By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — The most gruesome photographs of the firefighters who suffered tragic smoke inhalation deaths while responding to a 2007 blaze at the hazard-ridden Deutsche Bank building will not be shown to jurors at trial next week, a Manhattan judge ruled Monday.
The gory photos were not necessary for the manslaughter trials of three contractors charged with killing firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Rena Uviller said.
The judge will allow a portrait of each victim, depicting them alive and well in their FDNY gear, she said.
The others, autopsy photos depicting their lifeless faces with soot-filled nostrils and lacerations are off-limits, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Renee Uviller ruled.
"They have no probative value and I'm going to preclude them," Uviller said.
Jurors will see photos of the firefighters damaged lungs but other autopsy images are off-limits, the judge said.
Construction managers Mitchel Alvo, 52, Jeffrey Melofchik, 49, and Salvatore DePaola, 56, will stand trial on manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges beginning Monday.
They allegedly allowed the construction site at the building, which was badly damaged during 9/11, to remain a death trap during construction. Water could not flow to the section of the building that was set ablaze by a discarded cigarette, prosecutors said.
The standpipe system that would have provided water to the responding firefighters was not functional and the individuals charged with the deaths of the firefighters were responsible for that, prosecutors argue.
Defense lawyers for the contractors have called their clients "scapegoats" and have argued that the city failed to make sure the site was safe.
Jury selection is schedueld to begin March 21 but Alvo and the John Galt Group, which is charged as an entity, are asking to have asked for bench trials.
