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Officer Schwarz has 4th Trial – Negotiates for Reduced Sentence
Officer Charles Schwarz, pictured with his wife, Andra, grew weary of five years of litigation and agreed to plead guilty to one charge in exchange for the dropping of other charges. He is still in prison.
It has been a long and drawn-out battle for Charles Schwarz, a 37-year-old Brooklyn police officer who is serving time for a crime he clearly did not commit. This case was brought to the attention of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF) by “The Wrong Man,” an excellent segment of the CBS-TV program, 60 Minutes.
This bizarre case originated in 1997 when New York City Police Officer Charles Schwarz, a former Marine and member of the National Guard, arrested Haitian immigrant Abner Louima and took him to the 70th Precinct. While Officer Schwarz was at the front desk filling out the paperwork to book him for disorderly conduct, a deplorable event occurred. One of the arresting officers, Justin Volpe, took the suspect into the rest room and cruelly sodomized him with a broomstick handle.
Justin Volpe was arrested and subsequently convicted for this crime. However, the front page story caused much criticism of the New York Police Department (NYPD), and black leaders, including Al Sharpton and the NAACP, clamored for more arrests. As a result, Officer Schwarz, who had nothing to do with the crime, was arrested and indicted.
Over the past five years, Charles Schwarz has been tried on four occasions. In the first trial, Justin Volpe pleaded guilty to the crime and said that another officer — not Schwarz — had been his accomplice, but Judge Nickerson would not allow this testimony to be part of the trial. Not a single witness could be found who saw Officer Schwarz in or near the bathroom. Even the victim-suspect, Abner Louima, was not sure who assisted Officer Volpe. Officer Schwarz was found guilty of violating Mr. Louima’s civil rights.
In the second trial, Charles Schwarz, much to the shock of his attorney, was convicted of obstruction of justice and sentenced to 15 years. During that trial, it was presented that Schwarz led the victim-suspect to the hallway where the men’s room is located and thus was not at his desk the entire time as he had previously testified. Schwarz’s attorney said that Judge Nickerson had conducted an unfair and biased trial. (The elderly judge died in January 2002.) After these convictions, Schwarz served 33 months in federal prisons much of it in solitary confinement for his own protection.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed both of Schwarz’s convictions and scheduled a new trial date for June 20, 2002. There were four charges in the third trial: violation of Louima’s civil rights, conspiracy to violate Louima’s civil rights, and two counts of perjury based on Schwarz’s testimony that he never left the front desk. The result of Schwarz’s third trial was a conviction on one count of perjury and a hung jury (7-5 for conviction) on the other three counts. Sentencing was delayed until after the fourth trial, scheduled for September 10, 2002.
In the fourth trial, Schwarz, worn out by five years of litigation, agreed (after extensive debate and negotiation) to a five-year sentence for the perjury conviction in exchange for the dropping of the other charges (which carried the possibility of a 15-year sentence). Schwarz also agreed to a gag order with the promise that the prosecutor would file later for a reduced sentence.
Charles Schwarz has already spent more than three years behind bars because he happened to be working in the vicinity of the crime committed by another officer. Much of the blame for this travesty of justice goes to the judge and prosecutors who knew that Schwarz was “The Wrong Man,” but worried about having a Rodney King-type riot in New York. To save face in the media, they succumbed to political pressure and convicted an innocent man.
The LELDF thanks all who have provided donations that have been used for legal costs and other expenses incurred in the process of appeals and a new trial. It is our hope that Charles Schwarz will be released sooner rather than later so that he can be reunited with his wife, Andra.
