Second jury convicts Eric Williams in 2001 car chase death of Candice Arena

Ten years and one week after a North Babylon man was first convicted of murdering a young woman by firing a gun at the car she was in and causing it to lose control, a second jury came to the same conclusion Friday in Riverhead.

Eric Williams, 37, again was convicted of second-degree murder, two counts of first-degree assault and other charges related to the May 15, 2001, attack that resulted in the death of Candice Arena, 19, of Deer Park. A federal judge had thrown out Williams' first conviction because of improperly prejudicial testimony and ordered a new trial.

On either side of the aisle in state Supreme Court Justice Richard Ambro's courtroom, family members of Arena and Williams began sobbing as they heard the verdict. Williams glanced at his family with a stricken expression.

Arena's mother, Barbara Arena, wiped away what she said were tears of joy and relief afterward as she thanked prosecutors Janet Albertson and Lawrence Opisso.

"The jury did a wonderful job," she said. "I'm so glad they used their common sense."

She said she has never gotten over the loss of her daughter. Enduring a second trial a decade after her daughter's killer was convicted was torture, she said.

"It was like having salt in my wounds," she said. "I want my daughter to rest."

Arena's father, Frank Arena, said Williams "had two bites at the apple. My daughter had none."

Witnesses testified that Williams, a drug and gun dealer, was angry with Melissa Weiner, then 18, because she owed him $260 for cocaine she used instead of selling for him. When he found out that she was at a 7-Eleven on Deer Park Avenue that night, witnesses said, he grabbed his gun and stormed into the parking lot.

Weiner told the driver of the car, Melissa Singh, then 19, to flee. Williams chased the car with the three friends -- Singh, Weiner and Arena -- on side streets until he closed in on it at more than 80 mph while heading south on Deer Park Avenue.

Williams' girlfriend at the time, Rebecca Madigan, testified that he fired a shot at the car as it approached an underpass beneath the Long Island Rail Road. The car hit the embankment and flew in the air, ejecting Arena. The other two women were badly injured.

As at the first trial, the defense accused Madigan of using Williams' gun to fire the shot, but jurors said the path the bullet took through Singh's car made it clear the driver fired the gun.

"I'm just very grateful to the jury," said Albertson, who also tried the case the first time. "There are no guarantees when you retry a case like this."

Defense attorney Craig McElwee of Hauppauge said Williams would appeal again, probably focusing on one witness who did not testify, but whose testimony from the first trial about Williams admitting the crime in jail was read to jurors at this trial.

McElwee said the failure of prosecutors to bring that witness back deprived the defense of its right to confront and cross-examine him.

During the trial, McElwee conceded that his client dealt drugs and chased the women through Deer Park. "We were disappointed that the jury felt that his recklessness rose to the level of depraved indifference to human life," he said.

Madigan was at the center of why U.S. District Judge John Gleeson threw out Williams' conviction in 2013. During the first trial, she blurted out that Williams had told her he'd killed before. Gleeson called that testimony "beyond the pale" because it improperly suggested Williams had a tendency to kill.

Gleeson said the error was compounded when both sides called further attention to her remark later in the trial.

Williams faces a maximum of 50 years to life in prison when Ambro sentences him on April 3. After his first conviction, he was sentenced to 30 years to life.