Charles Schwarz/Abner Louima, Round 2
By Jeralyn, Section Crime in the News
Posted on Sat Jun 22, 2002 at 09:11:34 PM EST
Tags: (all tags)
Posted on Sat Jun 22, 2002 at 09:11:34 PM EST
Tags: (all tags)
The jury has been selected in the retrial of Ex NY Cop (and partner of Justin Volpe) Charles Schwarz for violating Abner Louima's civil rights and obstructing justice when he allegedly restrained Abner Louima during Louima's brutal assault in the precinct house bathrooom during which Volpe sodomized Louima with a broomstick. Schwarz was inititally convicted of the civil rights violation by a jury at the end of a trial in which Volpe plead guilty mid-way through. He got a new lawyer, went on trial again for obstruction of justice, testified on his own behalf, and was convicted. Both convictions were reversed. The first conviction was reversed because his lawyer had a conflict of interest.
What has Abner Louima been up to in the five years since his assault? He has moved to Florida to start a new life. Jim Dwyer, co-author with Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld of "Actual Innocence," takes a roadtrip to the Florida "Boomlands" to visit Louima and reports in today's New York Times Magazine, "For nearly five full years, the same players have been working over the same moment in time and space, fingering at the event until its meaning has all but rubbed away, like the lost language of weathered gravestones. There is no mystery, of course, about what happened to Abner Louima; the mystery is what happened to those cops."
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