February 17, 2000

Officer Says Wrong Man Was Convicted in Louima Assault

By RICHARD PYLE
Associated Press Writer

Testifying for the first time about one of the most shocking police brutality cases in New York history, a former officer insisted Thursday that a colleague convicted of helping him sodomize Abner Louima with a broken broomstick wasn't even in the room at the time.

Former Officer Justin Volpe said that Officer Charles Schwarz, who faces a possible life sentence on his conviction for holding Louima down, had no part in the assault. Volpe said another officer, Thomas Wiese, was the only person present in a police station bathroom during the attack.

"I never saw Schwarz in the bathroom at any time," Volpe repeatedly said in federal court in Brooklyn. "When I was in the bathroom, the only officer who assaulted Mr. Louima was myself."

Volpe, sentenced to 30 years after pleading guilty last year to the 1997 assault, was the first defense witness in the trial of Schwarz, 34, Wiese, 34, and Thomas Bruder, 37. The three officers are charged with conspiring to conceal Schwarz's role in the attack on the Haitian immigrant.

Volpe said Wiese stood by the entire time, making no move to take part or intercede in the attack. That conflicted sharply with Wiese's assertion, to detectives and Brooklyn district attorney investigators, that he had entered the bathroom during the attack and intervened by dragging a prostrate, bleeding Louima from a toilet stall by his legs.

Schwarz faces a possible life sentence after his 1999 conviction for violating Louima's civil rights by holding him down during the attack.

Volpe, at his own sentencing last December, said for the first time that Wiese, not Schwarz, was the second officer in the bathroom.

On Thursday, Volpe, 27, testified: "I want to do my time with a clear mind, with a clear conscience, and I can't live with myself and do my time in peace, knowing that another man is paying for the crime that I committed."