Roderick Scott not guilty in shooting of Christopher Cervini
Shortly after a state Supreme Court jury began deliberating in the trial of Roderick A. Scott, another panel assembled in a nearby room of the Hall of Justice.
Sixteen suburban high school seniors who attended the trial as a project for their New Visions program, which prepares them for a career in law enforcement, evaluated evidence in the case and took a straw vote on Scott’s innocence or guilt.
Within a half-hour, they decided that Scott was not guilty of first-degree manslaughter in the April 4 shooting of 17-year-old Christopher D. Cervini in Greece. Their teacher, Marc Ouzer, said his students found that the prosecution failed to meet its requirement of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Scott hadn’t acted in self-defense.
The actual jury deliberated 19½ hours over two days before reaching the same verdict Friday night. It found that Scott, 42, was justified when he shot Cervini twice while trying to detain him and his cousin for rummaging through cars at 3:30 a.m. on Baneberry Way, off Manitou Road.
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Outside court, Cervini’s relatives reacted in bitter anger to the verdict and said Cervini’s character had been unfairly put on trial. “My son was murdered. He was viciously gunned down,” said his father, James Cervini.
Scott, who would have faced a mandatory prison term ranging from five years to 25 years had he been convicted, said he wished the shooting hadn’t occurred and extended his condolences to the Cervini family. “I can’t imagine what they’re going through,” he said.
But he continued to insist that he was being a good citizen by attempting to hold Cervini and his cousin at gunpoint until police arrived.
“I feel that justice was served today,” he said.
His next step?
“A good night’s sleep.”
His lawyer, John R. Parrinello, said he hopes the case has an impact on other parents. Cervini was legally drunk from drinking gin with his cousin and a friend when they left his cousin’s home in the neighborhood and entered unlocked cars looking for cigarettes.
“I just want to say that I hope this case sends a message to families out there to watch their kids, to know where they are and what they are doing,” he said.
Assistant District Attorney Julie Finocchio said she was disappointed by the verdict but thanked jurors for their work.
“I just hope it’s not a message to this community that you have the right to shoot an unarmed 17-year-old kid for breaking into a car,” she said.
To convict Scott of first-degree manslaughter, jurors would have had to find that he killed Cervini while intending to inflict serious physical injury, and was not acting in self-defense. The jury considered no lesser charge.
Jurors announced the verdict at 7:40 p.m. — less than four hours after they sent out a note stating that they were deadlocked.
Justice David D. Egan urged them to continue deliberations with the aim of reaching a verdict but without violating any deeply held views on the evidence. Otherwise, he said, another jury would have to decide the case in a new trial.
After Egan’s instruction, the jurors deliberated about two hours before asking for a readback of testimony from Scott, in which he described the shooting. The verdict came less than an hour after the readback concluded.
Cervini, his 15-year-old cousin, James Cervini, and friend Brian Hopkins, also 15, stayed overnight beginning the evening of April 3 in the basement of James Cervini’s home on Fireweed Trail, within sight of Scott’s two-story colonial home at 58 Baneberry Way. But after drinking purloined gin while James Cervini’s parents were asleep, they went out to walk loudly around the neighborhood about 3 a.m. during an early spring storm.
After taking a circuitous route down Buttonwood Drive and over to Baneberry, and trying to get into cars along the way, they walked up to the garage of Scott’s home. Scott and his girlfriend, Tracy L. Allen, who were sleeping separately because of an argument the night before, both heard voices outside and got up to check.
Both said they saw three people walk from their driveway to a driveway directly across the street at 57 Baneberry and try to open the door of a truck. Scott told Allen to call 911, got his legally permitted .40-caliber pistol from the top of an armoire, and went outside in what he said was an attempt to stop a possible theft and hold the people responsible until police arrived.
When he got outside, the three people had moved west one house to 39 Baneberry. One person continued walking on the sidewalk toward Manitou, but Scott said he found two others between a pickup and a sport utility vehicle. The dome light of the SUV was on, indicating that someone had just entered it, he said.
Scott said he ordered the two people — Christopher and James Cervini — to hold still, warning them that his wife had just called 911 and telling them he had a gun.
But both bolted, he said. One ran around the front of the pickup and escaped toward Manitou and the other ran at him, shouting “I’ll get him!” or “I’ll get you!”
He said he fired twice because he feared for his life, not knowing if the person running at him was armed or would try to take away his gun and use it on him.
The person ran past Scott and collapsed in the street, where he said, “I’m just a kid” as he bled into the gutter, according to Scott’s testimony.
James Cervini told a different story. He said he and his cousin were obeying Scott’s order to stay still and had their hands up when the first shot was fired. He said he fled and had a glimpse of his cousin but couldn’t tell if he was running.
Hopkins, who had crossed Manitou, said he heard a shot, started to turn, heard a second shot, and saw someone fall in the driveway.
Cervini was shot twice: once on the extreme right side of his back, next to his armpit, and once by a gunshot that went through his left hand, chest and arm. A forensic pathologist said he could not definitively say which shot was fired first, but testified that the wound to the back was the fatal one.
A forensic toxicologist testified that Cervini was legally intoxicated when he was killed. His body also had traces of marijuana and amphetamines, she said.
Finocchio said the evidence showed that Cervini was shot first in the back while standing still with his cousin and reacted by holding his left hand to the exit wound in his chest and running at Scott, who shot him again.
Parrinello said he believed Cervini was shot first in the front and was spun around by the impact, causing the second shot to hit Cervini next to his armpit.
He also argued that Cervini ran at Scott in an attempt to help his cousin escape. James Cervini had been on probation twice for assisting a burglary and holding a knife to the head of a 10-year-old and feared he would face a charge of violating probation for drinking, breaking curfew and attempted theft, Parrinello said.
MZEIGLER@DemocratandChronicle.com
