(Photo: Robert Abrams)By: Dovesblood
On Thursday, April 10th. 2008, there was a pretrial hearing for Nixzmary Brown's mother, Nixzaliz Santiago, held on the 19th floor of Brooklyn Supreme Court. In stark contrast to the hoard of media at Cesar's sentencing, there were only four media outlets there: a spanish paper, the Daily News, the New York Post, and the tv channel NY1 Noticias. There were 6 officers in the room.(4 sargents and 2 regular officers) The DA's Linda Weinman and Anthea Bruffee were there. Ama Dwimoh, the lead DA, awhile back, requested some time off in April, so she wasn't present.
The prosecution usually sits on the right hand side of the room, so the two DA's logically sat at the desk on the right. The court clerk, Peggy, told them that this is the defense's desk. "Ooohhh", said Weinman, as her and Bruffee looked at each other in shock, getting up, realizing they had just wandered into enemy territory. As they were getting ready to walk away from the desk, the clerk, who was standing in front of the defense desk asked them something that made my eyes grow wider, my facial muscles freeze, and the blood inside of my body stop flowing and turn to ice! She pointed to the chair and asked them "is this where NIXZMARY sits"? My jaw dropped. I could not believe it. I stared at that empty chair with a piercing pain going right through my very heart. Then I snapped back to reality. "Nixzmary is dead"!!, I said to myself, looking at her furiously. "It's NIXZALIZ" said Linda Weinman. Silence. No sound. "It's NIXZALIZ", Weinman said again. The woman said nothing. The two DA's walked over to the desk on the left hand side of the room.
The court clerk then told an officer that she (Nixzaliz) would be sitting over here.
I sat there staring at that empty chair, hoping against hope, that little Nixzmary really would be sitting in that chair just like the woman said. Then I realized she wouldn't. You know what lady? GET THE NAMES RIGHT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Causing me emotional pain cause you're mixing up the names????!!!!!!
When they brought Nixzaliz in through the inmates side door, she was wearing a creme t-shirt, and dark navy blue jeans with designs on the back pockets. Her hair was in a bun, tied with a creme scrunchie that matched her creme t-shirt. She wore a bracelet on her left hand. It was made up of black square shaped beads that had pictures on them. I think it was one of those religious bracelets people wear with the Virgin Mary on them, but I couldn't see the pictures, so I can't be sure. As she was walking through the door and saw the Spanish translator, she smiled briefly. It was a sad smile, as if she wasn't sure she'd be getting one back. She's still heavy set and when I looked at her body, I thought, "that's the body that Nixzmary came out of". I searched her face to try and find any traces of Nixzmary, any resemblance. When she sat down at the desk, her lawyer, Sammy Sanchez was to the left of her and the translator was to the right. She (Nixzaliz) put on her red rimmed glasses.
Judge Patricia DiMango was presiding over the courtroom. The prosecution started off by saying they no longer want to use as evidence the 911 call where it's said that Nixzmary drowned.
The second issue they raised was that the dates of the grand jury indictments don't match. There was some discrepancy pertaining to Nov.1 and Jan. 11th.
After a bench conference, Sanchez dropped a bomb! He said Nixzaliz's old lawyer she fired, Mr. Abrams, has been going to Rikers Island to visit her! Sanchez complained that Abrams "is violating every single ethic under the canon". He's no longer Nixzaliz's lawyer and shouldn't be talking with her, Sanchez complained. Judge Dimango said she'd call Mr. Abrams up and tell him to stop.
Next, the defense was given notice that the prosecution subpeoned Nixzaliz's psychiatric records from jail.
The prosecution then indicated that they're dropping two counts against Nixzaliz pertaining to crimes against Javier Batista, her eldest child, currently residing in Puerto Rico with his biological father. Javier Batista is Nixzmary Brown's older brother. The reason the two counts (7 &10 I think) were dropped Is because Javier's father doesn't want him testifying as he feels it would be detrimental to the child. When the judge asked Sanchez if he had any objection to the prosecution dropping the counts, -surprise, surprise- he said "no".
Next Sanchez also stated that Mr. Abrams was the primary attorney on the case before he took over and that some of the boxes of minutes from Cesar's trial that Abrams dropped off to Sanchez are missing testimony. He cited Det. Snyder's testimony is missing. I thought, could Abrams have taken it out deliberately to sabotage Sanchez because he's jealous that Sanchez is the lawyer on a high profile case and he's not? The prosecutors offered to share their minutes of the missing testimony with Sanchez.
Next up, the judge denied a petition by a Daily News photographer to take a still photo of Nixzaliz. The papers have to keep using the same "perp walk" and mug shot photos.
Then DiMango made reference to Nixzaliz's past problem of being harrassed on the bus saying due to that the jail changed her housing unit. Sanchez requested Nixzaliz be put back into her old unit, as the bus incident was an anomoly, and the judge said she'd request a transfer for Nixzaliz but noted the jail has to do what's best for her safety.
There was a bench conference next. I saw the judge leafing through autopsy photos of Nixzmary as both the prosecution and the defense looked on. I had seen those graphic photos before of that poor baby covered in bruises, literally, from head to toe. After the conference, the judge said she was deciding which autopsy photos could be used and concluded that three of the photos couldn't be used saying "they would affect the dignity of the child". I'm assuming the photos included private areas as those would affect dignity. These same photos that DiMango didn't allow in were already showed to both the jury and the audience at Cesar's trial. There is such a thing as "dignity after death", something which, thus far, Nixzmary has been denied. The list of indignities done to her after death are numerous: First, at autopsy, her brain was removed, frozen if formaldehyde for 2 weeks so they could cut it open to examine it, then afterwards, it's was kept in the office of the Chief Medical Examiner for N.Y.C. This is a little girl who wanted to be a doctor and her brain was taken out of her body!! She was buried without a brain. The second indignity after death was the M.E. performing a rape kit on her dead body. Hadn't she been through enough? That's like raping her all over again. It's desecrating the body. The third indignity was Cesar's lawyer, Jeff Schwartz, dragging Nixzmary's name through the mud. He killed her all over again by killing her character. The fouth indignity was the good-for-nothing jury who declared to the world that Nixzmary's death was not a murder. Give this poor child the dignity of at least calling her death what it was : A MURDER!
Continuing on with the hearing, the judge gave Nixzaliz orders of protection and this time, unlike last time, she signed them.
Lastly, Sanchez requested that Nixzaliz be assigned the same spanish translator who was in the room now, as they have no problems. The judge agreed, saying, "why mess with what works"? and with that, court ended at about 11 o'clock. Sanchez didn't stop to do interviews, so the reporters desended on him like white on rice and followed him into the elevator.
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