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Superior Court Judge Lisa Perez Friscia (STORY/PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
Salamy Boima shrugged and smiled faintly after the verdict was read.
“He told me to tell the truth,” Boima, of Sierra Leone, told CLIFFVIEW PILOT, gesturing to defense attorney Ben Malin. “I told the truth.”
“I think justice was done,” Malin said. “I think Mr. Boima is an honest man who told the truth.”
Jurors deliberated less than half a day after Malin and Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Daryl Williams made closing arguments this morning.
Malin showed them diagrams of the scale of justice — one balanced, the other two tilting in favor or against a defendant. A jury is the justice system’s foundation, he said, with the tilt of the scales depending on evidence and the burdens of proof.
Williams, meanwhile, said Boima distributed work at the Carlstadt warehouse from a second job he had — something he’d been warned not to do.
He also “couldn’t get along with anyone” on the job after only six or seven months and was asked to leave by the warehouse manager.
Instead, Williams said, he “hung around for an hour and eight minutes” and called 911 to make a report he knew was false that he had seen a man in a silver Chevy Tahoe with a handgun.
Boima gave the police dispatcher a good description of the vehicle and the man, whom he described as Colombian.
And although he testified that he didn’t know his bosses’ name, he used it in responding to his attorney.
In the end, Williams gave jurors no proof that Boima didn’t see a gun after he repeatedly insisted that he had.
It was the first criminal trial for Superior Court Judge Lisa Perez Friscia, a former Bergen County prosecutor who ordinarily is assigned to civil courts but is devoting one week per month assisting with trials until new judges are appointed.
The jury of nine women and three men acquitted Boima of two counts of filing a bogus police report, causing a false public alarm and calling 911 without a legitimate purpose.
STORY/PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter
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