Not guilty verdict in Rosfeld trial sparks demonstrations in Downtown, East Liberty

•••

3:50 p.m.

Fodi said Rosfeld acted as the judge, jury and executioner the day he shot Rose.

The assistant district attorney wrapped up Rosfeld’s trial with a 30-minute closing argument to the jury.

Fodi said sometimes things don’t go as planned. Sometimes a teenager runs.

“Is it foolish? Yes,” he said. “Does it deserve death? No. Was it reasonable? Absolutely not.”

Fodi pulled up the widely viewed surveillance footage that captured the North Braddock drive-by shooting, pointing out the tan or gold four-door car with tinted windows and aftermarket wheels that pulled to the intersection of Jones and Baldridge avenues seconds before the gold Chevy Cruze at the center of the case pulled to the intersection.

“What do you know about the occupants of this car?” he asked, pointing to the other car, not the one with Rose and Hester inside.

Fodi said that car could easily have been mistaken for the car suspected in the drive-by shooting. It had all the descriptors, he said. What if it had been pulled over instead, he asked. Maybe the driver gets out, he said, but there’s a teenager inside as well.

“Maybe he had some weed, maybe he was just scared,” Fodi said. “He runs away and gets three shots to the back.”

He told jurors there was no way to know the culpability of anyone in any car Rosfeld pulled over.

He said escape doesn’t happen when a suspect is 30 feet away. You set up a perimeter, he said. You search and bring in K-9s. Hester didn’t get away, he said. He was apprehended later.

“That’s due process,” Fodi said. “We don’t shoot first and ask questions later. We investigate.”

Fodi pointed out inconsistencies in Rosfeld’s explanations. Rosfeld was overheard by a witness saying, “Why did he do that, why did he take that out of his pocket?” Fodi compared that to his statement to investigators indicating he’d seen the teenager raise his arm toward him.

“You can’t have it both ways,” Fodi said.

He referenced Rosfeld’s testimony that he’d still been trying to get the driver of the Cruze, Trevon Robertson, to the ground when Hester and Rose ran. Then he pulled up a witness video showing Robertson on the ground for at least 10 seconds before shots were fired.

He told jurors that Rosfeld was trained on Rose the entire time – all the shots were back to front, as testified to by the medical examiner, and each shot landed.

Fodi said Thomassey has offered up nothing but scare tactics, waving around the guns from the car with extended clips “because they’re scary.”

Fodi began his closing arguments with a mantra of the criminal justice system, the Fifth Amendment: “No man can be deprived of his life, liberty or property except by judgment of his peers or the law of the land.”

It was emblazoned on the wall of the Dauphin County courtroom where Fodi, Fitzsimmons, Bicket and Thomassey interviewed jurors for the case.

Rosfeld, he said, took that upon himself on June 19.

Fodi asked jurors to return a murder conviction.

“This is not reasonable police work by an officer,” he said.

"This is not reasonable police work by an officer." He asked jurors to return a murder conviction. Court is in a short recess now before the judge charges the jury and they begin deliberations.

— Renatta Signorini (@ByRenatta) March 22, 2019

•••

3:20 p.m.

Thomassey has finished his closing argument.

During defense attorney Patrick Thomassey's 35-min closing arguments, he questioned eyewitness testimony and bystander video compared to testimony of ex-cop Michael Rosfeld.
“Mike Rosfeld is 8 yards away,” Thomassey said. “Who had a better view of what was happening?”

— Renatta Signorini (@ByRenatta) March 22, 2019

Thomassey asked jurors to think about what was going through the minds of Rose and Hester as they fled the drive-by shooting during his 35-minute closing argument. They would be talking about what to do with the gun used in the shooting and how to get home, Thomassey said.

“These guys, they’re all from this area,” he said, adding they knew where to stop to be able to access a tunnel and escape arrest.

“If Rose and Hester didn’t do anything wrong, why did they run?” Thomassey said. “They knew what they did and they wanted to get away.”

Rosfeld followed police protocol in stopping the car.

“Under the law, he doesn’t have to see a gun,” Thomassey said. “He thought he did, maybe he did, I don’t know.”

He questioned the recollection of eyewitnesses and the reliability of video shown to jurors, compared to Rosfeld’s testimony.

“Mike Rosfeld is 8 yards away,” Thomassey said, holding up a gun in the courtroom and showing jurors the distance. “Who had a better view of what was happening?”

He told jurors that prosecutors did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rosfeld was unjustified in firing shots at Rose.

“The standard is what a reasonable police officer would do under the circumstances that he faced,” Thomassey said.

About 100 people are seated in an overflow courtroom to listen to closing arguments.

•••

3 p.m.

Closing arguments have begun.

Closing arguments got underway at 2:40 in the trial of Commonwealth of Pa. v. Michael Rosfeld.

— AlleghenyCountyDA (@AlleghenyCoDA) March 22, 2019

•••

1:05 p.m.

The start of closing argument has been pushed back to 1:30 p.m.

S. Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Rose family, gave his views on the defense’s case and what the jury has to work with.

“If they focus on what they saw in that video and whether or not they ever saw a threat – whether or not it was reasonable for Mr. Rosfeld to imagine a threat – then I believe they come back with a verdict of guilty,” he said.

