By Adam Pincus
Newsday
NEW YORK — A convicted gunman charged with firing an Uzi assault rifle at two police officers outside a Flatbush nightclub in 2006 was acquitted yesterday of first-degree attempted murder and assault and was instead convicted of only a weapons charge.
Jurors in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn found Damian Henry, 26, guilty of criminal possession of a weapon but were not convinced of the more serious charges in the Jan. 21, 2006, incident. Police shot him 18 times in a barrage of 30 bullets, his defense attorney said, but he survived the attack.
Jurors said they made a compromise decision because they did not find the police or Henry’s testimony entirely credible.
“We took things here and there,” said one female juror in her 20s who asked not to be named.
Authorities said at about 4 a.m., Henry tried to enter the Rag Top Lounge on Utica Avenue, but bouncers who frisked him found a gun and refused him entry. They later called police, prosecutors said.
Two police officers responding to the scene saw Henry shooting at the club with the Uzi, identified themselves and drew their weapons, prosecutors said.
They pursued him, and he fired at them, but missed, authorities said. They then shot him several times.
Jury forewoman Khadijah Carter, 33, said police did not appear to follow protocol, but she found it believable that they felt endangered.
Henry is serving a 25-year sentence on an attempted murder charge for shooting into a Brooklyn diner in 2005. He was free on bail from that case when the January 2006 shooting happened.
Authorities say he used a stolen gun in that incident. The same gun was used seven months later to kill Police Officer Dillon Stewart. Police are unsure how the gun got from Henry to Stewart’s killer.
Defense attorney Harold Baker called yesterday’s verdict a “split decision” that left his client facing a sentence of between 3 1/2 and 15 years in prison, instead of up to life on the attempted murder charges.
Copyright 2008 Newsday