ALTAMONT — After waiting nearly a year, Justin Fields had his day in court Friday, but a mistrial was abruptly declared in the midst of the first testimony.

Fields and his family have felt targeted by Altamont’s public safety commissioner and were eager to put the accusations behind them.

Fields, now 17, is charged with two counts of assault. He was arrested last May 15 after a fight in his home at 206 Main Street in the village. His sister, Amanda Fields, 18, signed a statement alleging the assault by her brother but now says it was a mutual fight.

“I feel I was coerced by the police chief into saying things that really didn’t happen,” Amanda fields told The Enterprise, referring to Public Safety Commissioner Anthony Salerno; he did not return calls seeking comment.

Some things written in the report, she said, were “completely false.” For example, she recalled, “It said he cracked a chessboard over my head. He cracked it over his leg,” she said of her brother.

The only injury she suffered were two small bumps on the head, which happened as she tussled with her brother and they fell off of a cot, said Amanda Fields. Her brother was far more seriously injured and bloodied since he and her ex-boyfriend had fought on the gravel driveway, she said.

“I would like to see my brother get off,” she said. “There’s no reason for him to get charged.”

Justin Fields went to jail after the incident. “He hasn’t touched me since,” said Amanda Fields.

Two views

Friday afternoon, after a jury of six had been selected from a pool of jurors that packed the small village courtroom at 9 a.m., Judge Rebecca Hout read the charges — both misdemeanors. Amanda Fields had suffered bruising and swelling to her head and neck, substantial pain and other injuries, and was treated at St. Peter’s Hospital, said Hout. Justin Fields, she said, was charged with hitting her in the head with a chessboard, punching her, and threatening that he would kill her.

Justin Fields was also charged, she said, with injuring James Bryan, Amanda Fields’s boyfriend at the time, hitting him with a closed fist and tackling him to the gravel driveway, causing lacerations and bruising.

In her opening statement, the assistant district attorney, Renée Merges, told the jury that this was “an important case.” She said it was a case about “family violence that is often shushed up,” blamed on the police making too much of it.

The prosecutor told those in the jury they would hear Amanda Fields testify “however reluctantly...with her brother sitting here and her parents there.” The eyes of the jury followed as Merges gestured to Justin Fields, a slight young man with short-cropped hair, wearing jeans and a striped knit shirt. His arrest report lists his height at 5 feet, 3 inches, and his weight at 130 pounds.

The jury also stole looks at Justin’s parents sitting in the back row of the near-empty courtroom — Michael Fields and Deborah Flansburg — a working-class couple dressed in their best. They’ve been together for 26 years and Michael Fields said, after the trial, that he was upset by the prosecutor’s reference to family violence, stating that it isn’t true.

Merges continued, telling the jury what Amanda Fields did last May 15: “She came to this police station and she told the Altamont Police what had just happened to her,” she said. James Bryan, she said, would testify he came on the scene after Amanda called him to help her. “She was afraid because her brother hurt her and was afraid he’d hurt her more,” said Merges.

Bryan arrived at 206 Main Street after Amanda Fields had left, Merges said. “This defendant confronted him...came at him...They wrestled to the ground...He took his shirt off...and now his back was scraping on the gravel driveway...You’ll see those pictures....”

Perhaps, Merges said, the jury would hear a “little bit of that young-man macho,” not wanting to admit that someone hurt him.

“I’ll ask you to return the only verdict based on the credible testimony as you listen carefully for it because there are certain obstacles in this particular case...This is not going to be easy for this witness to do,” said Merges as she called for a guilty verdict.

Michael Jurena, the public defender assigned to Fields, told the jury that the case was about “a lot of drama.”

The brother and sister, he said were in “a tussle.” She called her boyfriend at the time, and he arrived as a “knight in shining armor,” said Jurena.

“They scuffle; it happens,” said Jurena. Amanda Fields was mad and went to the police. “What you’ll hear is a lot of exaggeration,” Jurena told the jury.

Amanda’s testimony

Amanda Fields was called to testify first. Silence settled over the court room as she couldn’t, at first, be found. Her mother jumped up to get her.

“That’s not necessary, ma’am,” said Merges. “I’ll get her.”

A petit blonde with a delicate build, Amanda Fields finally walked to the witness stand. As Merges questioned her about the events of last May 15, she answered with a quiet but firm voice.

She was watching TV with her brother, she said, and no one else was home. She had moved a dresser from her mother’s room to her own room and some of the things from the dresser were on the floor.

“He wanted me to pick it up,” said Amanda Fields. “I said no. Me and him got into a verbal fight and called each other names.”

When she went into her room, her brother pushed the dresser in front of her closed door so she couldn’t leave, she said. “I called my ex-boyfriend,” she said. Then she moved the dresser by opening the door a little bit.

“We were both angry,” she said.

Merges asked if her brother was screaming threats.

Jurena objected, saying Merges was leading the witness.

 ”Sustained,” said Judge Hout.

Amanda Fields, responding to the prosecutor’s questions, said her brother was calling her names and saying he would kill her.

