Showing no emotion, suspended Weehawken police officer Alejandro Jaramillo stood before Superior Court Judge Kevin Callahan Monday afternoon to hear the jury’s verdict in the death of a 17-year-old Union City boy in July, 2003, with whom he’d had an altercation near the Weehawken/Union City border.
The 27-year-old Jaramillo was found guilty of aggravated assault and three counts of official misconduct, but was acquitted of the most serious charges: murder, aggravated manslaughter, and reckless manslaughter. The jury of seven women and five men took nearly four entire days to render a verdict.
Although Jaramillo could theoretically receive up to 25 years in prison on all three counts, officials estimate that Jaramillo is looking at a sentence of seven to 10 years and could receive his parole after serving as little as four years.
The family of the victim, Jose Luis Ives of Union City, has already filed a civil suit against Jaramillo.
The incident
On that fateful night of July 16, 2003, 17-year-old Jose Luis Ives Jr. rushed to the aid of his younger brother, Jorge, who was apparently involved in an altercation with Jaramillo. Jaramillo, an off-duty police officer, had been walking his dog around 11 p.m. and apparently spotted young Jorge Ives with a group of other boys setting off car alarms on Weehawken streets.
Jaramillo then became involved in a struggle with Jose Luis Ives, causing him to fall to the pavement, reportedly hitting his head hard on the ground.
At the scene, Ives went into convulsions, became unconscious, slipped into a coma with a fractured skull, and eight days later, he died from the injuries. A coroner’s report stated that the teenager died of severe head trauma. Ives’ two younger brothers testified that they saw Jaramillo continually pound their brother’s head against the pavement. One expert said that the victim’s fractures could not have been caused by one fall.
However, after hearing two weeks of testimony and deliberating the case for four days, the jury decided that Jaramillo did not intentionally kill Ives, only assaulted him.
Jaramillo could have received anywhere from 10 to 30 years for the murder or manslaughter charges.
During the closing days of the trial and the days where the jury was deliberating, Jaramillo was spotted clutching a Bible and displaying some signs of nervousness. But when the jury foreman read the verdict, he didn’t flinch.
Sentencing July 20; no longer a cop
After the verdict was read, Jaramillo was placed in handcuffs and whisked away by Hudson County Sheriff’s officers to the Hudson County Jail, where he will remain until his sentencing in front of Judge Callahan on July 20.
Jaramillo was convicted of official misconduct for leaving the scene of the assault and for filing a false police report. When Weehawken officials got the news, he was immediately terminated as a police officer.
Ever since the indictment was handed down in August of 2003, Jaramillo had been suspended without pay as a cop. But according to township attorney David Corrigan, the conviction enabled the township to end all association with Jaramillo.
“In light of the conviction, we instructed Township Manager James Marchetti to issue notice of the disciplinary action and termination,” Corrigan said.
Defense rests
Jaramillo’s attorney, Robert Galantucci of Hackensack, applauded the jury’s diligence in hearing all of the testimony.
“In light of all of the charges against him, I think we have to be pleased with the result,” said Galantucci, who only called one defense witness to testify. “We’re not as happy as if he was totally not guilty, so we will pause to say that we celebrated the verdict. But we’re pleased with it. It’s very difficult to say that it’s anything but a fair verdict.”
‘There is no justice in this country’
The Ives family was deeply angered and upset.
“This is another time where we see that there is no justice in this country,” said the victim’s father, Jose Luis Ives, Sr., through an interpreter. “A criminal is not guilty. We hope that in time he receives his justice and pays for what he did. But this doesn’t help now. It’s proven that a police officer can get out on the street and do whatever he wants, even kill someone. He’s not going to even think about what he has done. He is an animal.”
“I don’t even know what happened up there,” said Luisa Ives, the victim’s mother. “We’re still struggling every day with our loss, even if it has been three years. We were hoping that he would be found guilty, but it didn’t happen. My son will never come back and tell everyone what happened. This man [Jaramillo] is an animal. He took my son.”
Luisa was trying to hold back tears.
“I’m very disappointed with this,” she added. “I don’t know what happened. There is no justice.”
However, Ramon Negron, the victim’s grandfather, did get one sense of solace.
“Once I saw the handcuffs were on him and they were taking him away, I was happy with that,” Negron said.
But Negron admitted that the Ives family wanted to see a murder conviction.
“Everyone in our family was hoping for murder,” Negron said. “It’s a major disappointment for the whole family. We were waiting three years for this. Now, a good kid is gone. It almost feels like he lived in vain.”
Negron feels that Jaramillo received special treatment because he was a police officer.
“If that was a regular citizen up there, this wouldn’t have happened,” Negron said. “They never want to convict a cop.”
