November 8th Update on Duval Lawsuit

Transfered from old site

Expert Witness Says Duval Lost $400,000 in Wages to Wrongful Imprisonment
 
By Elaine Russell, Rochester Indymedia
 

 
(November 8, 2002)Attorneys for John Duval called an expert witness to testify as to the wages lost through 26 years of wrongful imprisonment. American University Professor Richard B. Edelman, Ph.D., testified that Duval would have earned over $400,000 between 1973 and 1999, based on his current employment situation and considering factors such as minimum wage increases and inflation rates. Duval currently works 20 hours a week for $6.50 an hour. Dr. Edelman stressed that this was a conservative estimate.
 

 
City Attorney, Mr. M., pressed on to present testimony from more Mahoney detectives. Mr. M. questioned the witnesses from a spot two feet from Duval and hovered over him in an intimidating manner. Mr. M., heretofore impeccably groomed, was noticed to have a fuzz ball on his suit jacket. It was removed at approximately 12:15 by the court reporter.
 

 
The 1973 testimony of Detective Mahoney was read into the record. When asked when he first saw Duval, Mahoney replied that it was when they brought him into the Public Safety Building. The matter of the time Duval first met Mahoney appears to be a running gag in this case. Duval said it was in 1973. The transcript of the 1973 trial records Mahoney saying in was in 1973. The President of the Locust Club, which exists to “protect the police,” took time from his busy schedule yesterday to testify under oath that they met in 1969.
 

 
Mahoney is gone but not forgotten. His mean spirit lives on. His meanness resonates with the Civilian Review Board, with the Mayor’s office, with the corporate media, with the County Executive and his $50 million jail expansion, and with the Grand Jury.
 

 
Mahoney’s legacy reminds us of the words of poet John Greenleaf Whittier:
 
“Priest, warrior, and statesman, from Georgia to Maine,
 
All mounting the saddle, all grasping the rein;
 
Right merrily hunting the black man, whose sin
 
Is the curl of his hair and the hue of his skin.”
 
(“The Hunters of Men, 1835)
 

 
Court resumes on Tuesday with closing arguments and the Judge’s instruction to the jury.