Saint Sean Shot a Drug Dealer

Heh… Sean Bell, the saintly young man who was shot on his wedding night because he was black (if you believe him, his lawyers, every newspaper in New York and Al Sharpton) apparently (or should I say allegedly?) shot a drug dealer last year…

The legal ramifications over the claim that Sean Bell had shot a man last July are already being felt, according to experts and sources familiar with the case.

“Are you kidding? This will be in the jurors’ minds as soon as this hits the front page,” said veteran Queens defense lawyer Marvyn Kornberg. “You don’t forget something like this. For once, the pretrial publicity is going to help the defense.”

But once the trial starts, experts say, it could be difficult for defense attorneys representing the three cops charged in the Bell indictment to work it into their arguments.

“Legally, it can’t be used in the case unless the cops can show that they knew about it,” Kornberg said. “If the cop can show that he knew this guy was a shooter, that might have weighed into the decision of firing his gun.”

While this may be kept out of the trial altogether, and while the credibility of the drug dealer is definitely something we need to figure out, it is interesting that Sean Bell is not the saint everyone’s making him out to be. I have to wonder if anyone is ever going to really look into what happened that night, even during the trial, and not just hear about what a great man this guy was.

I sense a kangaroo court coming and there’s going to be some jury revenge for the Amadou Diallo verdict coming.

You just wait.