Slain groom’s family vows to fight — in court

updated 5:54 p.m. ET April 26, 2008

NEW YORK - The family of an unarmed man killed in a hail of police gunfire on his wedding day pledged Saturday to continue its fight to have someone held accountable for his death, a day after a judge acquitted three officers in the slaying.

"I'm still praying for justice, because it's not over. It's far from over. It's just starting," Sean Bell's fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell, told supporters at a rally in Manhattan's Harlem neighborhood. "Every protest, every march, every rally, I'm going to be right up front."

Bell, 23, was killed and two friends wounded in a 50-shot barrage outside a Queens strip club hours before his wedding.

Hundreds of angry people marched through Harlem after the Rev. Al Sharpton promised to "close this city down" to protest the acquittals of three police detectives.

"We strategically know how to stop the city so people stand still and realize that you do not have the right to shoot down unarmed, innocent civilians," Sharpton told an overflow crowd of several hundred people at his National Action Network office in the historically black Manhattan neighborhood. "This city is going to deal with the blood of Sean Bell."

He joined Bell's family in the 20-block march 20-block march down Malcolm X Boulevard and then across 125th Street, Harlem's main business thoroughfare, where some bystanders yelled out "Kill the police!"

Fifty of the marchers carried white placards bearing big black numbers for each of the police bullets fired at Bell and his friends.

Sharpton urged people to return for a meeting this week "to plan the day that we will close this city down" with the kind of "massive civil disobedience" once led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

"They never accused Sean Bell of doing anything. Then why is he dead?" Sharpton said, his voice roaring with anger. Authorities "have shown now that they will not hold police accountable. Well, guess what? If you won't, we will!"

"Shut it down! Shut it down!" the crowd chanted, standing up and applauding wildly.

One of Bell's companions, Joseph Guzman, also spoke briefly, saying: "We've got a long fight."

Legal battles just a beginning
Legal experts said Bell's family faces an uphill fight in their attempt to have the officers charged with federal civil rights violations and might have to settle for battling them in civil court, where the city, not the officers, would be responsible for paying off any multimillion-dollar verdict.

Peter J. Neufeld, an attorney who represented police torture victim Abner Louima, said he believed the chances that the U.S. attorney's office would bring federal charges in the case were "close to zero," judging by Justice Department decisions in past police shootings.

While federal prosecutors have been willing to prosecute police officers for civil rights violations before, most famously in the case of Los Angeles brutality victim Rodney King, they have hesitated to take on cases in which officers have had to make a quick decision whether to open fire on a person they perceived to be dangerous.

No civil rights charges were brought in the 1999 case of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant shot to death in the vestibule of a Bronx apartment building by officers who mistook his wallet for a gun. They also were not brought in the case of Eleanor Bumpurs, a mentally ill, 66-year-old black woman who was killed by two shotgun blasts fired by a police officer evicting her from her apartment in the Bronx in 1984.

"The split-second nature of the decision to shoot," Neufeld said, makes it difficult for prosecutors to argue that the officers knowingly acted to deprive someone of a constitutional right.

Slide show   Emotional reaction Supporters react to the acquittal of the detectives who shot and killed Sean Bell. more photos

Bell's family and the two survivors of the shooting may have better luck, though, with their lawsuit against the city. His companions that night were  Guzman and Trent Benefield.

New York has a long history of multimillion-dollar payouts as a result of lawsuits brought by the families of people slain or beaten by police, including many settlements in cases where the officers were acquitted of criminal responsibility.

Even if the case goes to trial in civil court, Bell's family is in a good position for a victory, said Bob Conason, an attorney who helped Diallo's mother wrest a $3 million settlement from the city.

"This certainly doesn't kill the civil case," Conason said of Friday's acquittal.

"Yes, they will have to try the case over again," he said, but the standard for proving that the officers used excessive force is much lower in a civil court. "We had the exact same thing in Diallo, and we were not that concerned about winning the civil case," even after the initial verdicts of not guilty, Conason said.

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