No happy ending in Bell verdict

BY ELLIS HENICAN

4:32 PM EDT, April 25, 2008

It's Sean Bell let-down time.

After all the witness testimony, after all the demonstrations on the Queens courthouse steps, after all the press conferences and the finger-pointing and the outraged ministers and the detective union rants -- after all of it, two immutable facts remain.

A young man was shot to death the night before his wedding. And everyone is worse off as a result. Sean Bell, only the most egregiously.

The sad truth at the core of most of these high-publicity, high-tension media cases is that even after the verdict, no one is happy in the end.

Bell left behind a grieving fiancee, Nicole Paultre, and their two young daughters, Jada, 5, and Jord y n, 22-months-old, none of whom deserved any of this. And that's something the whole Bell family shares with the families of the three detectives who were put on trial: The family members suffered immeasurably for sins they didn't commit, as the criminal case inched from investigation to indictment to trial to verdict.

Forever, we'll be rehashing that night two Novembers ago. How Bell and his friends had been celebrating his impending wedding. How just outside the Club Kalua strip bar, plainclothes detectives fired 50 unanswered shots, killing Bell and wounding two of his friends.

Was Bell a good guy or a bad guy? Were the cops trigger-happy -- or just reacting as they were trained? Did race play a role? Did the detectives plausibly believe the club-goers were armed? What about the 9mm semiautomatics police officers carry now? Did their easy trigger action turn the night into a shooting gallery?

Was this Amadou Diallo or a tragic mistake?

In theory, these are the kinds of questions that trials ought to answer.

In fact, this trial and this verdict answer none of them. It's all a matter of predisposition, all a matter of what side you're on.

Which is why, at times like these, all we can do is return to the few facts we know.

A young man was shot to death the night before his wedding. And everyone is worse off as a result.