“I’m sure I was saying the same things to him,” she said. “He said it was my mess and I should pick it up...I threw something at him to start it off.”

“I’m going to ask that the witness be declared hostile,” said the prosecutor to the judge. “She’s saying now it’s a mutual disagreement.”

Jurena said that Amanda Fields simply wasn’t giving the answers that Merges wanted.

Mistrial

“Miss Fields, do you feel you need to be represented by your own counsel here?” asked Judge Hout.

“I don’t understand,” replied Amanda Fields.

The judge then asked the jury to leave the courtroom.

“We have a problem,” Hout said. If there is a potential for perjury, the judge said, she needed to allow the witness to have legal counsel.

“It doesn’t make it perjury,” insisted Jurena.

“This defendant says there are things she would have said or done a different way,” said Merges.

“She hasn’t provided any testimony that is perjurous,” reiterated Jurena. Amanda Fields needs counsel, he said, because Merges “is threatening her with prosecution.”

“I never said that,” responded Merges.

As the two lawyers argued over her head, Amanda Fields said to Merges, “You said to me, if I didn’t say exactly what was in there,” she said of her statement to police on May 15, “I’d need an attorney.”

To emphasize the truth of her statement, Amanda Fields said, “I’m under oath right now.”

“And I’m an officer of the court,” answered Merges to the witness.

As the prosecutor shouted a response, Jurena said, “Simply because it’s different doesn’t make it perjury.”

He went on, “I want a mistrial because I think the jury has been prejudiced.”

The jury did hear the witness say she may be changing her statement, said Judge Hout.

Merges asked that the mistrial be declared “without prejudice to the people.”

“I take full responsibility in asking that question in front of the jury and I declare a mistrial,” said Hout.

“If I was under oath, I wasn’t going to lie,” said Amanda Fields.

The judge concluded that, because she asked Fields in front of the jury if she may need legal counsel, it could “taint” the case. She dismissed the case “without prejudice to the prosecution.”

The trial was rescheduled for June 4.

Merges told The Enterprise that she plans to proceed with the case, even if the testimony of Amanda Fields doesn’t match her original statement to police.

Under surveillance

The Fields-Flansburg family contends that, since the police were initially called to their house for a fight between the children, Salerno has interfered with their lives.

 “This officer has continually harassed my son, going as far as to put his hands down my son’s pants while … searching him,” said Deborah Flansburg.

Justin Fields has been handcuffed and searched, the family and other witnesses say, although no contraband has been found and no arrests were made after the searches.

“I was shocked; I was scared,” said Justin Fields of being searched on an Altamont street.

“You don’t slap cuffs on a 15-year-old kid,” said his father.

“He patted me down,” said Justin Fields. “He went down my pants, over my boxers...We were sitting handcuffed for an hour. He said, ‘You got lucky this time.’”

Later, when Justin was a passenger in a friend’s car, they were pulled over, he said.  “I didn’t want him to do that to me again,” he said of being searched; he asked if it could be done in front of his parents. “I was screaming, ‘Can he do this?’” Justin recalled and said he felt “embarrassed” and “violated.”

The car was searched several times and a German shepherd was brought in from the Guilderland Police, said Justin Fields, but no illegal substances were found.

On May 15, Justin Fields said, “My sister and I both woke up a little grumpy.”

When he asked her to clean up the stuff that had been thrown on the floor, he said, “She started a hissy fit…My sister egged me on, throwing stuff at me. She wanted her boyfriend to see a big scene.”

“My daughter, she’s a thrower,” said Michael Fields. “My son gets upset if you mess up his stuff.

“Six Altamont cops came right up to my house,” said Michael Fields. “Salerno says, ‘I told you this was going to happen.’”

After the fight, Justin Fields spent the night in jail. His parents had no quarrel with this; they said they thought that would be an end to it and Justin would learn a lesson. While they said they thought it was normal for teenage siblings to fight verbally, they do not condone physical fighting.

Altamont judge Neil Taber at that time issued an order of protection. “He sat us down...and explained what this order meant,” said Flansburg. “It means no physical contact. He even said this does not mean they cannot act like brother and sister. When a brother and sister live together, they will have disagreements and call each other names.”

Second arrest

Three days after the May 15 fight and arrest, Justin Fields was arrested again, for second-degree criminal contempt, a misdemeanor, and second-degree harassment, a violation.

Justin Fields had returned home from jail. “All he was trying to do,” said Flansburg, “was make up with Amanda and she wouldn’t let him.”

“He called me the C-word,” said Amanda. “I told my mother and she said, ‘What are you — the queen?’”

When she got to Guilderland High School, Amanda said, “I told a teacher that me and him had an altercation.”

Justin Fields was arrested at school, arraigned in Guilderland Town Court, and sent to Albany County’s jail on $2,500 bail.

Justin Fields said he wasn’t allowed to call his parents. When he got to court, Salerno “hooks me up next to a little thing next to the phone and I asked if I could call my dad; he said no,” recalled Justin Fields. He also said he didn’t get to say one word to the judge who met privately with Salerno.

