By John Annese
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — The ex-con who shot NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller to death during a chaotic Queens car stop was hit Monday with the maximum sentence of 115 years to life behind bars.
The sentence, handed down Monday by Queens Supreme Court Justice Michael Aloise, came after a dramatic three-week trial which ended with a jury acquitting Guy Rivera, 35, of first-degree murder, but convicting him of aggravated manslaughter, attempted murder and gun charges.
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“Your sentence to me was determined the second you pulled that trigger,” Aloise told Rivera as he handed down the lengthy sentence. “It took me five minutes to calculate the numbers. It’s going to take you a lifetime to calculate the damage you did and the grief you caused.”
The 31-year-old slain cop’s widow, Stephanie Diller, testified in court moments before the sentence was handed down about the agony she has endured.
“In a single moment, everything that was my life was gone,” she said. “I wanted a lifetime with him.”
“I did not get to hold his hand,” she added. “I did not get to say goodbye. I did not get to give him the love and the peace he deserved in his final moments.”
But she wasn’t even the biggest victim, Stephanie said.
“The person who lost the most is our son Ryan,” she said. “He will grow up without the love of his father.”
She went on to address her husband’s killer directly.
“Mr. Rivera, only you know what was in your heart that day,” she said. “One day, you will stand before God and answer for what you did to Jonathan.”
“Your actions that day cannot be undone. Your actions that day gave me a life sentence without him,” she added. “When I leave this courtroom, I will no longer speak of you. I will no longer think of you.”
The verdict on the lesser charge angered Diller’s colleagues in the NYPD. While the murder acquittal does take life without parole off the table, the sentence means Rivera will nonetheless, barring appeals, likely spend the rest of his life in prison.
“Let me tell you this, murder, manslaughter, homicide, they’re legal terms. The defendant killed your loved one. There are no words in the English language that are going to take away the pain inside that you feel,” Aloise said. “Not even the knowledge that the defendant will most certainly die in a prison cell — and I promise he will — that’s not going to help you guys either.”
Diller’s mother also addressed the courtroom Monday.
“My world has been completely shattered. Everything feels empty without him,” Fran Diller said. “All I can feel is an unbearable ache of my son not being there.”
“I have looked at the defendant over the last two years, and at every single court hearing I have never seen any remorse, only a concern for himself,” she added.
The judge took a moment to praise the NYPD Community Response Team Diller was assigned to for how they rushed to try and save his life — and how they even gave medical help to the suspect after Diller was shot.
“When you’re at your lowest, you really show why you’re the finest,” Aloise said.
Rivera’s lawyer, Jamal Johnson of the Legal Aid Society, said he’ll file an appeal. He contended Aloise put the thumb on the scale for the prosecution with his pre-trial rulings.
“The jury should have been permitted to consider whether Mr. Rivera’s actions were reckless and negligent…. That option was taken away from the jury, leading them to decide only whether his actions were intentional,” Johnson told the judge, arguing that Rivera was “not a murderer.”
Rivera declined to make a statement in court Monday after his lawyer advised him not to because of the pending appeal.
“The court’s rulings, which prevented the jury from considering important evidence and lesser-included charges supported by the record — including reckless manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide — impaired the integrity of the jury’s verdict,” Johnson said in a statement later in the day.
“Just as important, the fact that the court stated it had already made up its mind about sentencing well before the trial was conducted reveals the bias and uphill battle the defense faced throughout this case.”
Diller was working on his day off on March 25, 2024 as part of a five-officer team in the 101st Precinct, when another member of the unit, Sgt. Sasha Rosen, spotted an L-shaped object in the pocket of the suspect’s hooded sweatshirt on Mott Ave. in Far Rockaway.
Rosen and Diller followed Rivera until he got into the passenger seat of a parked Kia sedan, and a third cop, Det. Dario Fernandez, surrounded the vehicle. Diller got the attention of the other two members of his team, Dets. Veckash Khedna and Derval Whyte — and within seconds, Diller was shot in the stomach.
Prosecutors argued that Rivera reached for his gun and deliberately fired a single shot at Diller in an attempt to blast his way out of his inevitable arrest, then pointed his weapon at Rosen’s chest, but the gun jammed. Khedna fired twice after the fatal shot, wounding Rivera.
Rivera’s defense team contended that the gun went off inadvertently in a struggle after Rosen reached into the car and grabbed Rivera.
The jurors saw video of the shooting from several angles, including the officers’ body-worn cameras and from nearby security cameras, and heard testimony from Diller’s grief-stricken widow and the other members of Diller’s unit.
Diller was posthumously promoted to detective by the NYPD.
“Rivera will spend the rest of his life in prison,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch tweeted after the sentence was announced. “That is obviously the right result, for him and for anyone who kills a New York City police officer.”
The judge came to the sentence by designating Rivera a persistent felony offender and giving him 25 years to life for the aggravated manslaughter of Diller, 40 to life for attempted murder of Rosen, and 25 to life for each of the two guns he possessed.
Though the shooting happened in a matter of seconds, by making the sentences run consecutively Aloise ruled that each charge represented a distinct crime Rivera committed.
As for Rivera’s prospects with an appeal, Katz said, “We stand ready to defend the conviction.”
Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry said he’s confident the conviction and sentence will stand on appeal.
“We know that the verdict in this case did not send the right message to the Diller family and every police officer who wears the uniform. It made us all second-guess everything about our criminal justice system which we count on when we’re putting our lives on the line,” Hendry said. “But this sentence, it sent the right message.”
“He should never ever walk the streets again,” he added. “And he won’t.”
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