Shawn Rocco - srocco@newsobserver.com
Raymond Cook listens as the prosecution makes their opening arguments during his murder trial in Raleigh on Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2011. Cook, a Raleigh physician, is accused of driving drunk at a high rate of speed and killing Elena Bright Shapiro, a 20-year-old aspiring professional ballerina, in a traffic collision in September 2009.
RALEIGH -- Prosecutors contend that Raymond Cook, the doctor accused of driving drunk at a high rate of speed and killing an aspiring professional ballerina, made deliberate choices that led to the fatal collision in the fall of 2009.
Cook, 44, is on trial for second-degree murder in the September 2009 death of Elena Bright Shapiro, an apprentice with Carolina Ballet.
His defense team argues that, indeed, he consumed alcohol on Sept. 11, 2009, and he sped in his black Mercedes above the posted limit on Strickland and Lead Mine roads.
But prosecutors and defense attorneys differ on whether malice played a part in the doctor's decisions that day.
Assistant District Attorney Adam Moyers, in opening arguments in the high-profile case, told jurors that Cook had been drinking at Raleigh Country Club in the afternoon and later at Piper's Tavern in North Raleigh.
When he got into his black Mercedes and headed for home at at least 30 miles per hour over the posted limit of 45 MPH, Moyers said, he essentially was in a "black missile."
Shapiro, Moyers said, was on her way to a house-warming party with a fellow dancer at Carolina ballet when her car was struck from behind by Cook.
"This is no accident," Moyers argued this afternoon.
Instead, a series of intentionally bad choices, Moyers argued, ended the life of Shapiro as she was on the threshold of a promising future.
"He chose to drink that day," Moyers said. "He chose to drive after drinking. He chose to fly down Strickland Road and as a result of those choices is the death of Elena Bright Shapiro."
Roger Smith Jr., one of the defense team, agreed that Shapiro's death inspired sorrow and anger.
"It's only human and natural that we feel great sadness over the loss of Elena Bright Shapiro," Smith said in his opening statement. "It's only human and natural that we feel great anger to Raymond Cook."
But in the light of the courtroom, Smith urged jurors to put aside their emotions and fairly and honestly review the facts of what happened that day.
In selecting the 12 men and women to sit on the jury, lawyers probed their feelings about alcohol and their willingness to clear their minds of any pre-trial publicity surrounding the high-profile Wake County case.
At some point in the next several days, Osmond Smith, the Superior Court judge overseeing the trial, will be asked to consider requests from the defense team representing Cook to suppress blood evidence and statements taken from the doctor shortly after the Sept. 11, 2009, accident.
Cook is accused of acting with malice when he got into his car that day.
Prosecutors allege that Cook was driving on Strickland Road at almost twice the posted speed limit with a blood-alcohol content more than twice the legal limit. He slammed into the back of car being driven by Shapiro. Prosecutors contend that she probably did not see Cook's Mercedes coming.
Cook, a physician who has surrendered his license, was charged initially with death by vehicle and driving while impaired. Prosecutors went to the Wake County grand jury several days later and received a murder indictment.
Cook, who has lived in Georgia and North Carolina, had been charged previously with driving under the influence of alcohol.
Under the second-degree murder charge, a jury would be asked to decide whether a man with a history of drunken driving charges acted with malice if, as investigators allege, he left the North Raleigh bar sped along Strickland and Lead Mine roads while impaired.
To prove malice, North Carolina law requires prosecutors to show that the defendant intended to drive in a reckless manner that reflected knowledge that injury or death would likely result.
