By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — When opening statements start in the highly anticipated trial of three construction supervisors and a demolition company charged with the 2007 deaths of two firefighters at the Deutsche Bank building, jurors will be forced to exit the courtroom for at least half of it.
That's because the panel of 12 jurors — who may be asked to sacrifice as much as six months of their lives to this case, which is expected to be one of the longest and most complex criminal trials in recent memory at Manhattan State Supreme Court — is only being asked to judge two of the four defendants.
The others have opted for a bench trial, meaning that they have put their fates in the hands of Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Rena Uviller, an 11-year judicial veteran.
Jury selection began Monday for the group that will weigh the evidence against Salvatore DePaola, 56, foreman for the demolition subcontractor John Galt Corp., and Jeffrey Melofchik, 49, safety manager for the general contractor Bovis Lend Lease. They are charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the fire that killed firefighters Robert Beddia, 53, and Joseph Graffagnino, 33.
Mitchel Alvo, 52, Galt's director of asbestos abatement, as well as the demolition company itself, are both charged with the same crimes on the same indictment, but both have opted for Judge Uviller to decide their verdict instead of the jury.
The Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty St. and overlooking Ground Zero was heavily damaged on 9/11. It was in the process of being slowly deconstructed when a discarded cigarette sparked a massive blaze.
Prosecutors say contractors eliminated any chance of survival for the first responders by dismantling the building's standpipe system, which was the only way FDNY firefighters could have accessed a water supply in the building after the sprinkler system was shut down.
The complicated combination of judge and jury means that jurors will have to leave the room for opening statements, and will have to discard any testimony they hear during the trial that is not relevant to the defendants they're responsible for.
Making matters even more complicated, John Galt. Corp. is named as a defendant — but only as a corporation, not an individual. That means that there will be four lawyers sitting at the the defense table, but only three actual defendants sitting in the chairs.
If convicted, the Galt Corp. can only be held responsible for up to $10,000 in fines, not jail time, prosecutors said.
While lawyers in the case are prohibited from speaking to the reporters about it, defense attorneys not connected to the trial weighed in on why the lawyers would split down the middle on whether to leave their fate in the hands of a jury or a judge during the same trial.
Defense attorney Arthur Aidala, who won an acquittal last summer for crane rigger William Rapetti who was charged with causing an East Side crane collapse that killed seven people in 2008, said a bench trial is often best in these cases because of the complexity and volume of evidence.
"There's a lot of technical testimony, there's a lot of expert testimony and quite frankly, a lot of it is very boring and it is very easy for a juror who is thinking about their family or missing work ... for their mind to wander," Aidala said.
"The hope is that a judge who is highly experienced and has the training that judge has would really have the attention span and the discipline to absorb and digest all for the technical aspects of thees types of cases," he added.
And given the tragic nature of of this case, Aidala added that judge is more likely than a jury to "hopefully have the ability to eschew any sympathy that is naturally going to play into this because of two lives that were lost."
The Manhattan DA's office has been criticized for not charging all of the parties allegedly involved in making the Deutsche Bank building a hazard-ridden trap.
Lawyers for the defendants in the case have argued their clients are the "scapegoats" for the real responsible parties, including the city's construction and building oversight agencies, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and Bovis, the general contractor.
In addition, the father of firefighter Joseph Graffagnino has said he will boycott the trial to protest the DA's decision not to charge any of the other parties he believes responsible for the inferno that spanned 15 floors of the 41-story building on Aug. 8 2007.
Seema Iyer, a defense attorney who routinely handles cases in Manhattan, said it is unusual to have a simultaneous bench and jury trial but that doing so may be a "back-door" way to "sever" the cases — a legal procedure in which individuals charged on one indictment are allowed to go to trial separately.
"It's like you're getting rid of the guilty by association [element]," Iyer said.
Jury selection is expected to continue Friday.
