Phi Beta Sigma members found NOT Guilty

[TheEpitome1920]

By Herbert Lowe
STAFF WRITER

December 13, 2004, 3:28 PM EST


A Queens jury declared three Phi Beta Sigma members not guilty today
of severely beating a pledge with a paddle in the St. John's
University fraternity trial.

The defendants hugged one another while their mothers and supporters
erupted with a huge uproar after the jury foreman read the last
verdict in State Supreme Court in Kew Gardens.

Afterward, several jurors warmly greeted Anthony D'Abreu, 25, Matthew
Fraser, 24, and Phillipe Moreau, 32, each of whom had faced up to 7
years in prison if convicted of the sole charge, second-degree
assault.

"They're all good boys," said the foreman, John Tonkin, 54, a heating
inspector with the city Housing Authority. "I've got three grown boys of my own and if they were my boys, I'd be proud of them."

Prosecutors contended the defendants beat Brian Chambers so severely with a wooden paddle that he was hospitalized for two weeks.

Chambers, 22, testified that he was in so much pain from being
paddled 50 times in Kissena Park, on July 10, 2003, that "it felt
like my back was in a vise" when he went to a hospital 36 hours later.

"A majority of us felt that the prosecution didn't give us enough
evidence," said another juror, 27, a social work major at Borough of Manhattan Community College, who preferred to remain anonymous.

The defendants each testified during a month-long trial that they
were elsewhere when Chambers, then of Bay Ridge, was beaten. They also said Chambers was too early in his initiation process to be struck.

D'Abreu, of Canarsie, Fraser, of Queens Village, and Moreau, of
Jamaica, all St. John's graduates, testified that they were at a late-night Phi Beta Sigma planning meeting at Hunter College in Manhattan
that night.

"There is no proof beyond a reasonable doubt that they were in the
same county with him [Chambers] the night he was struck," Moreau's
attorney, Michael Connolly, said in his closing argument on Wednesday.

The jury of seven women and five men began deliberating Thursday.
Prosecutors contend the defendants wanted to ensure he did
not "skate" into the fraternity. They were also upset that another
pledge, Ryan Jackson, had quit, leaving Chambers to pledge alone.

"'You're getting more because Ryan's not here,'" Assistant District
Attorney Kimberley Nielsen, during her closing argument, quoted
Chambers as saying about the defendants telling him the night he was
beaten. "'Don't you wish your 'LB' [line brother] was here now.'"

Fraser and defense witnesses testified that Chambers showed no signs
of ailing while helping him and another Sigma, Karl Edwards, move
Edwards' fiancée's furniture the day after the alleged beating.

"I've known Brian for a long time," Fraser testified. "He didn't seem
any different that day than any normal day."