Oral “Nick” Hillary “hunted” Garrett Phillips in the half hour before the boy was strangled in the apartment Phillips shared with his mother, Tandy Cyrus, according to Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick. The prosecution said “we should have turned it over” but called the defense’s request for a dismissal or mistrial “extreme”.
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The popular, friendly and athletic golden-haired boy had just begun the sixth grade when his mysterious murder shocked Potsdam. Hillary has always insisted he is innocent.
Rain also had another concern, Kyriakopoulos testified: She didn’t want Brown to have a lawyer present when questioned by two police officers.
“Never saw anything abnormal … anything out of the ordinary … you never saw Nick Hillary, never saw Nick Hillary do anything to Garrett?”
Peter Dumas, one of Hillary’s attorneys, said if the defense had had the information before now, it might have changed its strategy, including waiving a jury trial.
The matter surrounded prosecutors failing to disclose a witness who claims to have seen St. Lawrence County Sheriff’s deputy John Jones near the apartment where 12-year-old Garrett Phillips was murdered back in 2011. The defense alleges that the prosecution withheld information about a witness who saw someone other than Hillary leaving the scene of the crime.
“I don’t know that anything could cure it, judge”, Dumas said.
Multiple faxes were sent out to Ms. Rain, Mr. Levison and County Judge Jerome J. Richards in attempt to prevent the interview from happening, but Ms. Kyriakopoulos said she received no response.
Prior to testimony, the defense requested the case be dismissed.
But that was not what the testimony of state police Bureau of Criminal Investigation Senior Investigator Theodore J. Levison, Potsdam Police acting Chief Mark R. Murray and Ms. Kyriakopoulos revealed. But it took almost five years for the case to come to trial. But today, he pointed out that any notes taken by police should also have been turned over.
Garrett’s grandfather, Robert Paul, grandmother, Patricia Phillips, and aunt Tonya Cyrus each recounted Hillary as having a hard time with the breakup with Garrett’s mother. Under cross-examination Cyrus told the court that Hillary never told her that he did not like Garrett.
‘You can’t be in two places at the same time, ‘ Siegel said.
Rain testified that investigators told her in person that Brown wasn’t credible. She said she had told him to go home after school and do his homework before basketball practice. She recalled a time when Hillary allegedly yelled at Garrett for not doing a chore and called him a “little f–er”.
Authorities say that surveillance video shows Garrett leaving the high school at 4:52 p.m. – the same time they say a auto that they say looks like Hillary’s was seen leaving the high school parking lot. The first 911 call relating to Garrett was placed at 5:07 p.m., according to police.
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Though Hillary’s supporters have accused authorities in this largely white community of unjustly prosecuting a black man, Fitzpatrick said during his opening statement in Hillary’s second-degree murder trial that the evidence against the Jamaica-born ex-coach is conclusive.
