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L E T T E R F R OM T HE E D I T OR
Bronx Justice
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
Over the past several weeks
— and this past Friday
and Monday, in particular
— tragedy unfolded
at the Bronx County Hall of Justice
on East 161st Street. That tragedy
— the trial, closing statements,
and conviction of gay teenager Abel
Cedeno on the charge of fi rst-degree
manslaughter — compounded another
tragedy that took place in September
2017, when the long-bullied
youth stabbed classmate Matthew
McCree to death, because, he has
said repeatedly , he feared for his life
in a classroom brawl in which the
dead boy bounded to the front of the
room to attack the defendant.
The terrible loss of life nearly two
years ago and the risk that another
young life may be wasted in incarceration
stem from numerous failures
on the part of adults in this city
— in both the school system and the
criminal justice establishment.
Cedeno, who is 19 now, has been
bullied for the greater part of the
past decade. He and his mother
made multiple requests that he be
transferred from the school where
he had been made a target — a
school so dangerous and chaotic
that it was shuttered shortly after
the violent events of September 2017
— but those appeals fell on deaf
ears. A counselor at the school who
testifi ed in Cedeno’s trial, even as
she tried to paint the school as having
a gay-friendly climate, acknowledged
that she had heard from him
on numerous occasions about his
bullying, but never made a report to
the Department of Education. The
responsibility for that, she said she
assumed, was the dean’s.
Prior to the 2017 stabbing incident,
Cedeno had never been bothered
by McCree, but he has said he
was aware of the youth’s reputation.
A friend of Cedeno had suffered a
beating at McCree’s hands, the defendant
said. The defense developed
evidence that McCree and his friend,
who was injured in the 2017 brawl,
were gang members, but Judge Michael
A. Gross did not allow any
evidence of the two youths’ prior bad
acts to be introduced.
Several factors in the public record,
however, lend credence to the
defense claims about the two young
men who were stabbed.
Several months after the incident,
McCree’s brother, Kevon Dennis, was
arrested on felony charges of using a
knife just hours after McCree’s death
to rob student witnesses of evidence,
including cell phones that might
have included footage of the deadly
encounter. Those charges were later
dropped by the offi ce of Bronx District
Attorney Darcel Clark, who was
simultaneously pursuing murder
charges against Cedeno — which
the grand jury later reduced to manslaughter.
Defense efforts to have a
special prosecutor step in to avoid
the obvious confl ict of interest faced
by the Bronx prosecutor were denied
by the court. Dennis, meanwhile, on
another occasion attempted to jump
Cedeno outside the Bronx court.
A student witness presented by
the prosecutor last week was forced
under defense questioning to admit
that when she learned in late 2017
that Cedeno was free on bail, she
posted to Facebook an alert that
she had spied him on East 182nd
Street and that “theres no way” he
“is walkin that comfortable nd not
gettin touched.” She added that Mc-
Cree’s friends “needa step up they
game up 100” percent.
Which students were called to
testify was, in and of itself, a troubling
aspect of the trial. Defense attorneys
have said that the Department
of Education at every turn
frustrated their efforts to contact
the students who were in the room
when McCree died. The prosecutors,
however, produced a blizzard of witnesses
of their choosing, notifying
the defense of their identities just
one day in advance of their testimony.
A new state law passed this
year, thankfully, will require district
attorneys in the future to turn over
material to be used at trial in a far
more timely and equitable way. As
it was, Cedeno was only able to let
his attorneys know that the young
woman who had threatened him on
Facebook was selected by the district
attorney’s offi ce to offer testimony
against him as he watched her
on the witness stand.
Perhaps the clearest sign that the
criminal justice system has no understanding
of what Abel Cedeno
had faced in his career in the city’s
public schools came when Assistant
District Attorney Nancy Borko delivered
her closing statement last week
and ludicrously charged that Cedeno
had arrived at school the day of
the fatal encounter “bent on creating
an opportunity to use” the knife he
had purchased on Amazon to protect
himself to “prove that he’s not
a pussy… to prove that he’s tough.”
To be fair, in using the word “pussy,”
Borko was quoting a slur that Cedeno
himself threw out at the students
who were pelting him with pens and
wads of paper that day.
What this veteran prosecutor
seemed to have no appreciation for,
however, is that he chose that word
precisely because that was the term
that over and over again had been
used against him. On one of the occasions
that his mother, Luz Hernandez,
joined him in meeting with
school offi cials to discuss his bullying,
Cedeno testifi ed that he would
not say he was gay in front of her.
“I thought it was something to be
ashamed of,” he testifi ed . “The bullies
said I was gay and ‘you shouldn’t
be gay.’ They were bullying me for
something I have no control over.”
Now, a young gay man who suffered
continual bullying in a school
system that never gave a damn
enough to listen to his pleas for relief
faces the threat of further victimization
in a lengthy prison sentence.
Should Judge Gross, in determining
sentencing on September 10 , grant
Cedeno youthful offender status, the
young man could avoid the most severe
penalty and also be eligible for
rehabilitation diversion to better ensure
that he is ready to reenter society
on his release.
If Abel Cedeno is not given that
consideration, may God have mercy
on him. And on Judge Gross, ADA
Borko, District Attorney Clark, and
all the adults who failed Cedeno and
the dead and the injured students
from his school.
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