NEW YORK (AP) - Federal prosecutors say a New Jersey man must testify at his trial if he intends to claim he tried to warn authorities that a co-defendant wanted to kidnap and kill women, but his defense lawyer said Wednesday that his statements revealing he sought to help the FBI can rightly be shown to jurors.
Manhattan prosecutors asked a judge in court papers on Tuesday to block defense claims about “self-serving and false exculpatory statements” Michael Vanhise made to FBI agents. They said if the defense wants the jury to hear that information, it should come directly from the defendant.
If Vanhise, of Trenton, testifies, he’d be cross-examined by prosecutors.
In a response to the request filed with the court on Wednesday, defense attorney Alice Fontier said prosecutors can’t limit which Vanhise statements to the FBI during 2 1/2 months of cooperation are fit for jurors to see.
In an email to The Associated Press, Fontier said her client “has a right to present a full defense and he intends to do so.”
“The government knows that someone who was conspiring to commit kidnapping would not voluntarily assist the government in apprehending other individuals,” she said. “It hurts their case, and they would like it precluded.”
Jury selection starts Feb. 24 for Vanhise and Robert Christopher Asch, a former Manhattan high school librarian. Both are charged with plotting to kidnap, rape, torture and kill women and children. Their case grew out of a cannibalism case that resulted in the conspiracy conviction of a former New York police officer, Gilberto Valle, who prosecutors say plotted to eat women.
Valle, whose lawyers said he was just fantasizing online, is awaiting sentencing. Vanhise and Asch have pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors, in their papers, said they plan to introduce at trial through an FBI agent that Vanhise met with another person in New Jersey to discuss carrying out a kidnapping and that Vanhise was serious about kidnapping and committing acts of violence against women.
They said they didn’t plan to introduce other statements in which Vanhise admitted that he sent co-conspirators the photographs and approximate home address of his sister-in-law and nieces.
The prosecutors said his claims that he communicated about kidnapping and other violence to gather information for law enforcement and that he made several reports about potentially violent people to the Hamilton, N.J., police department must be excluded from trial because self-serving, exculpatory statements are hearsay.
Fontier urged U.S. District Judge Paul G. Gardephe to decide what is admitted at trial on a case-by-case basis.
“The portions of the statements that the government seeks to admit distort the true meaning of the statements and cooperation between Mr. Vanhise and the government agents,” she said. “Other portions must be admitted to give context to the statements that the government intends to offer to avoid misleading the jury.”
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