By Kirsten Fleming and Andy Geller
The New York Post
NEW YORK — A female juror asked a witness, hero firefighter Brendan Cawley, to become her Facebook friend during the second Black Sunday trial — placing into jeopardy the conviction of the manger of the building where the inferno occurred.
The handsome Cawley did not reply until after the jury convicted building manager Cesar Rios of criminally negligent homicide on Feb. 18.
He reportedly also notified Bronx prosecutors, who alerted trial judge Margaret Clancy and the defense.
Yesterday, amid cries of outrage from defense attorneys, the judge subpoenaed all of juror Karen Krell’s electronic correspondence about the case.
“This creates many questions about the juror’s state of mind during the trial,” said David Goldstein, Rios’ lawyer.
Rios was convicted of allowing the construction of a maze of walls that trapped Cawley and five other firefighters and forced them to jump from the fourth floor of a blazing Bronx building on Jan. 23, 2005.
Two were killed, Curtis Meyran, 46, and John Bellew, 37.
The company that owns the building on East 178th Street was also convicted of the same charge. An earlier trial exonerated two tenants who built the walls.
On Feb. 9, nine days before the verdict, Krell, a seventh-grade teacher at MS 301 in The Bronx, sent Cawley a Facebook message asking that he become her friend.
He did not reply.
On Feb. 19, the day after the verdict, she messaged him again.
“I was disappointed that I did not have the opportunity to speak to any of you after the trial!” she wrote. “Just wanted to say that we were truly touched by your stories. We analyzed the evidence thoroughly to come up with a fair verdict. Many of us wanted the first charge of manslaughter, but we could not all agree on that.”
“Anyways, I just wanted you to know that we all fought our hardest for all of you, and every second of it was worth it,” she added.
Court records show that he replied that day and the next day, Feb. 20, he asked for her e-mail address and said he would pass it on to Bellew’s widow, Eileen.
She passed on her address and on Feb. 24, he said Eileen Bellew would be e-mailing her and thanked her for her “hard work.”
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