Hempstead man acquitted of '06 murder

As jurors in his murder trial entered the Mineola courtroom, defendant Jonathan Mayzick searched their eyes to see what their verdict would be, he recalled.

"There was one young man who didn't make eye contact with anyone through the entire trial," Mayzick said in an interview after the verdict. "When he looked at me as he walked into the courtroom, I knew I would be found not guilty.

Seconds later, he was acquitted on all charges.

It took a Nassau County jury less than two hours to find Mayzick, 22, of Hempstead, not guilty of killing 18-year-old Ryan Harris on Thanksgiving Eve, 2006. Prosecutors had said Mayzick shot Harris in the head behind a Hempstead apartment building. Harris was with a man who prosecutors had said was Mayzick's intended victim because he had beat Mayzick up some days earlier.

Nassau County Court Judge Jerald Carter's courtroom was filled with police and prosecutors as the foreman announced the verdict. From the bench, Carter told a choked-up Mayzick, incarcerated for a year on the murder charge, and two years before that on an assault conviction, that his handcuffs would be unlocked and he could walk out a free man.

Mayzick and his parents went straight to the Red Lobster restaurant in Carle Place for lunch.

"This was a case that never should have been brought to trial," said Mayzick's lawyer, William Shanahan of Mineola. "There was no credible evidence linking Mr. Mayzick to the crime."

A spokesman for Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice declined to comment on the verdict.

Mayzick said he plans to devote the coming years to raising his 21/2-year-old son, whom he does not know at all.

"It's a tragedy that one man's life was lost, said Mayzick's father, John Mayzick, of Hempstead. "I'm glad a second life -- my son's -- wasn't lost as well."

Mayzick said he and prosecutors did agree on one point: That the turf wars at the root of so much violence in Hempstead -- the ones prosecutors said were at the root of Harris' murder -- are senseless.

"Its nonsense," Mayzick said.