http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/29/nyregion/oral-nicholas-hillary-potsdam-murder-trial-garrett-phillips.html 2016-09-28 17:18:55 Oral Nicholas Hillary Acquitted in Potsdam Boy’s Killing Mr. Hillary had been charged with second-degree murder in the strangling of Garrett Phillips in 2011, but a judge found no credible evidence to convict him. === CANTON, N.Y. — Nearly five years after the murder of a 12-year-old boy in New York’s rural, northernmost frontier The man, Oral Nicholas Hillary, had been charged with second-degree murder in the strangling of Garrett Phillips, an ebullient sixth grader who was savagely attacked in his mother’s apartment in Potsdam in October 2011. Mr. Hillary once had a romantic relationship with Garrett’s mother, and the police focused on him almost immediately, searching his home, car and office looking for evidence that he had killed Garrett in retribution for the breakup. They found little, if any, evidence linking Mr. Hillary to the crime — no DNA, no fingerprints, no hair or fiber samples — leading him to suggest a far more pernicious explanation for the prosecution: his race. Mr. Hillary is black; Garrett was white, as is his mother and most of the surrounding St. Lawrence County. Mr. Hillary has always proclaimed his innocence. And on Wednesday morning, Judge Felix J. Catena — who presided over the two-week nonjury trial in Canton, the St. Lawrence County seat — concurred, noting that the prosecution’s case was entirely circumstantial. As the judge announced his decision, both sides of the courtroom let out bursts of emotion. Mr. Hillary hugged his lawyers, shedding tears as his family praised Jesus; many of Garrett’s relatives were also weeping, their heads and bodies collapsing into the courtroom benches. “Karma will get you,” shouted Brian Phillips, an uncle of Garrett’s who sold and distributed thousands of posters bearing the slogan “Justice for Garrett” and raised $40,000 for a reward fund. Seen through a prism of racial bias, the case drew widespread attention at a time when law enforcement’s relationship with black Americans is under increased scrutiny after a string of police-related shootings. Mr. Hillary’s defense team — which featured two high-profile New York City lawyers, Norman Siegel and Earl S. Ward, drawn by the case’s notoriety — only lightly touched on the issue of race at trial, preferring to attack the prosecution’s case as a weak, circumstantial attempt to pin a gruesome murder on the wrong man. “There is absolutely no direct evidence tying Mr. Hillary to this crime,” Mr. Ward said during his closing argument on Thursday, adding: “Nick Hillary is not the type of person that would walk into a room, put his hands around the neck of a child and strangle him, kill that child. That is not Nick Hillary.” The prosecution — largely led by William Fitzpatrick, an experienced district attorney from the Syracuse area — had put much of its hopes on surveillance footage shot the day of the killing. It showed Mr. Hillary’s car lingering near Garrett as he headed home from school. Mr. Hillary, 42, a former soccer coach at Clarkson University in Potsdam, had been The acquittal most likely will do little to end Mr. Hillary has sued the village for civil rights violations in connection to his arrest. That case is still pending. As the bailiffs cleared the courtroom, the Hillary family made their way outside to address the news media. The Phillips family stayed behind, along with the local prosecutor who brought the case, Mary Rain, who stood silently in front of the family as they wept.