He’s sorry for their loss, but not for driving away.
The postal driver accused of leaving the scene of a fatal accident in the death of lawyer Marilyn Dershowitz took the stand in his own defense in Manhattan Supreme Court today, extending his sympathies to the victim’s family for the first time — but standing by his decision to drive off.
“First and foremost, I want to say to the Dershowitz family, I’m sorry for your loss,” Ian Clement announced from the witness stand of Manhattan Supreme Court, looking straight into the audience at the victim’s husband.
The husband, Nathan Dershowitz — brother of noted Dream Team lawyer Alan Dershowitz and himself a lawyer — made no reaction.
Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor who famously helped win an acquittal for OJ Simpson and a conviction reversal for Claus von Bulow, has not attended the week-long trial, but hardly a day has gone by that his name has not been invoked.
Today, defense lawyer John Arlia told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ruth Pickholtz that in summations Wednesday he intends to argue that the Manhattan DA’s office succumbed to pressure from the powerful legal family in prosecuting a “specious” leaving-the-scene case.
Prosecutors have countered that they’ve done no such bowing. In fact, they argue, the Dershowitz family tried — and failed — in repeated phone calls to pressure the DA’s Office into pressing even more serious vehicular homicide charges against Clement, who is not being blamed for accident itself.
Clement, a 64-year-old father of two, has steadfastly insisted that he had no idea he had run over the 68-year-old woman and her bicycle as they came in contact on a stretch of W. 29th Street outside a busy, truck-jammed U.S. Postal Service depot.
Still, he felt “a bump,” and heard the honking of car horns, leading him to pull his seven-ton postal truck to the side, stop, and put on his hazard lights, an account substantiated by surveillance video.
“I felt a bump, and horns honking,” he testified, his voice carrying the accent of his native Jamaica as he described the tragic events just after 12 noon on a July Saturday last year.
“I slowed, checked my mirrors, and noticed that there were cars stopped,” he said, under direct examination by his lawyer.
He never saw the bicyclist, either upright to his side or fallen afterward, he insisted. Marilyn Dershowitz, a 68-year-old mediation lawyer, had suffered mortal injuries to her head and torso, and was dying on the pavement.
Still, Clement testified, he pulled over, “Because I wasn’t sure that I had been involved in an accident… I wasn’t sure if I was involved.”
Asked what he was waiting for, as he stood parked for more than two minutes near 10th Avenue, Clement answered, “Someone to come and say something.”
When no one did, he drove off, believing he was uninvolved, he explained.
In cross examining Clement, assistant district attorney Erin LaFarge walked the driver through a list of things he’d run over in his 20 years of driving postal vehicles, including pot holes and garbage pail lids, each also producing a “bump.” But none of these bumps were impressive enough to cause him to pull over and put on his hazard lights, he admitted.
The bump that was Marilyn Dershowitz and her bicycle was a bump like no other, the prosecutor made Clement concede.
“You don’t pull your truck over every time you feel a bump, or hear a horn honking, right?” the prosecutor asked. “No,” Clement agreed. “You look in your mirror and you keep driving, right? You don’t pull over,” she continued. “I hear honking all the time, right,” Clement agreed. “You keep driving, right?” she asked. “Right,” he responded.
Jurors are expected to begin deliberations by day’s end Wednesday. To find Clement guilty under the state’s vehicle and traffic law, jurors must agree with prosecutors that Clement drove off despite either knowing or having cause to know that personal injury had been caused to another person.