Dad shows sympathy in court

BY ANN GIVENS | Newsday Staff Writer

September 15, 2006

Joseph Dell'anno has always felt that the drunken driver who was convicted of killing his daughter got a lighter sentence than he should have because State Police mishandled blood evidence in the case.

So when he heard this week that State Police had again admitted mishandling blood evidence - this time in Martin Heidgen's drunken-driving murder trial - Dell'anno rushed to court to support the families of Stanley Rabinowitz, 59, and Katie Flynn, 7, the victims in that case.

"It feels like deja vu," he said. "State Police have got to be better trained so a murderer can't get off on a technicality."

Heidgen, 25, of Valley Stream, is being tried for second-degree murder, accused of driving drunk the wrong way on the Meadowbrook Parkway on July 2, 2005, when his pickup truck slammed into a limousine and killed Rabinowitz, the driver, and Katie, who had just served as a flower girl in her aunt's wedding.

Dell'anno's daughter Ginamarie, 23, was killed about two years ago. The driver, Anthony Raffio, was being tried on manslaughter charges for her death earlier this year when State Police admitted they had bungled his blood evidence and prosecutors were forced to let him plead guilty to lesser charges.

Wednesday in Heidgen's murder trial, State Police admitted that they hadn't followed protocol when collecting his blood. One state trooper said on the stand that he didn't put Heid- gen's name on the tape sealing his blood in the vials and did not seal the blood kit box at all, as the kit's instructions require. He also testified that he didn't fill out the blood collection report, a form required when submitting a blood kit to the State Police department lab for testing.

In court yesterday, Trooper Christopher Sweeney, who investigated the crash site less than an hour after the accident, testified that neither Heidgen's pickup truck nor the limo had hit the brakes hard enough on the night of the crash to leave visible skid marks on the road.

Today, jurors will get a chance to see the results of that collision first-hand, when both the pickup truck and the limo are brought to the Nassau County Courthouse parking lot in Garden City. Jurors will be taken outside to see the two vehicles, which have been in the State Police impound yard for more than a year.

Heidgen's lawyer, Stephen LaMagna of Garden City, argued unsuccessfully that jurors should not be allowed to see the cars, because they are not in the same condition that they were in immediately after the crash.

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Dad shows sympathy in court

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