‘LIFE’ WILL GO ON
Feds end bid to execute SI killer of two cops
An unrepentant double cop-killer deemed too “intellectually disabled” to be executed will get to live out his life in prison after the feds on Monday dropped an appeal seeking to reinstate his death sentence.
Acting Brooklyn US Attorney Bridget Rohde said the decision in the case of Ronell Wilson (inset) followed “further consideration of all the pertinent legal issues,” with court papers pointing to a recent US Supreme Court ruling.
Rohde also said the move “does not change our view that it was proper to seek the death penalty” for Wilson, a reputed Bloods member, in the 2003 slayings of undercover NYPD Detectives James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews.
“Nor does it lessen the culpability of Wilson, whose conviction was upheld on appeal, for his coldblooded execution of detectives Nemorin and Andrews,” she added.
With capital punishment off the table, Wilson — who impregnated a prison guard in 2012 — remains sentenced to life without the possibility of release.
The head of the NYPD detectives union, Michael Palladino, expressed dismay at the decision.
“I am disappointed because the US Attorney’s Office did a magnifi- cent job proving that Wilson deserved the death penalty in two separate trials, but convincing the court that he has any intellect seems an insurmountable task,” Palladino said.
Wilson infamously stuck out his tongue at his victims’ families in 2007 when he was sentenced to die for fatally shooting the cops during a gun-buy-and-bust operation gone bad on Staten Island.
Wilson was set to become the first federal defendant executed in New York since 1954, when Gerhard Puff was electrocuted for murdering FBI Agent Joseph Brock while being arrested for bank robbery.
But an appeals court narrowly overturned Wilson’s sentence in 2010, ruling that prosecutors violated his rights by attacking his claims of remorse during summations in the penalty phase of his trial.
Wilson was hit with a second death sentence in 2013, but Brooklyn federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis last year ruled he was ineligible for the ultimate punishment due to “significant deficits in adaptive functioning.”
In dropping their appeal of Garaufis’ decision, the feds cited the Supreme Court’s 5-3 ruling in March that found killer Bobby James Moore too intellectually disabled to be executed for the 1980 shotgun slaying of 72-year-old Houston grocery clerk James McCarble.