Joseph F. DeFelice

After a jury had convicted a owner and landlord of a Bronx apartment building of negligent homicide after a fatal fire had contributed to the deaths of two firefighters, a Judge of the New York Supreme Court has overturned their convictions.  The 2005 fire occurred in an apartment with illegal subdivisions, creating walls where there should not have been any.  The firefighters had found themselves trapped in the building with the illegal walls, and had jumped out of the window to their deaths.

The overturning of the decision comes as Judge Margaret Clancy has found that the prosecution had failed to prove that neither the building owner nor the super were aware that the partitions were installed in that particular apartment, which was the crux of the initial criminal investigation.  Regarding this, Judge Clancy said  “An individual or entity cannot be convicted of a crime without evidence of actual knowledge”.

The decision is interesting in that a jury had last year had found the tenants who had actually constructed the illegal partitions not guilty in this matter, creating a legal showdown between the two decisions.  This current decision has left the families of firefighters, and the legal community trying to parse out what this decision means for criminal law.

President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder’s plans to hold the trials of September 11^th plotter Kalid Sheik Mohammed at a Federal Courthouse in New York City continues to gain attention, and is drawing increasing criticism from numerous groups.

This week New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has thrown his weight against having the trials in New York City, stating that the trials are “going to cost an awful lot of money and disturb an awful lot of people,” and has suggested using alternate sites for the upcoming trials.

Debate has raged since the announcement of the decision to try these individuals in open, Federal Court instead of a military tribunal, and has drawn many local New York residents into the debate over whether they would like both the attention, and potential security threats that would come with the trials.

On one hand, the trial would showcase the open trials that are the cornerstone of the American justice system, but would also pose a relative threat to those involved with providing the security, given the high profile nature of both the defendants, and the trial itself.

What do you feel about the upcoming trials?  Will this be an opportunity for the American justice system to be an example to the world? Or is this an unnecessary risk of the people of New York?