“He should have been entitled to a phone call, absolutely,” said Jurena.

No one called Justin’s parents to say he was in jail. At 8 p.m. that night, Michael Fields heard from a friend of Justin that he had been taken out of school in handcuffs that day, he said.

“I didn’t even know what court he got arraigned in,” said Michael Fields. He finally found out where his son was by calling a friend who is a guard at Albany County’s jail, he said. Justin Fields spent another night in jail.

Asked what it was like, he said, “I was just sleeping. I didn’t want to deal with it. I try not to think about it.”

Brian Forte, a member of the Guilderland Police Department stationed at the high school, said, “Normally, it’s me that’s making the arrest and I always call the parents.”

Occasionally, though, another police agency makes an arrest and follows its own rules, he said. “Tony came here to get Justin and took custody,” he said of Salerno. “It’s not our burden to call if another agency makes the arrest.”

He also said of Salerno, “I deal with Tony with kids from the school all the time. I don’t see him as a big, intimidating, harassing force.”

Living wit her grandmother

Amanda Fields said that Salerno “filled out the police report and told me I couldn’t read it but had to sign it.” She went on, “He came to my house and made me fill out the statement...He told me it wasn’t safe for me to live there.”

Amanda Fields moved in with her grandmother, Ginny Flansburg, of Guilderland.

“Brothers and sisters fight, so it’s better with her at my house,” said Flansburg last month. “Officer Salerno brought her to my house. He sat down and talked to me about it. I don’t know [what happened on May 15]. I wasn’t there. If Justin’s like that, I didn’t want him at my house.”

Asked if she felt unsafe around Justin, Flansburg said, “No, he doesn’t make me feel threatened...His mother said he would never hit Mandy again. I think maybe he’s learned his lesson. They put him in jail.“

She also said, “Mandy has always spent a lot of time at my house. When Debbie had Justin, I would take Amanda.”

At 68, Virginia Flansburg works two jobs — at a dress shop and at Albany Medical Center; she retired from full-time work there as a payroll representative.

Amanda dropped out of school in this, her senior, year, said her grandmother, largely because she suffers from painful fibromyalgia, like her mother and other relatives. “It makes her extremely tired,” said her grandmother. “It’s been all through the year.”

Amanda Fields moved back home to Altamont several weeks ago. Her parents say her grandmother catered to her and she enjoyed that.

“It was close to the mall and her boyfriend,” said her mother.

“And away from her father’s rules,” said her father.

Amanda said she decided to move back home because she rescued a Rottweiler puppy and her grandmother can’t keep a dog.

Asked about her relationship with her brother, she said, “We’re pretty close, but sometimes we don’t get along.”

Asked if she ever felt threatened by her brother, Amanda Fields said, “I felt more threatened when they asked me these questions when I was rattled.”

She went on, “I would like to see my brother get off. There’s no reason for him to get charged.”

After he spent the night in jail, she said, “He hasn’t touched me since. We’ve been living together. We haven’t gotten in a single fight....I’m getting along with my brother....I feel like me and my brother can’t walk down the street without looking over our shoulder at a cop.“

She also said, “When I told the truth, it should have been over a long time ago.”

Amanda Fields said that, two weeks after the May 15 fight with her brother, she and her family talked to the assistant district attorney, Renée Merges, and Judge Hout. “We told them it didn’t happen,” she said.

Legal battles

Justin’s parents estimate that, in the last year, they have been to Guilderland and Altamont courts dozens of times.

Initially, in Guilderland court, a plea-bargain offer was made where, if Justin Fields pleaded guilty, he’d be put on probation and do no more jail time, said Jurena. “He...said no way and ultimately the plea-bargaining process worked its way down to plead guilty to a violation and he wasn’t going to do that,” said Jurena. “Then ultimately...what was done was called an ACOD, an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal.

“Rather than force the judge to make a decision to dismiss the case or not dismiss the case, based on the paperwork, the former prosecutor and I entered into an agreement where the case would be dismissed in a day rather than waiting the usual six months or a year.”

Justin’s father said he thought a day was too much.

After last Friday’s mistrial was declared, Jurena told The Enterprise, “There’s apparently no real crime in Altamont, so they feel they have to pursue these things.” He said the case should have been adjourned in contemplation of dismissal and, since Justin had “stayed out of trouble for six months,” it would have been over by now.

“It’s the police that made her go to the hospital,” he said of why Amanda Fields sought treatment after the May 15 fight.

Continuing the comments he had made to the jury about the teenage fight, Jurena said, “Now it’s drama with the prosecutor,” referring to the court arguments. “They want to prosecute in a vacuum....I don’t know what’s driving this prosecution. It seems to be law-enforcement driven.”

 “She’s asking questions to make my family look bad,” said Amanda Fields of the prosecuter.

“My blood went up when she started painting the picture of us as a violent family,” said Michael Fields.

“A major weight,” said Jurena, “has been hanging over this family’s head for the last year.”