Widow Must Pay Man After Acquittal

**Willowdared** · 07-12-07, 01:53 PM

Maybe RSA can help me here, is an Appeals panel the judges themselves, or is it like a Grand Jury? Since when does a civil judgement hinge on a criminal case anyway, isn't this how the Goldman's get some measure of justice against OJ?

ASSOCIATED PRESS

July 12, 2007

TRENTON, N.J. – Nearly 50 years after a police officer was slain, his widow has been ordered to repay $150,000 to the man acquitted of the murder.

Elizabeth Bernoskie said she doesn't have the money. Her lawyer called Tuesday's court ruling “a cruel, torturous experience.”

Charles Bernoskie, a police officer in Rahway, N.J., with six young children, was shot to death while on duty in 1958, but it wasn't until 1999 that anyone was charged in the case.

Robert Zarinsky, in prison for the 1969 murder of a 17-year-old girl and a suspect in the slayings of other teenage girls, was linked to the Bernoskie killing by his sister, Judith Zarinsky Sapsa. She told authorities that when she was 16, Zarinsky and a cousin said they had killed a police officer during a botched robbery.

The cousin, Theodore Schiffer, corroborated the sister's story, admitted a role in the killing and served three years in prison.

Zarinsky, however, was acquitted. Jurors believed he did it but felt prosecutors didn't build a strong-enough case to prove it, the foreman said.

Elizabeth Bernoskie sued Zarinsky for wrongful death and was awarded $9.5 million in 2003. Zarinsky posted his $150,000 mutual fund as a down payment.

On Tuesday, a state appeals court panel ruled that Bernoskie's lawsuit shouldn't have been allowed because Zarinsky had been acquitted. The $150,000 must be returned, it said.

Bernoskie gave the money to her children and can't afford to repay it, her lawyer said. Zarinsky can move to seize her assets, including her home.

“I don't know what I am going to do,” Bernoskie said. Her lawyer called the ruling “diabolical.”