White Plains CitizeNetReporter - Analysis of Week 3:The Dennis Alvarez-Hernandez Capital Punishment Murder Trial

WPCNR WHITE PLAINS LAW JOURNAL. Commentary By WPCNR Legal Affairs Correspondent, S. Richard Blassberg. April 28, 2003: The last two witnesses for the prosecution completed testimony this morning in the Alvarez-Hernandez affair being tried in the County Court House.

Week Three in the trial saw the continued presentation of the Prosecution’s case by George Bolen and Patricia Murphy. Each remained faithful to the District Attorney’s apparent game plan, essentially attempting to enflame the jury with photographs and statements calculated to produce an angry and emotional reaction to the Defendant.

Bolen and Murphy continue to have the unenviable task, in this observer’s opinion, of fulfilling Jeanine Pirro’s apparent desire to add a Death Penalty Conviction to her resume, whether or not the facts support the effort.

WPCNR LEGAL CORRESPONDENT
S. RICHARD BLASSBERG
Photo by WPCNR News

Proving the Admitted

To listen to the Prosecution’s case thus far, one would not think that the Defense had acknowledged responsibility for the stabbing death of Patricia Torres and two of her children, as well as the critical wounding of a third, right from their opening statement. It is hard to imagine a significantly different prosecution presentation had the Defendant pleaded “not guilty.”

The parade of police officers and detectives, criminologists and toxicologists, employed by the Yonkers Police Department and/or the County of Westchester offered little which might compel jurors to believe that Dennis Alvarez-Hernandez clearly possessed the intent necessary to satisfy Murder One, under the statute, when he performed the tragic acts which he has acknowledged performing on September 3, 2000.

Recreating the Anguish of the Crime for the Jurors Tortures Family.

Only the most naïve observer would believe that spreading a blood-stained comforter, Prosecution Exhibit # 250, on the courtroom floor, or showing the lifeless body of Patricia Torres, first in her bloodied blouse, and then with her bare breasts exposed, was calculated to do anything more strategic than inflaming and prejudicing the jury. Whatever the impact on the jurors, those present in the courtroom could not miss the torturous pain inflicted upon family members who broke out weeping.

Sensitive Attorneys

However else one might characterize Week Three, it was a week of repeated objections, sidebars, and strained feelings between Defense and Prosecution attorneys.

Interestingly, an admission by Detective Lorenzo of the Yonkers Police Department, that he and Detective Kraft had essentially failed to advise properly Alvarez-Hernandez of his Miranda Rights, prior to extracting a confession at his hospital bedside, a potentially fatal error, drew little attention from prosecutors during Defense cross-examinatioin.

Yet, the statement by Alvarez-Hernandez “We had been drinking all day,” reported in Dectective Lorenzo’s notes, was the cause of strenuous objection by prosecutor Bolen.

Pathways to Judgment

By the conclusion of the Third Week of testimony, the District Attorney’s Office had presented all but one or two of its witnesses (who appeared today). Jurors have been advised that the Defense case will likely require two week or less to present.

At this juncture, it is not too difficult to anticipate the direction Defense arguments are likely to take. Attorneys Spiegel and Aiello will very certainly go to great lengths to establish the earliest possible time of occurrence and the highest possibl level of alcohol intoxication by their client, as clearly revealed intheir cross-examination of Prosecution witnesses during the first three weeks of the trial

Note: S. Richard Blassberg, Author of The Jeanine Machine has been observing Westchester's first capital punishment murder trial in years, from the gallery. Here is his analysis of Week Three completed Friday at the courthouse


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