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How Will Delay In Getting Marcelo Lucero To Hospital Impact On Conroy Case?

Posted March 18, 2010 by Patrick Young, Esq.
Categories: Hate Watch

Day 1 of the trial of Jeff Conroy focused attention on the delay in an ambulance crew in getting Marcelo Lucero to Brookhaven Hospital for treatment. Newsday reports that:

An emergency medical technician testified Thursday that an ambulance was delayed in taking Marcelo Lucero to a hospital after the 37-year-old was stabbed in November 2008.

But Chris Schiera, an assistant chief of the Patchogue Ambulance Co., said Lucero already was near death when he found him lying amid pools of blood near the Patchogue train station.

Schiera, the first witness called by prosecutors to testify in the high-profile murder and manslaughter trial of Jeffrey Conroy, said Lucero was in shock minutes after he was stabbed.

Lucero was in “the natural transition from life to death,” he said.

After briefly treating him in a driveway, emergency responders took Lucero to Briarcliffe College, a few blocks away, to be airlifted to Stony Brook University Medical Center, Schiera said. But Lucero went into cardiac arrest before a helicopter arrived, and the chopper would not take him, he said.

Lucero was taken to Brookhaven Memorial Hospital Medical Center, where he died.

I called up criminal defense attorney Glenn Abolafia to find out if the ambulance delay could impact on this case. Glenn has worked as both a prosecutor and defense attorney on murder cases. And he has a long involvement with a volunteer ambulance company in New Jersey. He told me that what the ambulance responders did was a judgment call. He said that in many cases of severe injury, such as that suffered by Lucero, the choice is to airlift to a hospital with a large trauma unit like Stony Brook. He said that a helicopter crew, arriving when Lucero had gone into cardiac arrest, would not take him until he was stabilized and that the EMTs would then take him by ambulance to the nearest hospital. So the reaction of the ambulance crew, which some have questioned in hindsight, was not outside ordinary practices, he told me.

In any case, Glenn says, the ambulance crew’s decisions are “totally irrelevant” to the charges against Conroy. The rescue workers’ decisions are not a defense to murder, since they did not cause the injury that led to Marcelo Lucero’s death.

As I was told back in law school, a killer can’t argue that his victim was entitled to better medical care than he received. Conroy has said he stabbed Marcelo Lucero. A knife to the chest could reasonably be expected to kill the victim. It is unlikely Conroy stabbed Lucero thinking “At least he’ll get the best medical attention possible”.

Tags : hate crimes, hate watch, jeffrey conroy, marcelo lucero

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