Defense closes in manslaughter trial

Blocked in by a car behind him and a car ahead of him -- whose irate driver stood in his only escape route -- Evan Potts did the only thing he could, his lawyer said Wednesday. He stepped on the gas and drove his rented Audi into Ian Sharinn, the man confronting him.

"His actions were justified," Potts' lawyer, Stanley Kopilow of Garden City, said in his closing argument at Potts' manslaughter trial. "They were reasonable. They were what each of us would have done in the same circumstance."

But prosecutor Brendan Ahern said what Potts did at a busy Long Beach intersection on May 15, 2009, was inexcusable, no matter his fear.

"He could see Ian Sharinn, he could hear Ian Sharinn, and when he was running over the human body of Ian Sharinn, he could feel him. That's the bottom line," Ahern said.

"Under the law," he said, "that's manslaughter."

The jury is set to begin deliberating Potts' fate Thursday morning in Nassau County Court. If Potts, 24, of Oceanside, is found guilty of a top charge of second-degree manslaughter, he could face a maximum of 5 to 15 years in prison when state Court of Claims Judge Philip Grella sentences him.

Both sides agree Sharinn, 34, of Long Beach, had used his car to block Potts from passing him on National Boulevard after the two argued on the road. After Sharinn got out of his car, Potts called 911, tried to flee in reverse, then drove his car over Sharinn, killing him.

Kopilow told the jury that it is Potts, 5 feet, 8 inches tall and 140 pounds, who is the victim, not Sharinn, who was 6 feet, 5 inches tall and 250 pounds.

"This is not an argument between equals," Kopilow said before a packed courtroom. "There is a pursuer, and a pursued. There is a hunter, and there is prey."

But Ahern said no amount of bad behavior by Sharinn justifies what happened to him.

"This is not the Wild West, where when someone insults you, you shoot them between the eyes" Ahern told the jury. "Ian Sharinn, for his conduct, got the death penalty, and now you are to decide whether the defendant was justified in dealing that death to him."