Jury in police brutality trial begins deliberating claim that Suffolk officers broke woman's arm

A federal jury began deliberating on Tuesday in the $9 million police brutality case brought against four Suffolk County officers by a Jericho widower who said they roughed up and broke the arm of his cancer-stricken wife after she led them on a 13-mile car pursuit.

Maryann Ost Chernick, 58, who died about a year after the incident, sparked the police pursuit after she backed into a CVS pharmacy in Deer Park in her 2018 Lexus on Feb. 9, 2019, then drove away, according to police and witnesses.

Although there was no damage done to the building, a bystander reported the crash to police, who tracked down Chernick heading west back to her home in Jericho and tried to pull her over, according to court testimony.

Chernick, who had been treated for stomach tumors, had been taking prescribed methadone and other painkillers to help her handle her illness, records show.

Attorneys Steven Harfenist and Gustave Passanante, who represent the widower, Ira Chernick, said the ailing woman thought police were on their way to an emergency and moved to the right-hand lane, but did not stop for the officers.

Instead, she led four police cars back to her home on Hunt Drive, blowing through a security gate and stopping in her driveway with the officers close behind.

Officers Charles Tramontana, Jesus Faya, Michael Sweet and Argand Reyes confronted Chernick as she tried to punch in the garage door code into the keypad at her home.

Faya testified that he grabbed the 5-foot-6, 110-pound woman by the right arm and waist and pulled her to the ground, while the other officers struggled to handcuff her.

They claimed at trial that she continued to resist, but was eventually handcuffed and taken first to the hospital, then arrested and charged with fleeing a police officer and driving impaired on drugs.

“I don’t know the name of the medicine that I took,” she told officers, according to the misdemeanor complaint.

Harfenist showed the jury photos of Chernick with blood all over her face and X-rays of her right arm held together with plates and screws, the result of eight hours of surgery for a spiral fracture.

Suffolk County attorney Stacy Skorupa, in her summation of the case Tuesday afternoon, called the police brutality claim “meritless.”

“There is not a scintilla of evidence that has been put before you that the officers used excessive force on Feb. 9, 2019,” she told the jury.

Skorupa said the officers had no way to know Chernick was not a threat, considering her refusal to pull over for police.

“None of these officers knew what was in that garage,” she said. “These officers feared for their safety and the safety of others.”

Tramontana testified that he feared Chernick had a weapon tucked in the crotch of her clothing or in a flowerpot near the garage entrance, an assertion Harfenist called “borderline absurd.”

“Maryann Chernick created a tug-o-war between her body and the police officers,” Skorupa said. “That was the consequence of her own actions.”

But Harfenist, in his closing, focused on what he said were inconsistencies in the officers' statements.

Suffolk County authorities claimed she may have broken her arm falling out of her car in Deer Park, but a doctor testified during trial that she could not have operated a vehicle with her injury.

The officers’ accounts differed on who took her to the ground, who handcuffed her and her physical condition after her arrest.

“They can’t get their story straight on the simplest thing,” he said.

Harfenist acknowledged Chernick was taking pain medication as part of her cancer treatment and that she pleaded guilty to the violation.

“That doesn’t give them the right to do what they did to her,” he said.

He urged the jurors to find in favor of Chernick’s widower, who was married to his wife for more than 30 years.

“They were wrong when they broke her arm and then they tried to cover it up,” Harfenist said. “We can’t let them do that. It’s wrong. Because if they get away with it, they’ll do it again.”

In court records, Ira Chernick asked for $6 million in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages.