Razzle Dazzle
Verdict Won't Ease the Pain

By RICHARD STEIER

"I don't think anybody was more shocked by the decision of that jury than I was," Detectives' Endowment Association President Mike Palladino said Jan. 31, the day after Federal jurors decided that Ronell Wilson deserved the death penalty for the 2003 murders of Detectives James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews.

What surprised me, learning the news from my television, was the jubilation of the cops' widows at the verdict. Maryann Andrews, herself a Detective, said, "At last we have some closure."

I would have thought it more likely that such feelings would be triggered by the guilty verdict rendered by the same jurors in December. It was that finding that ensured that Mr. Wilson would pay a heavy penalty for murders as senseless as they were cold-blooded; last week's verdict merely shortened the clock on when he will die in prison. Even with the death penalty imposed, appeals are likely to mean at least another 10 years passes before Mr. Wilson is executed.

'Full Closure When He Dies'

A cousin of Detective Andrews, Derek Williams, was quoted as saying, "It won't be full closure until the sentence is carried out."

REASON TO BELIEVE: Detectives' Endowment Association President Mike Palladino said the fact that Ronell Wilson pleaded for his life to be spared showed that capital punishment has an impact on criminals' thinking, notwithstanding statistics to the contrary. 'If we save one or two lives, then the deterrent effect of the death penalty has worked,' Mr. Palladino said following the verdict for the murders of Detectives James Nemorin (center) and Rodney Andrews (right).

It seemed as if the victims' families were counting too much on the death of someone who, however monstrous his crime, was less a monster than a pathetic sociopath.

Detective Palladino said he believed one reason the jurors opted for the death penalty was that they felt insulted by the defense lawyers' "long-winded sob story about the guy's dysfunctional family."

But if having an addicted, neglectful and out-of-control mother and an absent father didn't excuse Mr. Wilson's crimes, it offered some explanation of how he came to the point where he could take the lives of two people in return for the $1,200 in buy money that the Detectives were carrying and an enhanced reputation among his crew of gun- and drug-dealers.

The late James T. Farrell objected when the characters he created in his ground-breaking 1930s novel "Studs Lonigan" were described by critics as children of the Chicago slums; they weren't poor, he later told a reporter, but rather suffered from what he called spiritual poverty.

That same affliction differentiates Mr. Wilson from others who grew up in similar circumstances without losing their sense that a life was valuable and so killing could never be regarded as either an affirmation or an accomplishment.

As he was taken from the courtroom, the 24-year-old Mr. Wilson stuck out his tongue at the victims' families. This pre-adolescent gesture made no sense, since he hadn't gotten away with anything. In a way, though, it underscored the tragedy of that night four years ago when two brave undercover Detectives were dispatched by someone whose development was too arrested to have any idea of how to be truly tough.

Detective Palladino said he believed Mr. Wilson's character, or lack of it, was clear to the jurors long before he stuck his tongue out. Explaining why they had gone against the overwhelming tendency of juries in death penalty cases in New York over the past 50 years to sentence the convicted to life without parole, he remarked, "I think it was a combination of the severity of the crime itself, the government doing an excellent job meeting all the necessary criteria under the statute, and his statement [to the jury] - the way he delivered it. You could see he was cold-blooded; he never looked at the jury or at any of the families."

Government-Sanctioned Vengeance

Mr. Wilson's mother, grasping for a moral code she found elusive for most of her adult life, accused the victims' families of turning into murderers; one of his attorneys, Ephraim Savitt, used the word "vengeance" to describe what drove the jury.

Detective Palladino did not discount the role that this emotion played for his members, more than a few of whom joined him in Brooklyn Federal Court during the trial and its penalty phase. "For people who put their life in harm's way every day," he said, "I think the death penalty is kind of a quid pro quo. I think that's kind of the knee-jerk reaction by the members. The death penalty serves as a form of punishment more than justice.

