DEFENDANT REJECTS PLEA, THEN JUMPS TO HIS DEATH

NEW YORK -- After casting a last glance at his mother, a teen-ager accused
of selling crack cocaine jumped out the window of a packed Manhattan
courtroom Thursday and fell 16 stories to his death after a judge offered
to give him a three- to six-year prison sentence if he agreed to plead
guilty in the case, officials and witnesses said.

The defendant, Derrick Smith, 19, rejected the plea bargain. Then, as court
officers were leading him to a holding cell behind the courtroom, Smith,
who was not handcuffed, broke free and jumped out an open window, shaken
witnesses said.

"I thought his mother was going to have a nervous breakdown," said John
Toliaferro, 44, a legal assistant who was in court. "She kept saying,
'That's my son, that's my son."'

The suicide was a jarring interruption to the daily routine at Manhattan
state Supreme Court, as lawyers, judges, jurors and even defendants crowded
the sidewalks at lunchtime below the building at 100 Centre St., which was
once known as "the Tombs" for the faux-Egyptian architecture of a much
smaller courthouse that stood there in the 19th century.

It was supposed to have been a routine court date for Smith, who was
arrested Sept. 19 and accused of selling crack cocaine on the corner of St.
Marks Place and Second Avenue in the East Village, according to an
indictment. Since his arrest, Smith had been held on Rikers Island because
no one had paid the $2,500 bail to set him free.

Noting that Smith was already on probation for a 1995 drug case and that he
had been arrested several times since then on charges of selling marijuana,
Justice Budd Goodman of state Supreme Court in Manhattan revoked the offer
of bail Thursday and ordered him sent back to Rikers Island.

Then, according to a transcript of the proceedings, he told Smith that the
plea offer, "for today only," was three to six years in prison.

Smith's lawyer, Frank Bari, rejected the offer, setting the wheels in
motion for the case to go to trial.

Then Smith addressed the court. "I'm 19 years old, your honor," he said,
according to the transcript. "That is terrible. That's terrible." Then
Smith asked to represent himself. Bari, his lawyer, advised him against
this, and Goodman ordered him to submit the next motions in the case.

Alfonso Wilson, 35, who was in the courtroom with a friend who had a court
date, said that Smith then turned to face his mother. "He looked at his
mother," he said. "He looked very discouraged. Their eyes met."

Court officers led Smith behind a glass partition that forms a sort of
corridor along the outer wall of the courtroom and leads to an adjoining
holding cell. The corridor is in view of at least part of the courtroom. As
he passed a window, witnesses said, they heard a commotion.

Toliaferro said that Smith's mother jumped up. "She ran back, behind the
partition," he said. "Then she saw what happened. She saw the open window,
and the court officer there alone." Smith's mother, who was not identified
by the authorities, was taken to a nearby hospital and treated for trauma.