Retrial of Aging Manslaughter Case Goes to Jury

By SAMANTHA GRILLO & ALYSON KAUFMAN

A jury began deliberations on Tuesday in the retrial of a Brooklyn man who had been found guilty of murdering his roommate’s friend seven years ago but whose guilty verdict was overturned because of a judge’s error.

At the earlier trial the defendant, Delroy Colville, now 48, overruled his defense counsel’s request that the jury consider manslaughter charges instead of second degre murder and the judge sided with him. However, last October the State Court of Appeals ruled that the judge was in error.

In closing arguments in the current trial defense lawyer Julie Clark portrayed her client as acting in self-defense. “He stabbed Gardner not to kill him, but because he was defending himself,” she said.

The case stems from an incident in 2004 when, according to the indictment, Colville got into a heated argument that resulted in him slashing the roommate Gregory Gardner with a kitchen knife and stabbing and killing the roommate’s friend, Air Jordan Femme Carl Jones. During the altercation, Gardner allegedly hit Colville on the head with a glass ashtray, forminfg the basis of the self-defense argument.

But Brooklyn Assistant DA James Leeper countered in his summation that that Gardner had already walked away from the fight by going into the hallway when he was stabbed. The defendant allegedly went to his bedroom, retrieved a chef’s knife, and chased Gardner to the hallway where he straddled and stabbed him. Roommate Carl Jones was slashed on the lip while attempting to mediate and protect Gardner.

After stabbing Gardner, the defendant allegedly ran downstairs, put the knife in a mailbox, and then locked himself in his bedroom.

“He was panicking because he has no history of crime,” the defense attorney said. “If he was really committing a crime he would have left.”