“He’s earned the ultimate punishment.”
Federal prosecutors urged jurors to end Ronell Wilson’s life at the openings in his re-sentencing trial today, casting the convicted cop killer as a remorseless, unrepentant killer who doesn’t deserve to continue breathing.
“In a word, the defendant’s crimes in this case are inexcusable,” thundered Assistant U.S. Attorney James McGovern during his opening statement in Brooklyn federal court today. “Borne out of free will and choice, for his crimes he has earned the ultimate punishment.”
Wilson was convicted in 2006 of murdering undercover NYPD detectives James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews during a gun buy-and-bust sting on Staten Island. He was later sentenced to death but averted lethal injection after an appeals court tossed the sentence due to a prosecutor’s misstep.
Dressed in a white dress shirt and wearing glasses, Wilson looked on stoically as McGovern reviewed the details of the horrific murder and argued that Wilson’s prison celebrity has afforded him a perverse jailhouse power.
“This defendant has absolutely no remorse whatsoever,” McGovern told a jury of five women and seven men. “He has not a single drop of remorse. If anything you will see how this defendant has benfitted from his crimes.”
Defense attorney Richard Jasper Jr. lobbied for jurors to spare the killer’s life and cited his hellish childhood as grounds for mercy.
“The people who raised this defendant shaped and misshaped his soul,” he said. “He didn’t have a mother who baked cookies – she was baing crack.”