Testimony in NJ schoolyard killing trial ends with assessment of defendant’s mental state

Testimony concludes in NJ schoolyard killing trial

NEWARK, N.J. — Testimony concluded Tuesday in the first trial stemming from the 2007 murders of three friends in a Newark schoolyard, a crime that made national headlines as a symbol of lawlessness in New Jersey’s largest city and spurred a wave of anti-crime measures.

Attorneys were scheduled to make their closing arguments Wednesday morning.

The final two witnesses focused on the mental state of Rodolfo Godinez, a 26-year-old Nicaraguan national who is the first of six defendants to be tried for the brutal attacks. Their accounts provided a comparatively sedate conclusion for a jury that over three weeks had heard testimony from a survivor of the attacks and viewed autopsy photos of the victims, who were shot to death execution-style.

Killed on the night of Aug. 4, 2007, were Dashon Harvey and Iofemi Hightower, both 20, and Terrance Aeriel, 18. Only one survived: A woman, then 19, who was shot in the head and slashed with a machete. The Associated Press is not identifying her because two other defendants were charged with sexual assault.

Harvey, Aeriel and the 19-year-old attended Delaware State University. Hightower, who had gone to her high school prom with Aeriel, had planned to attend Delaware State for the fall semester.

During the trial, Godinez was portrayed by prosecutors as a gang member who orchestrated the attacks and by his defense attorney as a mentally challenged wannabe who was present but didn’t participate except to collect the victims’ wallets.

Ultimately, Godinez’s own words could sway the jury more than the physical evidence, which only tied him through DNA to a beer bottle found at the scene and not to the gun and machete used in the attacks.

In a videotaped statement given to authorities in Maryland after his arrest and played for the jury, Godinez described the attacks in detail. Later in the trial, a former jail acquaintance testified that Godinez told him he regretted ordering the attacks on the friends. Godinez did not testify at the trial.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker has termed the slayings a breaking point for a city where the murder rate had spiked by 50 percent at mid-decade.

In short order, Newark jump-started anti-crime efforts that included installing surveillance cameras and a gunshot detection system in dangerous neighborhoods, instituting penalties for gun owners who fail to report lost or stolen weapons and setting up an agreement to give New Jersey municipalities access to a federal gun-tracing database.

By the end of 2008, Newark’s murder rate had dropped by nearly 40 percent from two years earlier, though it rose slightly last year.