Clemente case is on appeal, attorney says

An attorney for former Wharton student Christopher Clemente said yesterday that he is appealing Clemente's 1991 convictions on nine counts of drugs and weapons possession. In the appeal, the defense admits that the Harlem apartment where police found Clemente on January 9, 1990 contained rock and powder cocaine, 214 crack vials and a loaded nine millimeter pistol, as well as a drug ledger with the name "Christopher Clemente" written in it. The defense also concedes that "numerous crack vials and bags of crack, as well as another 9 mm. pistol" were found outside the apartment. But the defense contends that the drugs and guns did not belong to Clemente, the signatures in the ledger were not Clemente's and the evidence in the apartment was seized illegally, in violation of the Fourth Amendment. At the trial, the defense maintained that Clemente was in the apartment for "purely innocent reasons." The defense suggested that he had gone to the apartment "for a tryst" with a woman named Leah Bundy. Bundy was convicted along with Clemente and sentenced to life imprisonment. According to Ronald Kuby, one of Clemente's attorneys, police originally went to the apartment next door to the one Clemente was found in to respond to a 911 call reporting a shooting. Kuby said the police then ordered Clemente to open the door to the apartment where he was. Clemente panicked, breaking a window and throwing some of the contraband out before opening the door, Kuby added. According to the appeal, the police overstepped their bounds by making an "extensive and intensive search for evidence" in the apartment, despite the fact that police did not have a search warrant. "[The police] conducted a room-by-room search, which they are absolutely not entitled to do," Kuby said. According to the appeal, any evidence seized in the apartment should be ruled inadmissable and suppressed. The appeal also takes issue with the judge's ruling that Clemente could be cross-examined about the details of two prior convictions involving crack possession. Judge Richard Lowe ruled at the trial that the underlying facts of Clemente's prior convictions -- while not normally admissable -- would be relevant on cross examination "in terms of Mr. Clemente's credibility" because the defense was claiming Clemente's was an "innocent presence" and that he did not own any of the drugs in the apartment. Kuby said this ruling was the reason that Clemente did not testify in his defense. The final argument in the appeal claims that the trial court should not have been allowed to ask Clemente's character witnesses about his prior offenses as if they were facts. The appeal claims the prosecution should have had to ask witnesses "if they had heard reports of the incidents, not whether they had heard of the offenses themselves." Kuby had harsh words for Lowe yesterday, calling the judge "an absolute disgrace." He criticized Lowe both for his handling of Clemente's and other trials, saying he thought Lowe's "extremely pro-police" bias prejudiced Clemente's case. Kuby said the defense maintains that Clemente was in the wrong place at the wrong time. "We've been saying that from the beginning," he said. "The tragedy is that he's spending 16 years to life in prison, which means it will be 16 years before he's even eligible for parole." New York City Assistant District Attorney Maxwell Wiley, who prosecuted Clemente, said he has not yet received a copy of the appeal and declined to comment on the case citing office policy. Clemente is currently serving his term at Greenhaven Correctional Facility in upstate New York.

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