Last Word: The 50 shot case

NEW YORK – It's cases like this one that makes me glad to be a lawyer because, whatever the emotions of the Sean Bell trial, as lawyers we look at the evidence and only the evidence.

Jami Floyd has the last word on Sean Bell.

Of course, sympathies and emotions have run high ever since Sean Bell was killed after his bachelor party and on the morning of his wedding. To many police officers, the accused cops have been made scapegoats merely to placate an angry public. That’s not the case. Nor is it the case that the detectives are cold-blooded killers.

No, the only question in this case was whether they were criminally reckless in firing on Bell and his friends - beyond a reasonable doubt. And the fact that the cops fired 50 times is not itself grounds for conviction. It’s just part of what the judge had to consider.

In the end, Judge Arthur Cooperman's duty was not to second-guess the cops, not to place the victim on trial. His job was to subject all the testimony to the intense scrutiny justice requires. To ascertain what really happened and why. And then, to apply the law. And that's what he did, like it or not.

That's the Last Word.

– Jami Floyd, In Session anchor