Final trial begins in Newark schoolyard killings

  Eyewitness NewsNEWARK -- The attorney for the sixth and final defendant charged in the 2007 killings of three friends at a Newark playground says his client was a bystander at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Gerardo Gomez, who was 15 at the time of the slayings, is the youngest of six men and boys charged in the case.

Opening statements are under way in his trial in Superior Court in Newark.

The prosecution told jurors Thursday that they would hear a case of "children killing children, and killing them with shocking violence."

Gomez was waived to adult court and faces life in prison if convicted of murder and felony murder.

Three of the defendants were convicted and two have pleaded guilty. Most were admitted members of the MS-13 street gang.

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New Jersey Trial Attorneys

Deliberations continue in Hackensack police chief's trial

  HACKENSACK -- Jurors weighing the case of Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa have completed their first full day of deliberations without reaching a verdict.

The panel, which got the case Monday afternoon, asked to rehear some testimony and review some police statements on Tuesday.

Zisa was suspended without pay in 2010 after being charged with official misconduct and insurance fraud. Prosecutors say he removed his girlfriend from the scene of a 2008 accident in which she was suspected of being intoxicated, then filed false information in an insurance claim.

The chief's also accused of covering up an investigation stemming from a 2004 assault and robbery in which his girlfriend's sons were suspects.

But Zisa's attorney claims the case based on lies and was brought as a political favor to Zisa's enemies.

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Jury selection this week in transgender murder trial

  Eyewitness NewsNEWARK (WABC) -- Jury selection gets underway this week for a Newark man accused of killing a transgender lingerie model.

Alrashim Chambers, 25, is charged with murder and bias intimidation.

His alleged accomplice is expected to testify against him as the state's star witness.

Prosecutors say Chambers shot Victoria Carmen White just hours after they met at a nightclub in Irvington.

The bias charge alleges that Chambers killed White after discovering her gender identity.

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Jury to get instructions at NJ priest murder trial

  Eyewitness NewsMORRISTOWN, N.J. -- Jurors at the trial of a janitor accused of killing a New Jersey priest are expected to begin weighing whether he's guilty of murder or manslaughter.

Jose Feliciano doesn't deny stabbing the Rev. Edward Hinds to death in the rectory of St. Patrick Roman Catholic Church in Chatham in 2009.

But the Easton, Pa., resident's lawyer told jurors during closing arguments on Monday that Feliciano was being sexually blackmailed by Hinds and killed in a fit of rage.

The prosecution says the janitor "slaughtered" the priest after Hinds fired him because the priest had discovered Feliciano had an outstanding arrest warrant in Philadelphia from the 1980s for sexually touching a child.

Feliciano testified during the trial.

Several witnesses testified Feliciano never mentioned the alleged sexual relationship.

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1978 NJ killings defendant ruled fit for trial

  Eyewitness NewsNEWARK -- A judge has ruled a man charged with killing five teenagers in Newark, N.J., in 1978 is competent to stand trial.

Superior Court Judge Patricia Costello ruled Monday defendant Lee Evans is capable of understanding the case against him.

The judge denied a motion by the Essex County prosecutor's office that would've required Evans to undergo a psychological examination.

Assistant prosecutor Peter Guarino tells Newark's The Star-Ledger newspaper he filed the request to try to head off the possibility Evans would argue on appeal that he was incompetent.

Evans and a cousin are charged with luring the teens to an abandoned building, tying them up and setting the building on fire in a dispute over stolen drugs. The bodies were never recovered.

Evans and his cousin have pleaded not guilty.

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