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4.2.12
WC: 191694

assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment. I still have no idea whether the victim’s mother was correct in her assessment of her dead son. The situation seems a bit more complex, but that’s often the case when you drill down to the real story behind the killing.

In July of 2011, my own family learned what it felt like to become the victim of a possible homicide. My brother’s beloved wife, Marilyn, was killed while riding her bicycle on a New York City street. Marilyn was a brilliant lawyer who had just retired from being a judicial referee in the New York Matrimonial Court. Her sudden death was devastating to my brother, their children and our entire family. She had been run down by a United States postal truck and rushed to the hospital where a team of doctors worked feverishly to cut off her bike helmet and try to save her life. They couldn’t help her and she died.

Because New York City, like many large urban areas, has security cameras on nearly every block, my nephew (who is an engineer) and I were able to view video footage of the event from several different angles. What we saw was a mail truck and an unidentified van barreling down a narrow street in what appeared to be a game of “chicken.” Neither would give the right of way to the other, so they both decided to drive down the narrow street in tandem. The mail truck struck my sister-in-law. It then stopped, appeared to look back, and proceeded to drive away. It stopped again and then made a sharp left turn into the basement of the mail building.

Upon viewing the video and talking to witnesses, we came to believe that Marilyn had been the victim of two crimes: negligent vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of an accident. Suddenly our family became the victims seeking justice from a reluctant prosecutor. It was a painful shifting of roles, as my brother demanded a thorough investigation and prosecution of the offending driver or drivers (the driver of the van was never identified or caught). We were now using technology and engineering science to try to prove criminal guilt on the part of the mail truck driver. In the end, the prosecutor charged the mail truck driver with leaving the scene of an accident, but not with causing Marilyn’s death. This horrible tragedy made me better understand what it feels like to be the family of a homicide victim.

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