Ronell Wilson, convicted of killing two NYPD detectives, spared death penalty by federal court

 

A merciless thug who murdered two undercover detectives on Staten Island is getting a reprieve from Death Row, infuriating the ranks of the NYPD.
A federal appeals court tossed out the death penalty against Ronell Wilson, who will be resentenced for shooting James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews in the back of their heads during a gun-buy operation that went bad.
Andrews' widow, Maryann, was so distraught she couldn't speak at a press conference to denounce the ruling.
"Nothing changes the fact that Ronell Wilson is a cold-blooded killer who executed two heroes," said former Assistant U.S. Attorney Morris Fodeman, who was on the prosecution team.
Wilson, 28, would have been the first killer put to death in a New York federal case since Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed for espionage in 1953.
A 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled that chief prosecutor Jack Smith erred in the penalty phase of the trial when he told jurors Wilson showed a lack of remorse by not just pleading guilty and by refusing to testify.
"These arguments were potent - no juror found that Wilson accepted responsibility or showed remorse, and every juror found that Wilson presented a risk of future dangerousness," the panel wrote.
The appeals panel said the Brooklyn Federal Court trial judge, Nicholas Garaufis, should have instructed the jury to ignore the prosecutor's comments.
The Brooklyn U.S. attorney's office is reviewing the decision, a spokesman said. Police officials ripped the ruling, which means a new jury will decide if Wilson deserves death by lethal injection or life in prison for the 2003 murders.
"Whatever the technicalities that led to this decision, you can't lose sight of the fact that Detectives Nemorin and Andrews were assassinated, pure and simple. ... If ever the death penalty applies, it does in these vicious killings," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
Detectives union President Michael Palladino said it would take a miracle to get a death sentence from a new jury that "will not have the luxury to see the ruthless demeanor that Ronell Wilson displayed during the trial."
Wilson's lawyer Ephraim Savitt said he hopes the feds won't seek the death penalty the second time around.
"But if they do, this time the jury is going to know there is remorse and that he's been a model prisoner with no problems of acting out," Savitt said.
During the penalty phase, Wilson read a statement in which he apologized to the victims' friends and family, but it was not subject to cross-examination.
One appeals judge cited the statement in dissenting from colleagues on whether the prosecutors' error swayed jurors.
"It sought only to draw into question the credibility of Wilson's late-in-coming expression of remorse," she wrote.
Wilson was tried in federal court because he killed the cops during a gun-trafficking bust. If he had been tried in state court, he would not have faced the death penalty.