A man facing the death penalty for murdering two NYPD officers lost his bid to prevent jurors from hearing details about his membership in the notorious Bloods street gang.
A defense attorney wanted to ban expert testimony about the Bloods during a special federal trial where jurors will decide whether Ronell Wilson, 30, should be executed by lethal injection or spend the rest of his life in prison for the execution-style slaying of the two detectives.
“Mr. Wilson has a First Amendment right of free association, no matter how reprehensible a group may appear to others,” defense attorney David Stern had written.
Prosecutors argued it’s essential for jurors to learn about Wilson’s gang involvement, because it helps demonstrate that if he’s not condemned to death he may pose a continuing danger to prison guards or other inmates behind bars.
Last year, Wilson was involved in a prison incident in which he refused to leave a recreation area and then flashed Bloods gang signs and made incendiary gang remarks to corrections officers, prosecutors say. Eventually, a special team of officers was called in to remove him.
Wilson has already been convicted of murdering NYPD detectives Rodney Andrews and James Nemorin during an undercover gun buy-and-bust operation on Staten Island in 2003, so the special trial in June will focus solely on what punishment he should face.
In 2007, Wilson was sentenced to death — after a federal jury found him guilty of murdering the detectives — making him the city’s first federal defendant to receive a death sentence since 1954.but an appeals court reversed that death sentence on procedural grounds in 2010.