POLICE ‘VIC’ A NO-SHOW
Judge eyes tossing sodomy suit
A BROOKLYN JUDGE has set a deadline for a tattoo artist who claimed he was sodomized by cops in a subway station to come forward if he wants to retry his civil case for a third time.
The problem? The lawyer representing Michael Mineo can’t find him.
Magistrate Judge Steven Tiscione issued an order last week giving the lawyer until Dec. 16 to locate his client or the $440 million lawsuit will likely be dismissed.
Three cops were acquitted of criminal charges; two were cleared by a civil jury. The only claim that remains is against the city and Officer Richard Kern for excessive force — two previous civil trials ended in hung juries for Kern.
But the last trial was in 2010 and Mineo, 32, appears to have gone underground since then after failing to convince a single jury of his shocking allegations in four trials.
He accused Kern of sodomizing him with a police baton in October 2008 while two other officers held him down after they caught him smoking marijuana outside the Prospect Park subway station in Flatbush.
“I think the case is extremely viable,” Mineo’s lawyer Kevin Mosley told the Daily News. “He was gung-ho about a third (civil) trial at that time, but whether he feels that way now, I don’t know.”
Mosley told the judge that even a private eye he hired could not locate Mineo.
Still, he believes Mineo is alive and is not incarcerated. “He moved (out of Brooklyn) and he’s not with the same crowd,” Mosley told The News.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division opened a probe of the incident in 2014, demanding that Kern submit a genetic sample to the FBI to determine whether his DNA is present in the blood mixture recovered from his baton.
Lawyers for the city and Kern told the judge they are trying to determine if the investigation remains open.
Since the last trial, Mosley’s former co-counsel in the case, Stephen Jackson, pleaded guilty to stealing more than $50,000 from a client and was disbarred.
Dr. Syed Ahmed, who testified that the injury to Mineo was not self-inflicted, was convicted of Medicare fraud in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Kern’s lawyers declined to comment.