IN A controversial case that has touched a nerve in the city's Irish community, a New York police officer will go on trial today accused of killing an immigrant from Derry in a Bronx apartment three years ago.
Mr Richard Molloy is charged with second-degree murder for allegedly shooting Mr Heslin Phelan (39), a house-painter who had left Northern Ireland nine years before his death. Before emigrating to the US, Mr Phelan had also served time in the Maze prison for terrorist offences and membership of the INLA.
The three years leading to the trial have been dogged by controversy and protests. Following Mr Phelan's death in January 1996, investigators said he had died from undetermined causes. But after the release of a city medical examiner's report, which ruled it a homicide, and protests by the Phelan family, the case made a slow passage through the New York legal system until the Bronx district attorney indicted Mr Molloy on murder charges. With no eyewitnesses inside the apartment, prosecutors and defence attorneys have sketched radically different outlines about what happened in the final moments of Mr Phelan's life.
According to witnesses interviewed for court documents, on the night of his death Mr Phelan had been drinking at the Oak Bar in the Bronx, where both men were regular customers. During the evening, the Irishman became argumentative with several people. Mr Molloy arrived, off-duty and in civilian clothes, and a barmaid suggested he take Mr Phelan to her apartment to sleep off the drink.
Mr Cormack Lee told the court he heard the two men come into the apartment. He has testified that through a wall he heard Mr Phelan shout "Go on, go on", just before hearing what later he learned was a gunshot.
Mr Molloy's lawyer, Mr George H. Vallario jnr, has always maintained that inside the apartment a despondent Mr Phelan managed to snatch the officer's handgun from its holster and shoot himself in the head in an apparent suicide.
Ms Anna Phelan, the dead man's mother, is adamant her son would not have killed himself.
The prosecution agrees. The city medical examiner's report, it says, indicates the officer prodded his gun into the victim's face and fired the fatal shot.
From the angle of the entry wound, the prosecution believes that it would have been very difficult for a right-handed person, such as Mr Phelan, to shoot himself through the left eye.
Hoping to discredit theories that the shooting was a suicide or an accident, the prosecution has also pushed for inclusion of evidence it believes illustrates a pattern of reckless and abusive behaviour on the part of Mr Molloy.
That evidence includes some disturbing allegations: that while drinking off-duty Mr Molloy fired his handgun at lights in a bar; during another drinking session involving a discussion about Northern Ireland violence, the officer said: "I'll show you some violence" and allegedly discharged a firearm into a street.
The officer's lawyer insists Mr Molloy is not the demon the prosecution has portrayed him as: "This guy is suffering. It's a tragedy for both families," Mr Vallario said. Rather, he said, Mr Molloy is a hard-working street policeman with a high arrest record and several departmental commendations.
Mr Molloy is currently on modified duty with the police department, which means he has handed in his badge and service handgun and performs administrative tasks pending a trial decision.
The Phelan family, however, remains quietly positive about that outcome. "We're still cautiously optimistic about this," said the victim's sister, Ms Martina Boback.