I see Albany attorney Terry Kindlon is filing an appeal in the case of Christopher Porco, the University of Rochester student and town of Bethlehem ax murderer whose trial enthralled the Capital Region in 2006. No doubt the physical evidence was weak, but I haven't come across anyone unconnected to the defense who entertains serious doubts about Porco's guilt.
That is emphatically not the case with two other defendants tried that year, one of whom was represented by Kindlon. They were Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain, who are now imprisoned and whose case is still properly controversial in and beyond this area. I covered much of their trial at the federal courthouse in Albany, and along I believe with most of the other reporters there would have been happy to see them acquitted. I deny that that makes me part of some liberal media conspiracy. While I oppose torture, I didn't object to the Bush administration's wiretapping, recognizing as I do the actual grave threat of Islamic terrorism. But Hossain and Aref were entangled in an FBI sting operation, and it was far from proven that they would have supported terrorism apart from that.
One problem for the defense, though, was that when Kindlon made his impassioned pleas on behalf of Aref, I couldn't help remembering, as I bet did many jurors, that a brief time before he had been making similar impassioned pleas (seen by us on TV) on behalf of the innocence of Porco, in which no one believed. Still, you never know. I think family members including the deceased mother have been vindicated in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case, when most people including me thought they had something to do with it, so I could be wrong about Porco, too. But that's not the way to bet.
Comments