Jury to begin deliberations on retrial in murder outside Baldwin bar

Two decades after a pair of drinking buddies died outside a Baldwin tavern, a jury will decide if a former Freeport man shot unarmed men in a deadly rage or grabbed a revolver from one and killed in self-defense on that frigid December morning.

Attorneys delivered closing arguments Tuesday in the retrial of John Pierotti in the 1998 slayings of Baldwin carpenters Willis Frost and Gerard Kennedy Jr. — killings for which he'd previously been serving life in prison.

A federal judge found in 2018 that Pierotti, 65, had a severe hearing impairment that made his first trial unfair and ordered his release unless prosecutors took steps to retry him.

The current Nassau County Court jury doesn't know another jury in 2000 found Pierotti guilty of first-degree murder and weapon charges in the Dec. 23, 1998, deaths of Frost, 41, and Kennedy, 36, outside what was then known as the Dragger Inn.

This panel is expected to start deliberations Wednesday.

Pierotti has worn headphones throughout the trial to amplify the proceedings, and court officials did microphone sound checks each day.

Pierotti claims he shot Frost and Kennedy in self-defense after grabbing the gun, which was never found, from Frost following an argument outside the Milburn Avenue bar.

But the prosecution contends Pierotti brought the .22-caliber revolver to the scene and that the location the victims' bodies — found far apart — show Frost and Kennedy couldn't have attacked Pierotti.

Frost and Kennedy had left the tavern to use drugs in a van before Pierotti attacked the unarmed men by firing into Frost's chest and Kennedy's eye, according to prosecutor Martin Meaney.

"You pulled the trigger. You did it," he said Tuesday in a raised voice as he turned to face Pierotti during his closing argument. "Can you hear me? Can you hear me now?" he added.

Even if Pierotti took the gun away from Frost while under attack, Pierotti still didn't have the right to shoot, the prosecutor said.

"When you take that gun away, you are no longer in imminent danger of being killed," Meaney added.

Pierotti's lawyer, Dana Grossblatt, contends Frost got angry after Pierotti approached for a second time a van Frost used for his job to ask for a battery jump for his own van.

She claims Pierotti wrestled away a revolver from Frost and then fired on Frost and Kennedy, who also threatened him, in order to save his own life.

Grossblatt on Tuesday attacked the credibility of key prosecution witness Melissa Johnson, Pierotti’s former girlfriend, asking jurors "to disregard" the testimony of "a pathological liar."

Johnson told police months after the homicides that Pierotti, with whom she has three children, left their home with her late father’s revolver before the tavern shooting and said after his return that he had killed two people.

But Grossblatt portrayed Johnson, who acknowledged having been revived with Narcan in December, as a drug addict who initially stuck by Pierotti and his innocence claim but dumped him for another man and changed her story after becoming financially desperate while Pierotti was jailed following his February 1999 arrest.

Meaney, however, defended Johnson's account implicating Pierotti. He said Johnson handed over bullets she said belonged to Pierotti that matched ammunition from the shooting. The prosecutor also questioned, if Johnson was trying to frame Pierotti, how she would have known a revolver was the weapon involved in the shootings.

Grossblatt argued the ammunition was common, while also saying the location of a bullet that police recovered in a nearby home after Pierotti's arrest corroborated his self-defense account.

Meaney countered by suggesting Pierotti accidentally fired off a bullet before shooting Frost. 

Grossblatt also questioned why authorities never tested the hands of Frost and Kennedy for gunshot residue.

“Twenty-one years later, a new century has arrived, yet those nails have never been tested and I argue to you, that is reasonable doubt,” she said of grimy fingernail clippings collected during Frost's autopsy.

But Meaney said expert testimony indicated the presence of gunshot residue would show only that someone was close when a gun went off, not that the person fired it.