| In Bronx
Murder Trial Defendant Hopkins Takes the
Stand With Geoffrey Berman In SDNY
Courtroom
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon
Honduras
- The
Source - The
Root - etc
SDNY COURTHOUSE,
Dec 12 –
On the second day of 2014 in
The Bronx, New York Shaquille
Malcolm was repeatedly shot
and killed in a building in
the Allerton section.
In arraignments
that followed, Inner City
Press reported
that the death penalty was on
the table, including as to a
co-defendant who has since
pled guilty to a superseding
indictment, Gyancarlos
Espinal.
On December 11
one of the two remaining
co-defendants Arius Hopkins
testified and was
cross-examined before U.S.
District Court for the
Southern District of New York
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan.
While Hopkins was
questioned by Assistant US
Attorney Danielle Sassoon, US
Attorney Geoffrey Berman came
into the courtroom gallery.
AUSA
Sassoon hammered away at Arius
Hopkins a/k/a Scrappy, asking
for example, Doesn't his gang
the Mac Ballas have rules?
Hopkins
replied, What kind of rules?
Sasson
insisted, Does it have rules,
yes or no?
Hopkins
smiled and said, Not
necessarily.
Judge
Kaplan admonished Hopkins, and
told the jury to disregard
portions of Hopkins answers
that went beyond the yes or no
format of cross examination.
For
example when Sassoon asked
Hopkins if he had re-posted on
Facebook a photograph of cash
and a gun, he replied, Yes and
then began a further
explanation. Judge Kaplan
stopped him and told the jury
to disregard everything beyond
"Yes."
On
re-direct examination,
Hopkins' lawyer Glenn A.
Garber asked him why he had
re-posted the photo. Hopkins
replied he was joking that the
wad of one dollar bills in his
could not possibly add up to
$800 as the original uploader
had claimed.
After the
cross examination, in the hall
Inner City Press remarked to
US Attorney Berman on
Sassoon's appellate argument
earlier in the day, which it
also covered,
defending one of Judge
Kaplan's sentencings, in a
Chinatown brothel finance
case.
"Ten a.m.,"
he said, clearly aware of the
timing of that argument in
which the Second Circuit panel
had agreed to place Sassoon's
argument first so that she
could return to the the trial
of Hopkins and Theryn Jones
a/k/a Old Man Ty.
Inner City
Press waited for the next
elevator. The
case is US
v. Jones, et
al.,
17-cr-791
(Kaplan).
Watch
this site.
***
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