S. Lee Merrit, Rose family attorney from @MeritLaw, speaks about the defense resting. Says Michelle Kenney, Antwon Rose’s mother, will likely speak this afternoon. He said the family was never in favor of the gag order. “Justice is supposed to take place in the open.” pic.twitter.com/Yu5GINUC6s

— Megan Guza (@meganguzaTrib) March 22, 2019

He said he expects Rose’s mother, Michelle Kenney, to speak Friday afternoon, though he noted that she was never subject to the now-lifted gag order. He said the family was never in favor of the gag order.

“Justice is supposed to take place in the open,” Merritt said. “Antwon Rose can’t speak for himself. Mr. Rosfeld silenced him with three bullets. He will never be able to speak for himself again, so the only person that can speak for him is his family.”

•••

12:28 p.m.

Thomassey addressed the media during the court’s first recess after he successfully argued for the gag order to be lifted.

He said he argued for that because “I’m tired of this.” He’d made the same argument Wednesday morning, a day after Merritt held a news conference on the courthouse steps.

He said prosecutors failed to make their case, which is why he again unsuccessfully requested for a judgment of acquittal.

“If a person commits a violent felony … and you have reason to believe the person is armed and running away, the law says you can shoot him,” Thomassey said. “He doesn’t have to point the gun at you or threaten you because your duty as a police officer is to stop him from getting into the community and committing another felony.”

Thomassey wondered why prosecutors did not call Robertson, the driver of the Chevrolet Cruze that contained Rose and Hester before the shooting.

“They wouldn’t have liked what he said,” he said. “He’s going to say they’re driving over there for the drive-by and Hester says to Rose, ‘Is that him?’ and Rose says, ‘Yes,’ and they shoot him. They call that conspiracy. They call that complicity, and if Mr. Rose survived, he’d be sitting in jail right beside Mr. Hester, who pleaded guilty last week.”

He also expressed doubts as to whether Rosfeld would have faced charges if someone had been killed in the drive-by shooting.

“Ask yourself this,” he said. “If Hester had been a better shot and these two guys are dead, that they did the drive-by with, and Mike Rosfeld does what happened on June 19, would they have charged him? He just shot a person who was involved in killing two people right up the road. I don’t think we’d be here. That’s just me.”

Here he is asking why prosecutors did not call the driver of the Cruze, Trevon Robertson. He also questions whether Rosfeld would have been charged if the drive-by had been fatal. pic.twitter.com/L5k2tHu5F2

— Megan Guza (@meganguzaTrib) March 22, 2019

•••

12:15 p.m.

Thomassey is addressing the media.

Michael Rosfeld's defense attorney Patrick Thomassey succeeded in having a gag order lifted this morning. He addressed the media a short time ago about the case: "I can't believe that (the prosecution) didn't have an expert." pic.twitter.com/VEq4QRT1fu

— Renatta Signorini (@ByRenatta) March 22, 2019

•••

11:10 a.m.

The defense rested its case at 11 a.m.

Use-of-force expert Cliff Jobe spent about an hour on the witness stand Friday morning. At the conclusion of his testimony, Jobe said he felt Rosfeld acted appropriately.

“I don’t know that he did anything wrong at all sir, he was following his training,” Jobe said in response to a question from Thomassey.

The defense presented two witness in its case – Rosfeld and Jobe.

Under cross examination Jobe testified that a person fleeing from a police officer could be a threat.

“Is a person running away from you aggressive?” Fodi, the assistant district attorney, asked.

“It could be, yes,” Jobe replied.

Jobe testified about the training municipal officers receive in Pennsylvania and a report he authored for the defense. Jobe did not interview Rosfeld for that report to maintain impartiality. He said he reviewed Rosfeld’s statements to police to come to a conclusion that the former officer’s actions were appropriate.

For high-risk traffic stops, police officers are trained to wait for backup – a minimum of four officers for one person in a vehicle, but all situations can be assessed differently, Jobe testified.

“It is usually better, if available, to have multiple officers on any type of stop that would be high risk,” he said.

But in small communities, officers don’t always have that luxury, he said.

“The defendant had the ability to seize this vehicle before anything else happened regarding an active shooting situation, and that’s the decision he made at the time,” Jobe testified.

•••

10:02 a.m.

Bicket dismissed juror No. 2, who was replaced by an alternate. No reason was given for the dismissal.

The dismissed juror is a 39-year-old white woman who was a former librarian and whose father worked in law enforcement for 25 years.

This is the second juror to be replaced with an alternate. Juror No. 1 was replaced before the trial began.

•••

9:30 a.m.

Bicket lifted the gag order on the case at Thomassey’s request.

Thomassey referred to Merritt, who has made statements to the media on a couple occasions since the trial started, in requesting the order be lifted. Thomassey told Bicket he believed Merritt’s comments were intended for jurors, who are sequestered.

“Some attorneys have thumbed their nose at the court,” Thomassey said. “I don’t think it’s right, I think he should know better.”

Bicket ruled in his favor.

Megan Guza and Renatta Signorini are Tribune-Review staff writers. You can contact Megan at 412-380-8519, mguza@tribweb.com or via Twitter @meganguzaTrib. You can contact Renatta at 724-837-5374, rsignorini@tribweb.com or via Twitter @byrenatta.