The lawyers for a Brooklyn MDC guard accused of chasing and shooting a suspected contraband smuggler won’t be able to put the troubled federal jail’s violent reputation on trial, a federal judge has ruled.
Brooklyn Federal Judge Pamela Chen said Monday that violence at the Sunset Park jail and the prevalence of contraband smuggling are not relevant to the charges against former Correction Officer Leon Wilson, who’s accused of chasing a BMW with his Bureau of Prisons van, then shooting and wounding one of the car’s passengers.
“There will be no evidence about the level of violence at the MDC introduced at trial,” Chen said.
Chen issued her proclamation after cutting short defense attorney Jeffrey Greco’s opening argument at Wilson’s trial Monday. Wilson is charged with deprivation of rights under color of law and use of a firearm in a crime of violence.
Greco called the jail “one of the most dangerous detention centers in the United States,” with “a building full of inmates that are smuggling contraband drugs and weapons from the outside.”
When Greco started to describe how inmates drop a line down from a window to waiting smugglers on the ground below, prosecutors objected, leading to Chen’s decision.
“I’m much more concerned about that suggestion — that there’s rampant drug smuggling. I’m not saying that’s not true,” she said. “The question is, what should the jury hear in assessing what happened that night?”
Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News
The Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Metropolitan Detention Center at 80 29th St. in Brooklyn is pictured on Friday, August 28, 2020. (Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News)
Detainees behind bars often conspire with accomplices on the outside to “fish” for packages of drugs, cigarettes and cell phones through unguarded windows at the jail, and several now-former correction officer have been caught sneaking in. cigarettes, drugs and phones. Guards regularly recover improvised weapons, and last year, two inmates were stabbed to death.
Still, Chen warned the defense, “Do not suggest to the jury… that this is what happens all the time,” she said. “Do not broaden it to: ‘This is what happens on the regular at MDC.’”
Wilson was on outer-perimeter duty at MDC Brooklyn on Sept. 4, 2023, when a BMW backed into the parking lot, its occupants ready to deliver a package of cigarettes, pot and cell phones.
He pulled his Bureau of Prisons van in front of the BMW, which peeled off, and he gave chase, firing at the car about a mile later and severely wounding one of the passengers. The car fled across the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan, and Wilson returned to the jail, never telling his supervisors about the shooting.
Greco argued to the jury that Wilson made a “split-second” decision to follow the car to find out why it was lurking in the jail’s staff parking lot. And when the BMW, which had a performance engine, slowed down in front of him, someone stuck a hand out of the window, holding what appeared to be a gun, Greco said.
“His life flashed before him and his training kicked in,” Greco said. “He drew his weapon. He fired several shots at the vehicle.”
Greco conceded that he didn’t report the shooting, but said, “That’s not a crime. That’s something to take up with MDC.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Raffaela Belizaire said Wilson had no business chasing the BMW, smuggling or not, and said he made a “series of escalating decisions to abandon his duty and break the law.”
“He was the danger to this community,” she said. “His responsibilities were to the jail and the jail alone…. What he was not was a police officer.”