"From my own point of view," he continued, "I'm intrigued by the prospect that the death penalty is a deterrent to the killing of law-enforcement officers."

He was reminded of statistics that suggest the reverse is true. Shortly after George Pataki, running on a pledge to restore capital punishment in New York State, defeated Mario Cuomo's bid for a fourth term as Governor in 1994, USA Today reported that the murder rate across the country in 1993 had on average been 56 percent higher in states that used capital punishment.

Mr. Palladino countered by noting that Mr. Wilson only emerged from his affectless shell to read a statement that professed to be sorry at the pain he had caused the Detectives' families in an attempt to convince the jury to give him life without parole.

"Here's a remorseless, cold-blooded killer who made a statement for one reason: he's afraid to die," the DEA president said.

A Belated Reaction

That fear did not come, however, until well after Mr. Wilson committed the murders, just as those who commit suicide out of shame about criminal activities rarely do so until they're caught or about to be. Mr. Wilson's initial response to shooting the two Detectives in the head and then dumping their bodies on a Staten Island street was to write rap lyrics boasting about the killings and his fearlessness.

No one has spoken more eloquently against the death penalty than Mr. Cuomo. The price he sometimes paid for his stand on the issue bracketed his political career: before being unseated by Mr. Pataki, his only electoral defeat had come 30 years ago, when Ed Koch defeated him in the race for Mayor based largely on his call for the restoration of capital punishment here.

Mr. Cuomo explained his opposition this way: "I have concluded that the death penalty is wrong, that it lowers us all, that it is a surrender to the worst in us, that it uses a power, the official power to kill by execution, which has never elevated a society, never brought back a life, never inspired anything but hate."

'Longing for Safer World'

But he also acknowledged a few years ago why it appealed to many other people: capital punishment embodied "not just a lust for revenge but a desperate expression of a longing for a safer world, a world free of fear."

"I will concede," Mr. Palladino said, "that the death penalty is an emotionally charged issue, and the [moral and practical] arguments can always be tailored to what your position is." But there is no parallel, he contended, between the government taking a life and the heinous crimes that prompt it to consider such action.

One of Mr. Pataki's first acts upon taking office in 1995 was to push through legislation restoring capital punishment in New York State. The law was found by the State Court of Appeals to be constitutionally defective three years ago, which was why the Bush Administration stepped in to have the Wilson case transferred to Federal jurisdiction. Mr. Wilson's offer prior to the trial to plead guilty in return for a sentence of life in prison without parole was rejected by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, a gamble of significant expense and prosecutorial resources that was rewarded when the jury voted for death.

Won't Bring Them Back

But will the families really benefit? Rose Nemorin spoke movingly during the penalty phase of the trial about what she and her children lost with the murder of her husband. However cathartic last week's verdict may have been, neither the decision nor the actual execution - if and when it occurs - will truly compensate for their loss.

When I was 21, a close friend of mine was shot to death, while sitting in a car, by an acquaintance who owed him money, and then had his body dumped, in that case on a beach in the Rockaways.

His father subsequently mentioned that a friend of his from our Brooklyn neighborhood had assured him that the murderer would be taken care of by people he knew. As far as I know, though, the guy served out a prison sentence that was far shorter than it should have been and eventually returned to the streets. My friend's father rarely spoke of the murder after that, but I don't think he could have remained silent had his request for revenge been honored. The fate of the killer never loomed as large for him as the loss of his son.

As Permanent As Death

Eighteen years later, my friend's mother died of cancer in her 70s. When I paid a condolence call, his father told me he was convinced that her death was attributable to what happened to their son. It didn't matter that there was no medical evidence to support this; the fact that he believed it drove home to me how traumatic and permanent an effect a murder that defies comprehension can have on a victim's family.

"Closure can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people," Detective Palladino said. "For some of them, it means they've reached a comfort level where they can accept everything that has happened and move on from there. They feel they've gotten as much out of the justice system as they can get."

He paused, then added, "Let's face it: there's no way in the world that void can be filled."