NY judge will allow statements by stabbing suspect in Ecuadorean’s death at trial

NY judge OKs hate crime suspect’s comment at trial

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. — A jury will be permitted to hear testimony that a New York teenager admitted to police moments after the fatal knifing of an Ecuadorean immigrant that he was responsible, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Jeffrey Conroy, 19, is the only one of seven teenagers charged with murder in the November 2008 stabbing of Marcelo Lucero near the Patchogue train station on Long Island. Two other teenagers have pleaded guilty to assault as a hate crime and other charges and have agreed to testify against their co-defendants.

Conroy and four others are awaiting trial; all have pleaded not guilty. Conroy’s trial is expected to start sometime in March.

The killing shone a national spotlight on the area’s race relations; prosecutors contend Lucero’s death was the culmination of an ongoing campaign that targeted Hispanic immigrants for violence. Since the killing, the U.S. Justice Department has said it is investigating hate crimes in Suffolk County and police response to them.

The Southern Poverty Law Center issued a report in September titled “Climate of Fear; Latino Immigrants in Suffolk County,” cataloguing a litany of anti-immigrant attacks dating back a decade.

State Supreme Court Justice Robert Doyle, in a Feb. 11 ruling released by prosecutors on Tuesday, said Conroy’s comment to police only minutes after the attack that “I stabbed him” will be permitted at Conroy’s trial. Doyle ruled that Conroy blurted out the admission while being searched for a knife and that “traditional Miranda warnings were not required.”

Conroy and his six friends were arrested within minutes of the midnight stabbing, only blocks away from where Lucero was killed. Defense attorney William Keahon did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.

Doyle also ruled that defendant Kevin Shea’s comments to detectives following the stabbing were admissible at trial. Shea’s attorney did not immediately return a call for comment.

The two defendants who have already pleaded guilty admitted participating in other attacks on Hispanics, confessing they and their accomplices frequently used racial epithets when confronting victims. In one instance, a Hispanic man was shot with a BB gun.

Lucero, 37, came to the United States when he was 21. He was walking with a friend when they were confronted by a group of teens. His friend fled, but Lucero was surrounded, prosecutors say. He tried to fight back, flailing at the assailants with his belt before being fatally stabbed.