Metro

Mistrial for ex-con who allegedly shot his parole officer

The trial of a twisted Brooklyn ex-con who allegedly shot his parole officer — and admitted that the DA had a slam-dunk case against him — was tossed today on a technicality “the size of a thumbnail.”

Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Wayne Ozzi declared a mistrial after the prosecution had only given the defense a tiny photo of a fingerprint taken from the .9mm that Robert “Poison’’ Morales allegedly used to wound parole officer Samuel Salters in 2010, sources said.

The photo was “the size of a thumbnail,’’ griped a source close to the case.

Morales’ lawyer needed a digital copy to be able to blow it up to analyze it properly, the source said.

“I want my client to have a fair trial, which includes him being given the evidence that is required by law to be turned over to us,” said his lawyer, Kenneth Perry.

But a law-enforcement source said the fingerprint was inconsequential to the case, anyway, because it didn’t include enough ridges to try to compare to Morales’ for a match.

“They couldn’t match that print to anybody. It’s not significant to the case at all,’’ the source said.

The tiny hardcopy of the print was entered into evidence; a digital version never was.

The judge KO’d the trial as it entered its eighth day and neared summations.

Prosecutors will retry Morales, who had been on parole after serving 23 years for setting a fire over a $2 debt that killed an 8-year-old boy in 1979.

“We have a solid case,” said DA spokesman Jerry Schmetterer.

A hearing to set a new trial date is Aug. 23. Morales remains remanded.

The court proceeding had been rife with drama from the start.

Perry and prosecutor Lewis Lieberman squabbled nearly daily about the turning over of evidence and other issues, including their alleged petty behavior toward each other.

At one point, both lawyers complained to the judge about the other sighing and rolling his eyes when he was speaking.

“The whole thing was kind of a circus,” said juror Harold Plaut, an actor whose own antics held up the trial’s first day for five hours so he could audition, unsuccessfully, for TV’s “Law & Order.”

Morales, 52, had allegedly shot Salters in the shoulder before a scheduled parole meeting at Salters’ downtown Brooklyn office.

The tough ex-con had told investigators the night of the attack that the shooting “was fate.”

He complained that Salters, 52, had been treating him like a child — forcing him to report to the office once a week — and that he was on his way to one of their sessions when he saw another man drop the gun in a trash can and he retrieved it.

“[Salters] was riding my back, and the opportunity presented itself, and I took it,” Morales said in a taped confession.

“It’s a shut case for you. You don’t got to do no homework, no nothing. It’s a done deal,” Morales calmly added to the authorities.

“I found that gun for a reason. It was like God said, ‘Here, step to the plate, see what you’re going to do.’ ”