The
bouncer, Stephen Sakai, 32, was dealt the maximum sentence by
Justice John P. Walsh of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, but
not before introducing yet another wrinkle into a case that has
had more than its share.
Mr. Sakai retained a
new lawyer for the sentencing, who moved to overturn the
conviction on the ground that Mr. Sakai’s previous lawyer had
failed to introduce a journal of Mr. Sakai’s that would prove he
had been elsewhere at the time of the crimes.
“His attorney
worked against him,” said the new lawyer, Tamara M. Harris.
During the trial,
Mr. Sakai testified to the journal’s existence but failed to
produce it. His former lawyer, Kleon C. Andreadis, said by phone
on Thursday that he had asked Mr. Sakai for the journal
repeatedly.
“At no time was
it offered to me despite my insistence that I see it before he
take the stand,” Mr. Andreadis said, adding that the journal
would have had little evidentiary value anyway.
Ms. Harris also
told the judge that Mr. Andreadis had refused to call Mr.
Sakai’s mother as a witness despite assurances that he would.
Mr. Sakai’s mother, Ms. Harris said, was prepared to corroborate
Mr. Sakai’s contention that he was repeatedly drugged by
detectives during his interrogation.
“Her son didn’t
even resemble himself” when the police got through with him, Ms.
Harris said.
Mr. Andreadis
said that he had seen no reason to call Mr. Sakai’s mother,
because she had not witnessed the effects of mistreatment
claimed by Mr. Sakai. Justice Walsh seemed little moved by Ms.
Harris’s arguments.
“I don’t see
anything on the record that as a matter of law would reverse his
conviction,” he said before passing sentence.
Mr. Sakai is also
charged with fatally shooting a patron of a Manhattan club, Opus
22, in 2006. Jury selection is set to begin in that trial on
Jan. 28.
Mr. Sakai,
dressed in a black coat, gray shirt and slacks, and in
handcuffs, declined to speak in his own behalf Thursday and
stood expressionless as Justice Walsh pronounced sentence.
He had been more
forthcoming during the trial, when he told jurors that he and
the two murdered men were victims of a corrupt detective who was
trying to horn in on Mr. Sakai’s security consulting business.
Police assassins,
Mr. Sakai said, killed the two men after Mr. Sakai began using
his martial arts students to spy on the police.
On the stand, he
promised that his mother would soon arrive with a journal
providing his alibi. She was already in the courtroom and did
not offer a journal.
Mr. Sakai, a
bouncer at the Wild Cherry club in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, was
convicted last month of the second-degree murder of Wayne Tyson,
56, an occasional patron of the club and a martial arts student,
and Edwin Mojica, 41, a security coordinator there.
Mr. Tyson was
found stabbed to death in his apartment in Crown Heights, and
Mr. Mojica was found shot in the back of the head on his stoop
in Williamsburg.
Before the
sentencing, Mr. Mojica’s older sister, Zoraida Cook, gave a
victim impact statement. She made a point of refusing to use the
defendant’s last name, which he adopted in 1998 after years of
martial arts study, and addressing him by his birth name,
Stephen Sanders.
“Martial arts is
a system of ethics,” involving humility, respect and loyalty and
honor, Ms. Cook said. “You’re not a man of honor. You’re nothing
but a coward, Stephen Sanders.”
