Verdict No. 2: Conviction in Officer’s Murder

A man who prosecutors said fired two fatal gunshots into the face of Police Officer Russel Timoshenko during a traffic stop in Brooklyn last year was convicted of aggravated murder on Friday night, a charge that carries a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole.

A jury also found the man, Dexter Bostic, 36, guilty of all the other charges he faced, including the attempted aggravated murder of Officer Timoshenko’s partner, Herman Yan, and three counts of illegal gun possession. He is to be sentenced in February.

Mr. Bostic’s was the second verdict in the trial of three men who face identical charges in the July 2007 shooting. The case was heard simultaneously by three separate juries. Earlier this week, Robert Ellis was acquitted of aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder, delivering a stinging defeat for prosecutors, who had said that Mr. Ellis shot and wounded Officer Yan. Mr. Ellis was convicted on gun possession charges.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Raymond W. Kelly, the police commissioner, expressed bewilderment with that verdict. But the jury foreman in the Ellis case said that prosecutors had failed to provide the jury enough evidence for a murder conviction: Not only had the prosecutors been unable to convince most of the jurors of Mr. Ellis’s precise role in the shootings, but they had not provided witnesses or testimony that jurors found credible.

There was a starkly different mood in the courtroom on Friday night as the verdicts in Mr. Bostic’s trial were read. Police officers raised their hands in victory, and homicide detectives dabbed at tears on their cheeks. Officer Timoshenko’s mother, Tatyana, was asked if the verdict had resulted in justice for her son. “For this case it does,” she said. The jury hearing the case of the third defendant, Lee Wood, will continue deliberating on Monday afternoon.

In a statement on Friday night, Commissioner Kelly said, “I hope this just verdict brings some measure of peace to the Timoshenko family.”

Outside the courtroom, dozens of police officers burst into applause as the two prosecutors who tried the case walked past. Patrick J. Lynch, the head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said the jurors “should be proud of themselves.”

Mr. Bostic’s lawyer, Edward D. Wilford, said his client “didn’t get the full process he was entitled to,” and added that the case would be appealed. He also suggested that Mr. Bostic’s jury might have been influenced by newspaper accounts of Mr. Ellis’s acquittal, despite the judge’s admonition to ignore coverage of the case. “Sometimes people feel that someone has to pay for this,” he said.

In many respects, Mr. Wilford had the most difficult job of the three defense lawyers. His client, who had spent most of his adult life in prison, was on parole the night their sport utility vehicle, with three guns inside, was pulled over by Officers Timoshenko and Yan. A witness testified that Mr. Bostic told him that he had not wanted to go back to prison just for gun possession.

Prosecutors apparently convinced jurors that Mr. Bostic sat in the front passenger seat of the car, the side that Officer Timoshenko can be seen approaching in a surveillance video, before he drops suddenly, felled by two bullets from a .45-caliber Llama handgun. Mr. Bostic’s fingerprints were found on the handle of the passenger door, and his DNA was found on that gun.

In her closing arguments in Mr. Bostic’s trial — the day after Mr. Ellis was acquitted of murder — a prosecutor, Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi, said that a “mountain of evidence” pointed to Mr. Bostic’s guilt. But perhaps the most powerful part of her sober presentation was the video of the shooting. Instead of stopping it immediately after the shots were fired, Ms. Nicolazzi let it run, as police officers frantically swarmed a Brooklyn intersection, as desperate calls crackled on radios, and Officer Timoshenko lay dying in the corner of the screen.