About the Bell Verdict

The verdict in the Sean Bell case hinged on credibility and whether the prosecution witnesses against the three Detectives charged in the fatal shooting had enough of it to suggest that the cops were guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

They did not. The problems with those witnesses' testimony, coupled with what Dets. Gescard Isnora, Michael Oliver and Marc Cooper told the grand jury that produced the indictments, argued more powerfully that the cops were justified - however mistaken they turned out to be in believing Mr. Bell or his companions had a gun - in taking the actions that they did on a desolate street in South Jamaica 17 months ago.

The one respect in which Queens Supreme Court Justice Arthur Cooperman seemed to depart from a dispassionate interpretation of the law and the facts before him in explaining his ruling was when he questioned why Mr. Bell and his friends decided to hold his bachelor party at such a disreputable place as Club Kalua. It may have been a dubious choice, but young men - and some not so young - make such choices regularly, often for less-celebratory occasions. The clubs are just as likely to be found in prosperous neighborhoods from the Upper East Side to Chelsea, and if the settings seem less dingy, the activities conducted on the premises are often just as tawdry.

In Mr. Bell's case, however, Kalua's notoriety prompted the presence of undercover cops there that night searching for additional violations that might finally shut it down. This combined with several questionable decisions on his part and that of his companions to create circumstances that wound up in a tragedy.

He drank to excess - Mr. Bell was later found to have a blood-alcohol level nearly twice that for being legally drunk. He engaged in a loud argument with a stranger named Fabio Coicou outside the club, and one of his friends, Joseph Guzman, apparently took note of Mr. Coicou posturing as if he was armed and made a threat to get his own gun. And then, in his intoxicated state, Mr. Bell drove his car into Detective Isnora, then into an unmarked minivan carrying two other cops and then, after putting the car in reverse, sought to drive through them, producing the fatal fusillade of 50 bullets that caused his death and serious wounds to Mr. Guzman and the other passenger, Trent Benefield.

In the aftermath of the verdict, Mr. Bell's father responded, understandably, with anger, and his supporters shouted that it was a miscarriage of justice - a view echoed even by some columnists who normally show better judgment.

Justice Cooperman, in the first hint as to how he would rule, said early in his oral verdict that "carelessness and incompetence are not standards to be applied here unless the conduct rises to criminal acts." He was clearly referring to the overall police response to the situation, and whether Detective Oliver violated NYPD guidelines by reloading his gun and firing a second round of bullets without taking longer to assess the situation and whether the cops were actually being fired upon.

Those are matters that will be decided in internal proceedings by the Police Department. But the decision by the Queens District Attorney's Office to have the cops' grand jury testimony read in court allowed their attorneys to get their versions of events out without having to risk their being tripped up under cross-examination.

The prosecution's witnesses were not so fortunate, and the inconsistencies and contradictions - sometimes of their own previous statements - went a long way to undermine the case against the Detectives.

Mr. Benefield's changed testimony from his original statements, and remarks he had made at the hospital after he was shot that indicated long-running problems with substance abuse, undercut his credibility.

Mr. Guzman was more self-assured and less-muddled during his direct testimony, but under probing and often-heated cross-examination by the Detectives' lawyers he grew argumentative and belligerent. Anyone who was in the courtroom that day would be hard-pressed to believe his claim that he sought to defuse tensions with Mr. Coicou, rather than - as Detective Isnora claimed and Mr. Coicou originally told the DA before recanting - threatening to get a gun.

It didn't matter whether that threat was just bluster. At that hour of the night in that location under those circumstances, it would have been reason enough for Detective Isnora to be concerned that the elements of a drive-by shooting were beginning to come together.

We don't know for sure that Detective Isnora identified himself as a cop when he approached Mr. Bell's car, or whether Mr. Bell was lucid enough to realize he was a police officer. The collision between his car and the minivan carrying two white cops would figure to have dispelled any notions Mr. Bell had that he was being confronted by a carjacker before he drove forward that final, fatal time, but it may have happened too quickly for him to assess the situation. Then again, he may have known exactly what he was facing at that point, and the prospect that he could wind up in jail on what was supposed to be his wedding day may have spurred one final burst of recklessness.

We are unlikely to ever know. But the case presented in Justice Cooperman's courtroom offered more than enough reasonable doubt, and thus his verdict, stripped of the passions generated by the case, was absolutely logical and correct.