Riccardo McCray’s defense lawyer, Joseph J. Terranova, called them human cockroaches.  It was such an apt image that prosecutor James F. Bargnesi  sought a gag order to shut Terranova down.

McCray is on trial in Buffalo for the City Grill Bloodbath.

Twenty-four-year-old Riccardo McCray is charged with first- and second-degree murder, along with attempted murder and weapons possession in the Aug. 16 shooting outside the City Grill that left four dead and four wounded.

It’s a big case, and who doesn’t want to be in on a big case?  Not these guys :

One is a paranoid schizophrenic who helped McCray write letters while locked up with him in the Erie County Holding Center.

Another jailhouse informant, a crack cocaine abuser, spent recreation time with McCray on the Holding Center roof.

A third accuser, in the Holding Center for alleged sex crimes, sent nine letters to prosecutors offering to open up about his talks with McCray as a way to “seek atonement.”

A fourth witness never talked with McCray face to face but communicated through air ducts in the Holding Center, then approached prosecutors because “I needed a favor.”

The problem stems from the fact that McCray, whose entire criminal history consists of one conviction for disorderly conduct, an non-criminal infraction, but whose nickname according to the jailhouse snitches is “Murder” or “Murder Matt,” couldn’t be identified by one of the victims, Tillman Ward.

Police tried to get Ward to talk for months without success. He recently changed his mind after prosecutors offered to go easier on him in on felony weapons charges that he faces.

Tillman Ward, one of the victims in the carnage outside of City Grill — identified McCray as the gunman in an interview with police detectives last weekend at the Erie County Correctional Facility in Alden, where he’s now jailed.

Miraculously, Ward ID’d McCray two days before jury selection, promise of leniency in hand.  But the gap in proof caused a loud bell to go off throughout the Erie County Holding Center.  It was the sound of opportunity, audible only to the ears of human cockroaches.

“We frequently see this in this kind of case. The human cockroaches come out of the shadows in all of these high-profile cases, and they’re willing to say what it takes to benefit themselves,” Joseph J. Terranova, McCray’s lawyer, said after Monday’s pretrial hearings in Erie County Court.

It was this reference to human cockroaches that so angered the chief of the Erie County District Attorney’s Homicide Bureau that he sought a gag order from Judge Sheila A. DiTullio.

Bargnesi told DiTullio that the name-calling violated rules of professional conduct.

While reporters are free to cover the proceedings “for as much or as little as they desire,” the interviews outside the courtroom are not necessary, Bargnesi said.

“It’s a distraction,” he said.

Human cockroaches. Rats.  Whatever animal comes to mind, it doesn’t alter the nature of the witnesses Bargnesi plans to use.  As Terranova says, you turn on the light and they scramble.  Is that the defense’s fault?

The problem facing the prosecution has nothing to do with the language used to describe its witnesses.  The problem is the witnesses.  The prosecutor will scrub them, comb their hair, put them into thoughtful looking glasses and dress them up in demure neutral colored cardigans to give them that Mr. Rogers’ look.  And they will still be jailhouse snitches, whose claims that the defendant said something inculpatory to them relies solely on their word.

Even Tillman Ward, who can at least take comfort in the fact that he was wounded to prove that he has some, any, legitimate connection to the crime, has a case to work off, and refused to identify McCray until a deal was cut.  One might impute a better motive to Ward, that he would want to convict the person who shot him (why would he lie?), but that ignores street justice.  Ward can always deal with his nemesis later.  Right now, he needs a favor and pointing at McCray is the way to get it. 

One might think that the prosecution in such a high profile case, given the alluring name “City Grill Bloodbath,” would be very cautious, very circumspect.  They must realize that it would attract every jailhouse snitch looking for a quick route to the door.  It seems impossible for them to not see that half the Erie County jail population heard that opportunity bell go off, and would be more than thrilled to answer its call.

McCray, in the meantime, says he’s just not the shooter, no way, no how.

McCray did not speak in court. But in a letter published in the Buffalo Challenger newspaper, McCray said he’s “about to be slaughtered in public for a crime that involves multiple people.”

“Please let the public know that several people were suspects in this case and because they are now witnesses instead of suspects, because they had something to say, I am left holding the bag,” McCray wrote in the letter.

“I am innocent of these charges, yet from the beginning of my arrest I’ve been treated as the guilty party,”

Talk about naive.  Did he expect the presumption of innocence?  What was he thinking? In the meantime, McCray says that his lawyer withheld witness statements from him.

McCray wrote that he was denied witness statements by his lawyer. “When I asked if I could have copies of the witness statement he told me no, because he didn’t want anything to happen to the witnesses,” McCray wrote.

“My heart goes out to the victims and their families, but I am not the shooter.”

Apparently, Terranova would prefer to make sure that none of the witnesses disappeared with extreme prejudice before trial, not exactly a rousing sign of faith in the innocence of his client, but perhaps a wise exercise of caution just in case.  Should anything happen, at least his client can’t be blamed given that he wasn’t provided the witness statements.

This will likely be an ugly trial, with some fertile ground for attacking the credibility of the witnesses against McCray.  Even if the prosecution gets its conviction, it will be permanently tainted with the nature of the witnesses it dredged up from the Erie County Holding Facility.  Call them rats, human cockroaches or snitches, they all come from the same menagerie, and no gag order is going to change that.