of Team Government," he said.

In her summation, Resnick slammed Volpe as a "sadistic, lying animal" whose testimony two weeks ago was filled with falsehoods, contradictions and an attempt to justify his acts by blaming Louima for being defiant.

"He didn't want to answer direct questions ... he wiggled and waggled and went off on tangents," she told jurors. "You knew Justin Volpe was lying when he said Thomas Wiese and not Charles Schwarz walked Abner Louima to the bathroom."