Jury selection to continue today
Prosecution, defense to resume choosing jury in 2014 Lansingburgh murder case
TROY >> Jury selection will resume Tuesday morning in the trial of the man accused of killing a Lansingburgh woman and her unborn child in 2014.
After four hours of questioning Monday, the prosecution and defense were able to agree on just five jurors to hear the case against Gabriel Vega, 19, who is accused of killing Vanessa Milligan, 19, and their unborn daughter, Alina Brielle, on April 3, 2014.
Police said Vega killed Milligan just days before she was to give birth to their daughter, then set fire to the apartment Milligan shared with her grandmother at 271 5th Ave. to try to cover up the crime, causing extensive damage to both that building and a neighboring home at 269 5th Ave.
Rensselaer County Court Judge Andrew Ceresia started with a pool of about 200 people to select a 12-member jury, along with two alternates, to consider charges of second-degree murder, second- and third-degree arson and first-degree abortion included in an indictment by a grand jury. Vega sat attentively at the defense table throughout the process, wearing glasses, an open-collared, white dress shirt and dark slacks and with his long, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail.
The beginning of the process was delayed briefly Monday morning as Ceresia considered a motion by defense attorney Frederick Rench of Clifton Park to dismiss the indictment because of questions about the testimony of one witness. Rench specifically cited two statements
made to the grand jury by Janelle Santana, a friend of Milligan who told grand jurors she had visited the woman on the night she was killed and said Milligan asked her to leave the door unlocked upon leaving because Vega was coming over later to drop off an iPod and a pair of headphones.
Rench claimed that statement, as well as testimony in which Santana said she was aware Vega was the father of the baby, were improper because they were hearsay and that Santana did not have direct knowledge to confirm either. Assistant District Attorney Andrew Botts, who is prosecuting the case, successfully countered, however, that both statements were proper, pointing out Santana’s statement about the paternity of Milligan’s baby was further supported by statements made by Vega to police, as well as DNA testing of the child’s body.
In addition, Botts pointed out additional testimony from another woman with whom Vega fathered a child in which she said Vega admitted he was in Milligan’s apartment on the night of her death and that he had killed Milligan and the baby.
The trial is expected to
last about two weeks, Ceresia said, with Botts saying he expected to need about six days to present his case and Rench saying he would only need a day “at most” for defense arguments.
Police described Vega as a “classic psychopath” at the time of his arrest and said investigators had built “an overwhelmingly strong case” against him. Prosecutors, however, said that while he was charged with murder in Milligan’s death, he could only be charged with abortion in the death of their daughter because the baby had yet to be born and state law did not allow a murder charge in the death of an unborn child.
Vega was picked up six months after Milligan’s death by federal marshals on Central Avenue in Albany, on Oct. 22, 2014, and has been held in the Rensselaer County jail since his arrest.