DIALLO SHOOTING TRIAL
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ALBANY, N.Y. (Court TV) — The medical examiner who performed the autopsy on the bullet-riddled body of Amadou Diallo testified that various gunshot wounds indicate that he was shot repeatedly while already down.

Bronx prosecutors are trying to prove that officers Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon and Kenneth Boss murdered Diallo with depraved indifference when they shot him last February. The four members of New York's Street Crime Unit were working undercover and driving in an unmarked car in search of a serial Bronx rapist when they encountered Diallo.

Lawyers for the officers claim that Diallo was acting suspiciously and ducked his head back into the vestibule when he saw them. The officers claim they identified themselves and that Diallo did not heed their command to halt. When he reached for something, the defense says, officers could not clearly tell whether he was going for a weapon, and they felt threatened. Diallo was then fired upon; 19 of the 41 bullets hit the West African immigrant. He was unarmed, having only a beeper, a wallet and his keys when he was killed.

Prosecution forensic pathologist Dr. Joseph Cohen told jurors that three wounds suggest the officers continued to shoot Diallo when he was either falling or already down. One bullet, Cohen said, entered the front of Diallo's left shin and travelled up the leg from the front to the rear. Another entered through the bottom of Diallo's right shoe, wounding his third right toe and travelling upwards; the third wound showed that a bullet entered Diallo's right shin and travelled in a "strikingly upward trajectory" until it lodged in an area behind the knee.

According to Cohen, the only way Diallo could have been standing upright when he suffered the wound was if one of the officers was standing directly below him and shooting upwards. If Diallo had been standing up, the bullet would have traveled horizontally from the shin to the back of the leg, not directly up the leg.

Cohen told jurors how multiple gunshot wounds perforated Diallo's spine, spinal cord, aorta, kidneys, spleen and intestines. Because there was a lack of hemorrhaging or blood on Diallo's body and clothes, Cohen concluded that the wound to victim's aorta may have come before the other shots. [The aorta, the human body's largest artery, pumps blood to the other parts of the body. Dr. Cohen concluded that when the bullet perforated Diallo's aorta, the heart was unable to pump blood to the rest of the body. The doctor found that 45 percent of Diallo's blood had leaked into his chest cavity.]

The medical examiner also indicated that gun-inflicted paralysis and broken bones may have caused Diallo to fall during the shooting. Refuting defense claims that Diallo remained standing for a time during the shooting, Cohen told jurors that the bullet that pierced Diallo's aorta also perforated his spine and spinal cord. Diallo would have been paralyzed from the waist down and falling during the stream of 41 bullets.

For the record, Cohen concluded that Diallo died from the multiple gunshot wounds he suffered during his encounter with the officers.

The defense is expected to counter Cohen's testimony with their own expert who may talk about the trajectory of the bullets as well as Diallo's wounds. Cohen will be cross-examined Tuesday afternoon before prosecutors rest their case-in-chief.

— Bryan Robinson