Anthony Mack, the Ives’ family attorney, said, “Whenever a jury deliberates that long, it is better for the defendant. The longer they’re out, the better the chances are for an acquittal. Then, they were wrangling on the counts and there seemed to be some dissention in the jury. If there’s a quick verdict, it usually means conviction. This was a difficult case and a complicated case in light of the circumstances.”
Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio agreed with Mack.
“It was a difficult, complex case,” DeFazio said. “It resulted in the tragic death of a 17-year-old boy. There were certainly some disparities in the witnesses and the expert testimony. The jury did their job and asked some insightful questions. We committed a lot of time and effort into this case. It’s disappointing, but we accept the jury’s verdict.”
DeFazio said he believes that Jaramillo “is certainly facing a significant amount of time in prison.”
At the maximum, he faces 10 years maximum on the second degree aggravated assault and 10 years for the official misconduct charge for filing a false police report.
“He’s clearly exposed to consecutive sentences,” DeFazio said.
But Galantucci believes otherwise.
“We got away from the murder and manslaughter charges,” Galantucci said. “There’s no question that the judge will reduce the sentences accordingly.”
Blows to the head
Galantucci’s expert witness, Dr. Mary Case, the chief medical examiner for St. Louis County in Missouri, stated that Ives’ skull fractures and head injuries might not have been caused by multiple blows.
The state medical examiner, Dr. Albert Williams, the man who performed the original autopsy on Ives, testified that he couldn’t determine with any degree of certainty how many actual blows caused the skull fractures to Ives. But famed medical examiner Dr. Michael Baden, known for his testimony in the O.J. Simpson and Robert Blake murder trials, and for his HBO series “Autopsy,” testified that there had to have been more than one blow to cause the skull fractures.
“I didn’t think for a minute that his testimony was credible,” Galantucci said. “I was not concerned with Dr. Baden. It’s been 20 years since he was a medical examiner. He’s a TV guy. But the only one who fit the bill as a true expert was Dr. Case, who is the foremost neuropathologist in the world. Her whole life is based on head injuries. I wasn’t worried about the star quality. This is not TV. This is the real world.”
Galantucci was asked about his strategy in calling just one defense witness.
“For me, to call another witness other than Alejandro Jaramillo would show a lack of trust and support in my client,” Galantucci said. “His statements were read in the initial report. The jury didn’t pay a lot of mind to the testimony from those who said they saw it happen. The only issue was the experts’ testimony.”
Galantucci said that the jury did the right thing by not believing the testimony of the victim’s two younger brothers, Jorge and Juan, who were 10 and 12 at the time of the incident.
“The jury did not buy the story that these kids who were walking the streets late at night tried to tell,” Galantucci said. “They didn’t buy it at all.”
Jaramillo’s reaction
Galantucci was asked how his client was taking the verdict.
“Of course, he has mixed emotions,” Galantucci said. “He understood the difficulty of the case and the amount of charges against him. They literally threw the kitchen sink at him and hoped that something stuck. They hit him with 11 different charges. That’s just overzealousness by the prosecutor. I spoke with Alejandro after the verdict. He was pleased that the jury saw through the nonsense and understood what they were doing.”
Galantucci said that Jaramillo is very remorseful.
“He feels terrible about what happened, but he was put in the position where he had to protect himself,” Galantucci said. “When the verdict was read, he understood perfectly what it meant. He was actually bolstering the spirits of his family. I thought he was very courageous. We spoke about the fact that his career as a police officer was in serious jeopardy, so he understood the severity of it.”
Civil suit
Mack said that there already has been a civil suit filed in Newark by the Ives family against Jaramillo, the Weehawken Police Department, and the township of Weehawken.
“No question, he [Jaramillo] will be deposed in the civil case,” Mack said. “He appeared to be nervous and concerned. It definitely wasn’t like this guy didn’t have a care in the world. I think he has to be remorseful.”
“He looked at all of us, the whole family,” Negron said. “He didn’t show any emotions to us.”
Mack said that the civil case should be heard in court in Newark by September.
Corrigan knew that the civil suit paperwork had already been filed.
“The case will proceed, but his [Jaramillo’s] actions are related to his off-duty conduct and not what he did as a police officer,” Corrigan said. “I believe that the Weehawken police officials acted properly and followed procedure. I don’t believe that he [Mack] has a course of action against the township.”
The verdict was very similar to the last time a Hudson County police officer was charged with criminal murder. In 1995, former Jersey City police officer John Chisuolo was arrested on charges he beat Julio Tarquino to death with a Billy club while off-duty at a Jersey City gas station.
Visiting a friend
While a jury couldn’t reach a verdict on the murder charges, Chisuolo was convicted in 1998 for aggravated assault in the case, as well as unlawful use of a weapon and official misconduct.
Chisuolo served four years of a nine-year jail sentence before being paroled in 2003.