Opinion ID: 2321939
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Buttler's Trial

Text: At Buttler's trial, Heather Ballman, Janyce Watkins, and Michael Kreybig gave essentially the same testimony they gave at Gillispie's trial. As mentioned above, Sol Cepero did not testify at Buttler's trial. Mercer's testimony during Buttler's trial was also similar to his testimony at Gillispie's trial. [5] He explained in more detail, however, a conversation he had with his co-conspirators after the failed robbery in the Bronx: Q: What conversations transpired when you got in the car? A: [Buttler] started going off. Yo, listen, manyou know, telling [Gillispie], Why you shoot the place up? You know, so [Gillispie] was blaming me saying I let the guy come up and approach him. . . . A: Someone of the guys I think he thinks tried to lunge for his gun, and that's why he started shooting. In Buttler's trial, the other-crimes testimony was elicited from the ballistic expert, Detective Barry, in the same manner as in Gillispie's trial. However, the following question was also asked by the prosecutor: Q: Okay. Now, if I were to tell you the jury has already heard from Detective Mojica that that was the bullet that literally fell out of one of the victims at the barbershop, could you tell us, did you examine that? A: Yes I did. However, that bullet did not have sufficient markings on it to indicate [whether] it was fired from [the] same gun or not. The testimony of Detective Mojica, the responding officer at the Bronx barbershop shooting, was more abbreviated during Buttler's trial because there was no confession to introduce. But the other-crimes testimony was largely the same. Detective Mojica again testified as to the scene when he arrived at the barbershop: Q: Can you describe the scene for us when you arrived there, detective? A: Wow. There were several uniformed officers on the scene. There was an ambulance at the location. There were several people shot. . . . And the most severe person, Christopher [Folks], who was shot, was being treated by the EMS. Q: Okay. And how many times was he shot, detective? A: Four times. When I arrived to the scene, they were bringing him out on the stretcher. His eyes were rolling back. His chest was open, so you saw a bunch ofyou could see actually the entrance wounds. At that time, the uniformed officer, the first uniformed officer on the scene, secured the location. And there was another ambulance arriving at the same time, soto treat the other people who were shot. Mojica continued to explain how he processed the ballistics evidence at the scene. The copper-round was again addressed: A: It's one copper round that when Mr. [Folks] was being treated by EMS, they were pulling him out of the store, and the store, the glass front, they were pulling him out. He was on a stretcher, and they hit the sidewalk. So he comes down on the sidewalk, and then they have to pick him up to put him inside the ambulance. And when they put him inside the ambulance and they lifted him up on the gurney, I don't know how, but it falls out of his body, this copper round. Q: You saw that happen? A: I picked it up.