By Alex Ginsberg
A jury of seven women and five men began deliberations Tuesday in the third murder trial of a Long Island City man accused of shooting a Lithuanian couple as they slept in their Astoria bedroom in 1997.
Referring to the defendant as a “jilted lover,” Assistant District Attorney Carmencita Gutierrez said Abel Rosas flew into a jealous rage when the woman he was seeing, Yurate (Emily) Dainene, broke off the relationship and reconciled with her husband Rimgaudas Dainys.
“If he couldn't have her, no one would,” said Gutierrez.
Summations in State Supreme Court in Kew Gardens concluded seven days of testimony against Rosas. The state's case rested on a combination of physical evidence and eyewitness testimony but most heavily on a signed confession made by Rosas the day after the murder at the 114th Precinct station house.
But Rosas' attorney, David Cohen, who called no witnesses for the defense, said the confession was coerced during 26 hours of questioning and urged jurors to disregard it.
Rosas, 37, did not take the stand. He is charged with breaking into the couple's apartment, creeping into their bedroom and killing them with shots to the head at nearly point-blank range on March 30, 1997. If convicted, he faces 25 years to life in prison.
Gutierrez urged jurors to consider the four-page handwritten confession Detective Thomas Stathes took from Rosas the day after the murder.
In testimony Monday, Stathes read from the document, “I was about four feet away when I shot them. I know that I shot them. It was so close I could not have missed.”
According to Stathes, who was the lead detective on the case, Rosas walked into the 114th Precinct at 4 p.m. on July 30, 1997, about 10 hours after police discovered the couple's bodies in their bedroom at 23-17 38th St. Offering to help in the investigation, Rosas told detectives that he and Dainene were friends.
But as the day turned to night and then to day again, the story changed. A police search of Rosas' apartment on Greenpoint Avenue in Long Island City – carried out with the defendant's consent – turned up a nude photo of Dainene. At 4 p.m. the following day, July 31, Rosas was placed under arrest and confessed, Stathes said.
“He was not free to do what he wanted, when he wanted, and he certainly was not free to leave,” Cohen said in his summation Tuesday, noting that officers brought him food and accompanied him to the rest room during the questioning. He called the precinct office where the questioning took place “a coercive environment engineered by Detective Stathes,” whom he sarcastically referred to as “that nice man.”
The lawyers also offered differing interpretations of the palm print – linked to Rosas – lifted from the slain couple's door. Cohen reminded the jury his client lived in the apartment during the period he dated Dainene. But Gutierrez said the unsmeared imprint meant Rosas was the last person to touch the door “before it became a crime scene.”
Gutierrez also urged the jury to remember that the couple's 16-year-old son Lukas identified Rosas as the triggerman during testimony last week. Cohen questioned the clarity of the boy's memory, noting he was only 9 years old at the time, a suggestion Gutierrez dismissed.
“He will never forget that it was the defendant Abel Rosas who ran out of his parents' bedroom after shooting and killing them,” she said.
It is the third time before a jury for the Mexican immigrant. A 1998 trial ended in a hung jury, but Rosas was convicted in a subsequent proceeding the following year. That decision was overturned on appeal last fall, however. Rosas has remained in prison since his initial arrest in 1997.
Reach reporter Alex Ginsberg by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 157.
