An innocent man, he added, "can appear guilty just by the way he testifies," while a guilty man can "convince people that he's innocent".
He testified that while he knelt on Mr. Mineo's right side, Officer Jugraj was in front of him by Mr. Mineo's head and Officer Kern straddled the suspect's legs.
On one occasion in 1999, he testified, while he sat with Mrs. Astor in the Rockefeller Garden near her summer retreat in Maine, they stared toward a Chinese sculpture and Mrs. Astor grabbed his hand and asked, "Would you stay with me until the end of my life?" "Yes, I will stay until you want me to," Mr. Amaral said he told her.
He testified that while at Berkeley he joined the Communist Party in 1938 and left it in the spring of 1943.
Suspecting that he had a broken hose or a ruptured derrick, he called for help, but while waiting for a response, he testified, he heard a high-pitched hissing sound, followed by a large explosion.
He was even critical of "Superman" comics: "They arouse in children fantasies of sadistic joy in seeing other people punished over and over again while you yourself remain immune," he testified.
The incumbent, John M. Fabrizi, 50, decided not to seek re-election after he lost the support of the Democratic Town Committee following his admission last year that he had used cocaine while in office and after he testified in court on behalf of a convicted sex offender, a friend of his son's who twice impregnated an adolescent girl.
On the witness stand, while he was testifying - I am not making this up - he dropped dead.
All the while, witnesses testified, he was trading in suspect art.
Mr. Donovan's office is hoping that Bronksey can eventually sit in the witness box at a victim's feet while he or she testifies, unseen by the jury, said Peter Spencer, a spokesman for Mr. Donovan.
