Jury Convicts Brick Attack Defendant

N E W   Y O R K, Nov. 30 , 2000 -- — A street-hustling crack user with a lengthycriminal record was convicted Wednesday on charges of shattering aTexas woman’s skull with a six-pound brick on a mid-Manhattanstreet.

After two and-a-half days of deliberations and two notes declaring theywere deadlocked, the jury of 10 men and two women convicted ParisDrake, 37, of first-degree assault and criminal possession of aweapon.

Drake, who was acquitted of attempted murder in the attack,faces up to 25 years in prison when state Supreme Court JusticeLaura Visitacion-Lewis sentences him on Dec 13. He will likely facea minimum sentence of 12½ years.

Drake was accused of bashing Nicole Barrett, 28, in the headwith a paving brick on 42nd Street at Madison Avenue — a block fromGrand Central Terminal — on Nov. 16, 1999. According to trialtestimony, she was near death when hospitalized.

Barrett, who has no memory of the attack, attended the trialdaily with her mother, Sharon. They left after the verdict wasdelivered without making a comment.

One juror, who withheld his name, said reaching the verdict wasdifficult. “We didn’t want to send an innocent person to jail,”he said. “It was a hard decision” but continuous review of theevidence left them with no believable suspects but Drake, he said.

Shocked at the Verdict

Drake’s lawyer, Louis A. Zayas, said his client was “shocked”upon being found guilty of the two charges. Zayas had said hisclient was at his girlfriend’s Bronx apartment at the time of theattack and suggested that Drake had been a victim of mistakenidentity.

“He said, ‘I can’t believe this. How can they convict me when Ididn’t do this?’” Zayas quoted Drake.

The lawyer called the verdict “a tremendous miscarriage ofjustice, not consistent with the evidence.” He said he presentedseven witnesses to the attack who either could not identify Drakeor had identified someone else.

“I think the jury compromised,” Zayas said, explaining why hebelieved they returned a split verdict after twice reporting theywere deadlocked.

“They were coerced into coming back with a verdict,” Zayassaid, but he would not say how he thought the jurors were coerced.

Appeal Certain

He said an appeal on Drake’s behalf “is as certain as there isdaylight tomorrow.” One ground for appeal, Zayas said, was what hecalled improper testimony from the prosecution’s key eyewitness,Laura Weiner.

The lawyer said the judge had told Weiner, who is a lawyer andan amateur artist, to refrain from saying that she helped policecreate the sketch of the assailant on the “wanted” poster thatwas circulated after the attack.

During her testimony, Weiner mentioned twice that she had helpedpolice, Zayas said. He said this was an attempt to bolster thecredibility of her identification testimony. Zayas said the judgerejected his subsequent motions for a mistrial.

Zayas said he also has ground for an appeal because theprosecution “used as witnesses two jailhouse snitches whosetestimony was not corroborated in any way — not by other witnessesor documents or anything.”

Barrett, who now lives in Athens, Texas, with her mother, wasliving in New York when she was attacked. She had been in the cityabout a year, and planned to study and work in interior design.

The attack left Barrett with some cognitive and physicalproblems and with a metal plate over a hole in her skull. Shetestified that she gets distracted easily and sometimes has pain inthe limbs on her left side.