Man Convicted In Death Of Cop On LIE Could Go Free Today

A 31-year-old man who was sentenced in 2016 to up to 8 years in prison in the 2012 death of Nassau Police Officer Joseph Olivieri on the Long Island Expressway could walk free as early as Thursday after a state appeals court threw out the most serious convictions against him.

Newsday broke the story Wednesday night. Prosecutors had convinced a Nassau jury that James Ryan's drunken driving had caused the chain-reaction crash that killed Olivieri, but in its decision Wednesday, the appeals court contended that "this was not one continuous chain-reaction accident that unfolded within a matter of seconds. Rather, a substantial amount of time passed between the accidents involving the defendant’s vehicle and the subsequent accident in which the officer was struck by the SUV," Newsday reported.

During his trail, Ryan, of Oakdale, was found not guilty of the top charge of aggravated vehicular homicide, but a jury convicted him of numerous other charges, including manslaughter, aggravated criminally negligent homicide, vehicular manslaughter and DWI.

Prosecutors said Ryan admitted to having consumed three vodka and Sprite drinks, the first of which was a two-shot vodka drink, while at Three of Cups Lounge in Manhattan before the crash.

Here is how prosecutors described what occurred around 5 a.m. on Oct. 18, 2012:

Just before 5 a.m. on October 18, 2012, Ryan was driving his Toyota Camry eastbound on the LIE after leaving a Manhattan club when he struck a livery cab driver at a high rate of speed. The cab driver was able to steer his car off the road, but Ryan fled the scene despite sustaining significant front end damage to his vehicle. Before passing the next exit, Ryan slammed on his brakes, coming nearly to a complete stop before an off-duty New York Police Department detective who was driving behind Ryan slammed into the rear of Ryan's vehicle. The detective's vehicle spun around violently and came to a rest facing westbound. The officer suffered a fractured sternum, multiple fractured ribs, and heart palpitations. Ryan's vehicle spun into the concrete barrier, perpendicular across the HOV lane before officer Olivieri, the first responder on the scene, blocked off the detective's car in the right lane with lights and sirens before crossing the roadway on foot to Ryan's position in the HOV lane. A black SUV driving eastbound in the HOV lane swerved but struck Ryan's vehicle and Olivieri. Ryan's blood-alcohol content at the scene was between .13 and .14 percent.

"Officer Olivieri was killed in the line of duty because James Ryan was committing a crime when he drove drunk, crashed and fled the scene and those criminal acts put Officer Olivieri directly in harm's way," Nassau District Attorney Madeline Singas said in 2015.

The driver of the SUV, 50-year-old Francis Belizaire, of Bay Shore, was not charged in Olivieri's death and Ryan's attorney argued that prosecutors had "been blinded by the allegations of [Ryan's] alcohol use."

"There's nobody else to criminally blame, so they blame Ryan," his attorney, Marc Gann, told the Associated Press.

Olivieri, a father of two from Ronkonkoma, spent five years with the NYPD before joining the Nassau County Police Department in 1998 and becoming a member of the highway patrol in 2005.

Ryan could be released from Collins Correctional Facility near Buffalo as early as Thursday, Newsday reported.

Patch file photos