By Jeannette Neumann
Hakim Scott had been riding in the backseat of his friend’s car the night that an Ecuadorian immigrant was brutally beaten just feet from the red Mercury Mountaineer.
On Wednesday, attorney Craig Newman told a Brooklyn jury that Scott also took a backseat in the killing of Jose Sucuzhanay on the night of December 7, 2008.
It was Scott’s friend and fellow defendant Keith Phoenix who repeatedly hit Sucuzhanay with an aluminum bat, inflicting the brain and head injuries that eventually took his life, Newman said.
“Were Keith Phoenix’s actions horrific, horrible and devastating? Yes,” Newman said.
Scott’s actions were minor in comparison, he said. Scott hit Sucuzhanay once over the head with a beer bottle. That blow may have injured Sucuzhanay and caused him to fall to the ground, but it didn’t cause his death, he said.
“If my client Hakim Scott wanted to kill him, there you go – he’s on the ground,” Newman said.
But Newman told jurors that Scott never had the intent to kill Sucuzhanay or even to seriously injure him.
Prosecutors had tried throughout the three-week trial to link Scott and Phoenix as accomplices, but they weren’t acting together, Newman said in his closing statement Wednesday in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
“Guilt by association is not acting in concert. Guilt by association – knowing someone who is guilty – is not the cornerstone of our judicial system,” Newman told the jurors. “This is, ladies and gentlemen, two separate actions by two separate individuals.”
The most serious charge against Scott is murder as a hate crime. The 26-year-old could face life in prison if convicted.
Closing arguments in the Phoenix case are to be heard on Thursday. The case is likely to go to a separate jury later Thursday afternoon.
The killing is being prosecuted as a hate crime because witnesses have testified that Scott and Phoenix shouted anti-Hispanic and homophobic remarks at Sucuzhanay and his brother Romel as they were walking home, arms linked to shield themselves against the 30-degree weather.
It was nearly 3.30 a.m. and all four men had been drinking.
Scott didn’t testify during the trial, but in video testimony recorded before the trial and shown to the jury, Scott says he jumped out of the back passenger seat of Phoenix’s Mercury Mountaineer after Sucuzhanay spit on him through the window – rolled down because the men were smoking.
Scott and the two brothers faced each other behind the car.
Scott says Sucuzhanay quickly reached for the Budweiser beer bottle he was brandishing. Scott then hit him with the bottle and Sucuzhanay staggered to the ground. Then, Scott says Romel punched him in the face and ran away. Scott chased after Romel for the length of a few cars and then says he turned around to see Phoenix raising an aluminum bat over his head and slamming it down on Sucuzhanay, who was lying immobile on the ground.
Scott said he jumped out of the car because he was offended Sucuzhanay had spit on him, not to seriously injure or kill him because he thought Sucuzhanay was gay or Latino.
“For Hakim Scott this was never about hate. It was never about prejudice,” Newman said. “He got spit on, stepped out of the car and reacted.”
But Assistant District Attorney Patricia McNeill told jurors that Scott played an integral role in the murder of 31-year-old Sucuzhanay, a father of two. Scott was the instigator and his beer bottle blow was the catalyst for the chain of events that left Sucuzhanay dead, McNeill said.
“Who was the first one out of the car? The defendant. Who led that attack? The defendant,” McNeill said, jabbing a pointed finger toward Scott, who sometimes raised his eyes to glance toward her. Most of the time, he sat with his shoulders slightly hunched, gaze downward.
Scott and Phoenix “identified Romel and Jose as gay Latino men and they pounced on them because of it,” McNeill said.
Scott closed his eyes and shook his head back and forth several times when McNeill said that he and Phoenix went after the Sucuzhanays because they thought the brothers were “lesser people.”
“This wasn’t a fight,” McNeill said. “It was an attack.”
“Do justice for Jose and Romel Sucuzhanay,” McNeill pleaded with the jury, holding up an enlarged photo of the two brothers standing side by side.
McNeill pointed at four circular containers of evidence holding inch-long shards of a broken beer bottle, proof that Scott hit Sucuzhanay with vehement force, she said.
McNeill took pains to poke holes in Scott’s account of what happened the night of the encounter.
She projected a photo for the jury showing blood that had mixed with snow and pooled in the gutter near where Sucuzhanay was beaten. Scott and Phoenix attacked the two men on the sidewalk, not on the street, McNeill said. That means it was improbable that Sucuzhanay had spit from the sidewalk several feet into the open car window, hitting Scott.
“Does that make sense to you? Is that even believable? No,” McNeill said. “He had to come up with a story,” she said of Scott.
“He is responsible for his death,” McNeill said. “He is responsible for everything.”
Jury members are now deciding which story they believe.
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