'Dream team' lawyer says evidence in 'nanny cam' case is reminiscent of OJ Simpson trial
The same “nanny cam” that captured footage of a black man beating a New Jersey woman in front of her child during a home invasion also shows a detective investigating the crime referring to the man as a “monkey,” along with other racial slurs.
An article by NJ.com questions what the Essex County jury will think about the racial epithets made by Collin McMillan, a Millburn detective.
“There’s no question but that the racial prejudice of a police officer affects his credibility where the defendant is black and … the police investigating him have a prejudice against blacks,” Gerald Uelmen told NJ.com. The Santa Clara University School of Law professor was part of the “dream team” defense that helped win a 1995 murder acquittal for O.J. Simpson. Defense evidence included testimony that Mark Fuhrman, a detective who investigated the crime, had previously used racial epithets. The Simpson defense team argued that Fuhrman planted a bloody glove on their client’s property.
Additionally, after defendant Shawn Custis was arrested while leaving a girlfriend’s New York City apartment building, police say they found a pair of jeans in the apartment that belonged to Custis and had the home-invasion victim’s blood on them, NJ.com previously reported.
Rutgers-Newark law professor Louis Raveson said the jurors who see McMillan uttering racial epithets on video could find the defendant not guilty “simply because everybody’s fed up with the police not doing what they’re supposed to do and allowing their personal and racist attitudes to infect the job that they do.”
The footage doesn’t clearly show the perpetrator’s face, according to the article. Custis is black, and the victim did not identify 45-year-old Custis when she reviewed photos that include him and other potential suspects. Custis is charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of a child, robbery, burglary, criminal restraint and theft.
Four other witnesses—Custis’ former girlfriend, her daughter and two other women who had personal relationships with him—testified that the man in the footage was Custis. The government also presented testimony from an an Essex County Sheriff’s officer that Custis confessed to the crime while detained in a courthouse holding cell area.
At a March pretrial hearing, Custis’ defense attorney John McMahon indicated that he’d cross-examine police about what he saw as the “lack of investigation into other possible suspects.”
