Lawyer backs testimony by Wilkerson during trial
Denies she lied in hearing on nephew's case
Several people came to the defense of state Senator Dianne Wilkerson yesterday, as prosecutors reviewed statements she made during a hearing last year on the manslaughter conviction of her nephew, Jermaine Berry.
Wilkerson's lawyer and a family friend, who is pastor of a local church, said Wilkerson did not lie in testimony last fall, when she suggested Berry did not commit the crime for which he was convicted, the 1994 stabbing death of a 21-year-old Dorchester man outside a Mattapan social club.
Prosecutors, in a statement released Sunday by Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley's office, said they have ``consistently taken the position during the post-conviction hearings that Dianne Wilkerson's statements were inaccurate and unsupported by the rest of the evidence in the case."
But Wilkerson's lawyer, Jeffrey Denner, vehemently defended the legislator yesterday and dismissed the possibility of perjury charges.
``I would hope that no charges would ever be levied in this case, because I see no basis for them whatsoever," Denner said. ``She's not going to permit her reputation to be sullied in this way."
The testimony in question came at an evidentiary hearing in a motion for a new trial for Berry in September. She testified that she brought another nephew who had been outside the club the night of the slaying, Isaac Wilkerson, to the police station in South Boston for questioning soon after the killing. There, according to Berry's attorney, Janet Hetherwick Pumphrey, Dianne Wilkerson witnessed Isaac Wilkerson being interviewed by detectives Herbert Spellman and Dennis Harris. Wilkerson said she saw the detectives turn off their tape recorders when Isaac Wilkerson made statements that could clear Berry.
Police have denied that Dianne Wilkerson was in the room.
Yesterday, the Rev. Ernest Branch, pastor of Sermon on the Mountain Baptist Church in Roxbury and a family friend, supported parts of Wilkerson's story.
``I was with Senator Dianne Wilkerson at the South Boston police station when the police detectives informally interviewed her nephew," Branch said in a statement. ``I was actually in the room and know it took place.
``There were no recording devices that I was aware of, but questions were asked by the detectives in the room," he said. ``At one point, we tried to reach the nephew's parents, because we felt perhaps there should be others in the room to lend support." Branch declined to be interviewed by the Globe yesterday.
Several witnesses had testified in Berry's 1995 trial that they heard Isaac Wilkerson confess to the stabbing about one hour after Hazel Orlando Mack was killed.
Prosecutors said in their statement there is no reason to doubt the police version of events.
``There is no information brought to light since that time that has altered our view of the verdict," the statement said. ``Part of that evidence was the testimony of the Boston police detectives, who testified in this case accurately, consistently and honestly. Their testimony is fully supported by other evidence in the case."
Wilkerson, a Roxbury Democrat, is running a sticker campaign for reelection. Questions about her testimony were raised recently in a letter to Conley's office from the Boston Police Detectives Benevolent Society. In it, union president Robert Kenney wrote: `` It is most disheartening to think that an elected official would come into a court of law and swear to statements that are clearly false in an attempt to create doubt about the veracity of the detectives."
Kenney did not return calls from the Globe. Prosecutors said they received the letter yesterday.
Berry's motion for a new trial was denied in January by Justice Christine M. McEvoy, who ruled that Wilkerson's ``claims that she was present during this interview are irreconcilable with the tape recording and the police record of the interview."
Berry's attorney, Pumphrey, said Wilkerson was telling the truth. ``She's got absolutely no reason on the face of the earth to lie," Pumphrey said. ``It's not like she preferred one nephew to another."
Adrienne P. Samuels can be reached at asamuels@globe.com. 