Frank James, accused Brooklyn subway shooter, wants trial moved

Accused Brooklyn mass subway shooter Frank James wants his upcoming federal trial transferred out of the borough over prejudicial pretrial publicity and inflammatory comments by Mayor Eric Adams and other politicians, according to court papers.

In a request to Brooklyn Federal District Court Judge William Kuntz, attorneys for James argued that a poll they commissioned on the April 12 shooting found that potential jurors harbored deep negative feelings about the 62-year-old James. Proof, his attorneys said, he couldn’t get a fair trial, currently scheduled for Feb. 27 in Brooklyn federal court. Instead, James attorneys suggested the trial be held in Illinois federal court.

“The news media and politicians continually published inflammatory and inadmissible information about Mr. James, close in time to the intended start of his trial,” defense attorneys Mia Eisner-Grynberg and Amanda L. David wrote in a brief filed Monday. “These efforts combined to produce a jury pool that harbors decidedly negative, often incorrect, and fixed views about [James] and, without hearing any evidence, is overwhelmingly inclined to find him guilty despite his presumption of innocence. Under these circumstances, the Court must presume prejudice and transfer venue.”

A day after the shootings, James was arrested in Manhattan. The NYPD alleged he opened fire on morning rush-hour passengers on a Brooklyn N-train, wounding 10 and sparking panic in a city already racked by surging crime. The NYPD and other law enforcement agencies saturated the news media with James’ photograph, prompting a number of people to recognize him as he walked in the East Village and alert police, who took him into custody.

“My fellow New Yorkers, We Got Him, We Got Him,” Adams said during a news conference after the arrest, remarks, defense attorneys noted in their filing, that received 4.7 million Twitter views. The defense also filed a sample of newspaper articles and news media reports they maintained added to the flood of negative and pervasive prejudicial publicity.

James was charged in federal court with terrorism and carrying out an attack on a public transit system, crimes carrying a potential life sentence if he is convicted.

Prosecutors will file their response to the change-of-venue request in December, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District.

The defense attorneys suggested that Kuntz should consider transferring the case to the Northern District of Illinois, based in Chicago, which they said was demographically similar to the Eastern District of New York. Polling results filed with the court noted that 69% of respondents in New York knew of the shooting, while 14% recalled James being mentioned. By comparison, 44% of those polled in Illinois knew of the shooting, with only 9% recalling James’ name, court papers showed.

Court precedents show that changing a location of a trial because of adverse pretrial publicity is rare. Courts usually try to weed out juror prejudice about a defendant during voir dire examination. One notable exception was the case of four NYPD street crime unit officers accused of killing unarmed Bronx street vendor Amadou Diallo in February 1999. Defense lawyers for the cops got the trial transferred from the Bronx, where jurors had a reputation for being tough on police, to upstate Albany. In February 2000, an Albany jury acquitted the officers of all charges.

By Anthony M. DeStefano

tony.destefano@newsday.com

Anthony M. DeStefano has been a reporter for Newsday since 1986 and covers law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs from its New York City offices.