by Jerry Burke
What a difference a year, and a perjury charge, can make.
Heriveaux testified last week in state Supreme Court in Long Island City that he had know the defendant, Prince, a former hospital worker, for almost a year prior to the March 11, 2001, incident that left Mitchell in a wheelchair and another person injured. Also, Heriveaux said he was with Prince in the parking lot and saw Prince "shooting in the air" after someone tried to "sneak up" behind him.
Heriveaux explained to the jury that he lied to officers and at the original trial because "I didn't want to put Chris out like that ... I wanted to help him out." He further said that after he told Prince that he had just lied to police, Prince recommended "sticking with" that story.
Police say that a few hours after breaking up an argument in a local bar, Mitchell and a group of friends were fired upon outside a campus dormitory. While running away from the shooter, he was struck in the back with a bullet and left paralyzed for life.
Police believed that Prince, then 21, was the gunman who wounded Mitchell and another young man that night. But despite the testimony of Mitchell and six other witnesses, Prince's June 2002 trial resulted in a mistrial, due in part, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown believes, to Heriveaux's false testimony.
Heriveaux testified last year that he did not know Prince. "He swore under oath that he did not know the defendant and that he did not [as police now believe] drive the defendant to and from the scene of the shooting," said Brown. "Those representations were material to the proceeding and were allegedly false."
Last March, a month after perjury charges were filed against both Prince and Heriveaux, the witness cut a deal with the D.A. to avoid jail time in exchange for his testimony in the new trial.
Mitchell, working as bouncer at a local bar, had broken up a fight between a group of his friends and Prince. A few hours later, Mitchell and his friends were standing outside the dormitory when, police say, Prince showed up, taunting the group with insults.
Police say Prince brandished a 9-millimeter semi-automatic pistol and began to open fire on the crowd. A teammate of Mitchell's, Tyson Holley-Hines, was shot through the pants without injury while his cousin, then-17-year-old Rashan Fray, was struck in the knee and seriously wounded.
As Mitchell ran away, police believe Prince shot him once in the back and then fled the scene. Mitchell survived after numerous surgeries, but was left paralyzed from the neck down.
Prince is charged with three counts of attempted murder, each of which carries a 25-year prison sentence, and perjury, a possible 7-year sentence. He is being held without bail, and is also awaiting another, unrelated, attempted-murder charge stemming from a shooting in St. Albans last March. Prince's new attorneys, Harvey Fishbein and Franklin Gould, say that the defendant was not at the bar or on the campus on the evening in question.
