Anthony Oddone Appeals Conviction in Death of Andrew Reister
A Farmingville man serving a 17-year sentence for the 2008 death of Hampton Bays resident Andrew Reister is seeking to have his conviction overturned by the New York State Court of Appeals, Newsday reports.
In 2009, Anthony Oddone was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter and in 2010 a sentence of 22 years in state prison was handed down, though the sentence was later reduced by five years.
Reister, who was a corrections officer at the Suffolk County Correctional Facility in Riverside, was moonlighting as a bouncer at the Southampton Publick House in Southampton Village in August 2008. Oddone was a patron. According to testimony, Reister told Oddone to get down off a table, and Oddone refused. An altercation ensued and Oddone held Reister in a chokehold. Reister fell into a coma and died two days later. The length of the chokehold is at question in the appeal, according to Newsday.
“Choking somebody who’s already passed out is a funny sort of self-defense,” Judge Robert Smith said in court, according to Newsday. “You don’t need a stopwatch to know he’s held on too long.”
Read the report at newsday.com.