Bloomfield,NJ and Marcus Jeter
video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVaU8qm2LhQarticle about updated case
http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2015/03/bloomfield_cops_in_dash-cam_case_reject_plea_deal.htmlNEWARK — Two Bloomfield police officers have rejected a plea deal and are scheduled to go on trial in July on official misconduct and related charges in connection with a 2012 arrest.
In a brief court appearance today with their attorneys, Officers Orlando Trinidad and Sean Courter indicated they have turned down a plea offer that would have required them to serve five years in state prison each.
Superior Court Judge Michael L. Ravin set the trial start date for July 13 and informed the officers about the maximum sentences they face if convicted of all charges - 28 years for Courter and 33 years for Trinidad.
Today's pre-trial conference marked the officers' last opportunity to accept the state's plea offer.
"They maintain their innocence," Courter's attorney, Charles Clark, said outside the courtroom after today's hearing. "They wanted their trial date. They were never going to accept a plea."
The charges against Trinidad, 34, of Bloomfield, and Courter, 34, of Englishtown, stem from the June 7, 2012, arrest of Marcus Jeter during a motor vehicle stop on the Garden State Parkway.
Courter and another officer, Albert Sutterlin, conducted the stop after they had responded to a domestic-related call at Jeter's township home. Trinidad later arrived at the scene and struck Jeter's car with his patrol vehicle.
During the incident,
Courter has said he was trying to remove Jeter from the car when he felt Jeter reaching for his weapon, court papers say. But Jeter has claimed he had his hands in the air the entire time, said Essex County Assistant Prosecutor Betty Rodriguez, who is handling the case.
Dashboard video raises question of police action, prosecutor says
Two Bloomfield police officers have been indicted on conspiracy and misconduct charges after a dashboard video from a police cruiser raised doubts about the officers' account of an arrest they made, according to Essex County prosecutors.
After prosecutors reviewed a second police dashboard video, resisting arrest and other charges against Jeter were dropped, and
Courter and Trinidad were indicted on charges of official misconduct, conspiracy, tampering with records, and false swearing. Trinidad, who hit Jeter during the incident, also is facing an aggravated assault charge.
That video is allegedly inconsistent with the officers' written reports on the arrest, prosecutors said.
Sutterlin, who retired in May 2013, pleaded guilty in October 2013 to tampering with records and is awaiting sentencing.
In a lawsuit filed by Jeter against the three officers and other defendants, Jeter claims the officers violently dragged him from his car and assaulted him. Jeter alleges the cops wrongfully arrested him and conspired to cover up the officers' misconduct in an act of "racial profiling."
In a separate lawsuit, Trinidad has been accused of assaulting another man following a 2013 arrest. That lawsuit claims Trinidad landed a "brutal punch" that Rodolfo Crespo's right ear was "practically ripped from his head."
Courter and Trinidad made a motion to dismiss their indictment, claiming the grand jury presentation was unfair, in part because grand jurors were repeatedly told the officers were liars. Clark also objected to how another officer provided narration for the grand jury about the dashboard video in question.
But in a Jan. 12 decision, Ravin rejected that motion, finding that grand jurors were able to view the video and "come to their own conclusions as to what the video showed and whether the video was consistent with Courter's and Trinidad's version of events."
Two officers had provided their opinions to the grand jury about the written reports being inconsistent with the videos, but Ravin found those officers' testimonies "did not impinge on the grand jury's independence."
"The grand jury was able to view videos one and four multiple times throughout the grand jury presentment and hear testimony from all of the actors involved in the case," Ravin wrote in his decision.
"In light of this thorough presentation of the evidence, Courter and Trinidad have not shown that a few stray remarks by two of the five witnesses caused the grand jury to arrive at a result that it would not otherwise have reached."
Bill Wicher
