Banker who stabbed cabbie gets charges dropped at last minute
by David Atkins
The law only applies to the little people:
Charges against William Bryan Jennings, the former Morgan Stanley (MS) U.S. bond-underwriting chief accused of stabbing a New York cab driver over a fare, will be dropped, police said.
“I’m aware that the charges are being dropped,” Detective Chester Perkowski of the Darien, Connecticut, police department said today in an interview. He declined to comment further.
Jennings was accused of attacking the driver, Mohamed Ammar, on Dec. 22 with a 2 1/2-inch blade after a 40-mile (64 kilometer) ride from New York to the banker’s $3.4 million home in Darien. Ammar, a native of Egypt and a U.S. citizen, said Jennings told him, “I’m going to kill you. You should go back to your country,” according to a police report.
Jennings faced assault and hate-crime charges, each of which brings a maximum sentence of five years in prison. He was also charged with not paying the fare, a misdemeanor. He pleaded not guilty March 9.
Eugene Riccio, Jennings’s attorney, wouldn’t confirm that the case had been abandoned.
“All I’m saying is we’re showing up,” he said today in a phone interview. “We have a court date Monday, and we’re going to be there.”
Jennings car service didn’t show up after a Christmas party, so he hailed a cab. Jennings says the cab driver agreed to a $204 fare, but the driver asked for $294. Jennings also claims the cab driver changed his story.
It’s possible the police are dropping the charges because the driver’s testimony wouldn’t be considered trustworthy by jurors. But it’s also extremely likely that a poor person without good lawyers who had pulled this stunt would be getting the maximum sentence.
A rich banker confronting a cab driver over a fare dispute, attacking him over it after a Christmas party, and then getting the charges dropped at the last minute, is pretty much a microcosm of criminal and economic justice in this country today.
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