After Two Years of Sparring, Trial of Former Nets Star Is Scheduled to Begin

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January 11, 2004
After Two Years of Sparring, Trial of Former Nets Star Is Scheduled to Begin
By ROBERT HANLEY

fter their post-midnight tour of Jayson Williams's 65-acre estate and lavish home, eight guests stood near Mr. Williams's gun cabinet in his bedroom. It held five shotguns and a rifle, four of them loaded.

It was shortly after 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 14, 2002. Mr. Williams, a 35-year-old multimillionaire and former star basketball player with the New Jersey Nets, took out a double-barrel 12-gauge shotgun to show his visitors — four members of the Harlem Globetrotters, three of his friends and a limousine driver, Costas Christofi, 55.

Mr. Williams told the guests at his Alexandria Township, N.J., home to watch what he was going to do with the shotgun, saying that he was a "professional," Steven C. Lember, the first assistant prosecutor of Hunterdon County, wrote in a court brief in October 2002. Mr. Williams opened the weapon, leaving its barrels and stock in an inverted V position.

Seconds later, with the gun pointed toward Mr. Christofi, Mr. Williams cursed at him and jerked the weapon, snapping the barrels closed, Mr. Lember wrote. As the barrels shut, the gun fired. Twelve pellets tore into the side of Mr. Christofi's chest. In minutes, he was dead.

Was Mr. Williams's action a crime, showing "extreme indifference to the value of human life," as the authorities have charged? Or was the shooting a "tragic and bizarre" accident, as Mr. Williams's lawyers have argued for months? Those are the pivotal questions a jury will face in Mr. Williams's trial, which, after nearly two years of investigation and pretrial sparring, is about to start.

On Tuesday, in Somerville, the seat of Somerset County in central New Jersey, jury selection is scheduled to begin. The trial judge, Edward M. Coleman of New Jersey Superior Court, transferred the case there last October from neighboring Hunterdon County, where Mr. Williams and his wife, Tanya, live. Defense lawyers argued that intense publicity had convinced many Hunterdon residents that Mr. Williams was guilty.

Mr. Williams's lawyers — Joseph A. Hayden and William R. Martin — have retained Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, a jury consultant who helped the defense select a jury in O. J. Simpson's murder trial.

The selection is expected to take about a month. Judge Coleman has scheduled opening statements and the start of testimony for Feb. 1, with the trial expected to last about two months.

In the months since the shooting, Mr. Williams has paid Mr. Christofi's brother and sister $2.75 million to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit they had filed in civil court. He also told them in a letter that the shooting was an unfortunate accident and that he regularly prayed for forgiveness.

Acquaintances say Mr. Williams continues to work each day in a home-building company he owns with his father, Elijah, who recently suffered a stroke. They say that he also donates, through his foundation, to favorite charities, including basketball and other programs for needy children, and that he takes delight in his year-old daughter.

The most serious charge against Mr. Williams is aggravated manslaughter, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 30 years. The indictment includes an alternate, less serious homicide charge — manslaughter — with a 10-year maximum sentence. The legal standard for manslaughter is causing a death through recklessness — a far less rigorous standard to prove than aggravated manslaughter's standard of "extreme indifference to the value of human life."

Mr. Williams also faces two weapons charges that carry combined maximum sentences of 11 1/2 years.

In addition, he faces four charges of covering up his involvement in the shooting, including tampering with witnesses and evidence. Those charges could result in a total maximum sentence of 13 years.

Initially, all seven witnesses told the police that they had been downstairs, playing pool, and that Mr. Christofi had tried to commit suicide while alone in the master bedroom, Mr. Lember has said.

At 2:54 a.m., about 15 minutes after the shooting, Mr. Williams's brother, Victor, called 911 and told the authorities that Mr. Christofi had shot himself. Victor Williams has said he was asleep in the house when his brother arrived with his guests.

Mr. Lember said that two friends initially charged with helping in the cover-up have since admitted doing so and are to testify against Mr. Williams under plea deals. One, Kent Culuko, who played on a lacrosse team owned by Mr. Williams, said he wiped Mr. Williams's fingerprints from the shotgun, the prosecutor said. The other, John Gordnick, who once operated basketball camps for Mr. Williams, admitted burying the clothes Mr. Williams wore at the time of the shooting, according to Mr. Lember.

During a court hearing last September, Mr. Martin, one of Mr. Williams's lawyers, suggested that he planned to use descriptions of his client's agitated emotional state immediately after the shooting to defend the cover-up charges. Mr. Martin said Mr. Williams had been in a "state of shock" after the shooting.

In the hours before the shooting, Mr. Williams and his friends attended a Globetrotters game in Bethlehem, Pa. Then they went to a restaurant near the Williams estate for a late-night dinner and drinks. Mr. Christofi had been hired as a chauffeur to drive four of the Globetrotters to the restaurant.

At one point during the dinner, Mr. Williams swore at Mr. Christofi, the brief said. When the chauffeur got up to leave, Mr. Williams told him he had only been joking. Eventually, Mr. Christofi drove some of the guests to the Williams mansion and toured it with them.

In late April 2002, a grand jury added the more serious charge of aggravated manslaughter to the initial charge of simple manslaughter after Mr. Culuko and one of the Globetrotters, Benoit Benjamin, once a Nets teammate of Mr. Williams's, changed their accounts and implicated Mr. Williams, Mr. Lember's brief said. It quoted them as telling detectives that Mr. Williams had cursed Mr. Christofi while handling the shotgun and pointed it toward him as he snapped the barrels closed.

Mr. Lember has said that Mr. Culuko's and Mr. Benjamin's descriptions were "very important" factors in the prosecution's belief that Mr. Williams showed "extreme indifference to the value of human life" and that he had committed aggravated manslaughter.

In a defense brief filed in November 2002, Mr. Martin and Mr. Hayden said that several of the men in the bedroom told detectives that the shooting had been accidental and that Mr. Williams was distraught and remorseful immediately afterward. Mr. Benjamin, one of the Globetrotters, was quoted as calling the shooting a "terrible horrible accident." Kent Culuko called it "a 100 percent accident," the brief said.

The document described how another Globetrotter, Howard Paul Gaffney, told detectives that Mr. Williams was "crushed" by the shooting. Mr. Culuko's brother, Craig, another witnesses, was quoted as saying that Mr. Williams began crying after Mr. Christofi was shot and "dove" toward his body, saying, "Oh, my God . . . We gotta get help."

Last week, a spokeswoman for the defense team, Judy Smith, said that the lawyers had not yet decided whether Mr. Williams would testify in his own behalf. "We'll decide after the prosecutor presents its case," she said.

[surfin joe]

hey whatever happened to Rae Carruth?

[Bostongambler]

Joe he is spending his days making little rocks out of big ones..
And his nights he is bedding down with Bubba...[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-shocked.gif[/img]

[big action]

Appeal on hold, awaiting transcripts

Ten months after his trial ended, Rae Carruth can't challenge his conviction or sentence because transcripts of the three-month trial have not yet been completed. Defense lawyer David Rudolf petitioned an appeals court requesting that the court reporter refuse new work so the transcripts can be done in 30 days.

Rae Carruth is sentenced to 19 to 24 years in prison after a jury that found him not guilty of murder convicted the former Carolina Panther of conspiracy and other charges stemming from the fatal drive-by shooting of his pregnant girlfriend, Cherica Adams.

Co-defendant Michael Kennedy, wheelman during the drive-by shooting of Adams, pleads guilty to second-degree murder and is sentenced to 12 to 14 years in prison.