Jurors saw the videotaped confession of a teen accused of starting a mattress fire that caused the death of an NYPD officer in 2014 Friday, while his attorney admonished the tape as an admission coerced in a "chamber of hell" of an interrogation room.
Marcell Dockery, 18, was seen on tape admitting to setting ablaze a mattress in the hallway of his Coney Island apartment that later grew into a large inferno that killed officer Dennis Guerra and left his partner, Rosa Rodriguez, in a coma for 44 days on April 6, 2014.
"I was just bored," he said in the footage played in court Friday. "When I set a fire a little bit I swore I just blew it out."
Dockery said in the confession that he was surprised when the hallway grew so smoky from the blaze, which he thought he had extinguished. He then admits to trying to warn his neighbors.
"I banged on her door," he said of a neighbor. "I was screaming, 'Yo it's a fire' and she told me, 'Run!'"
In the confession, Dockery can be heard to admitting setting fires since he was 9 years old -- once trying to spell his name out in a tub with flames -- and said he didn't tell police what he did because the blaze got so big.
"I was scared to tell them I started this," he said. "I was nervous in my heart."
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Dockery's attorney, Jesse Young, called into question the confessions, saying that the officers intimidated his client into admitting to a crime. Young the interview room a "chamber of hell" that detectives used to force Dockery to give oral and written confessions.
