By Emanuella Grinberg
Court TV
In a late-night decision Friday, a Milwaukee jury acquitted three white off-duty policemen of nearly all charges in the bloody beating of an unarmed biracial man outside a house party where several off-duty officers were present. With its verdict, the panel seemed to accept claims from defendants Andrew Spengler and Jon Bartlett that they used appropriate force in attempting to detain 26-year-old Frank Jude on suspicions that he had stolen Spengler's badge. The verdict also supported defendant Daniel Masarik's claim that he was on the phone with his wife inside Spengler's home when the incident occurred on Oct. 24, 2004. Jude, a former male stripper who is currently incarcerated for an unrelated battery incident, denied he had the badge, which was never recovered. The beating landed him in the hospital for two days with a broken nose, bruises and lacerations all over his body.
"I take no great pleasure that Mr. Jude received the injuries he did, but I am satisfied that this was a just verdict," said Michael Hart, Spengler's lawyer. "There's no doubt he had the hell beaten out of him, but the verdict was clear that it wasn't by these officers." Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann said he was "saddened" by the verdict, but accepted the jury's decision. "I wish the verdict were otherwise, but in our system of justice, the jury decides," McCann said after the verdict. "There was no question as to the severity of the injuries. The question was just who did it." After nearly 25 hours of deliberations over three days, the all-white jury found Masarik, 26, not guilty of substantial battery and reckless endangerment. Spengler, 26, bowed his head at the defense table as he was spared a potential three-year sentence on one charge of substantial battery. Bartlett, 34, was also spared a possible sentence of 10 years on a reckless endangerment charge. However, the panel was unable to reach a verdict on a charge of substantial battery for Bartlett. McCann said his office would retry Bartlett on the charge. Of the dozen or so off-duty officers who attended the party, the three defendants were the only ones criminally charged in the incident. Masarik and Spengler were dismissed from their jobs, and nine others were either suspended or dismissed for either participating in the attack or withholding information about it from authorities. While the civilian witnesses and two uniformed officers who responded to the scene testified that they saw the three defendants kicking and punching Jude while he was on the ground, all but one of the other off-duty officers at the party testified they did not witness any physical violence toward Jude. Prosecutors attributed their testimony to a "code of silence" that permeated the case from the start, when the partygoers, including the three defendants, refused to provide statements to authorities at the scene — in some cases, until months later. "I am very deeply troubled by the code of silence. It seeped into the courtroom," McCann said. "It's hard to believe that the number of officers who were in the immediate presence of the attack did not see anything." Throughout the 11-day trial, lawyers for the three defendants suggested that their clients were the victims of incorrect eyewitness identifications, considering the number of people and the chaos at the scene. The incident occurred sometime around 2:45 a.m., after a long night of partying for the defendants and the victim, a male stripper who attended Spengler's party with two college students he met earlier in the evening at a bachelorette party. As Jude and the young women attempted to leave the party, several of the off-duty officers accosted them and accused them of stealing Spengler's badge from his home. What happened next became a source of contention, as the jury considered inconsistent accounts from both police and civilian witnesses, none of which provided a clear picture of exactly who was responsible for Jude's injuries. During deliberations, the jury asked to see the photo arrays that witnesses in the case used to identify the men they saw kicking and punching Jude in the head. In addition to the photo arrays, they also asked for a copy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from February 2005, which ran a story about the attack on Jude and pictures of the three defendants. While condemning the acts against Jude, Masarik's lawyer attributed the guilty verdict against his client in the court of public opinion to media bias. "None of us wanted to try this case in the media," said attorney Jonathan Smith. "The information coming out from the start was not from the defense, and I think it cannot be helpful to the community to have bits and pieces put out to display when we don't have the whole picture." | 
