What, Me Worry?

Former New Jersey Net Jayson Williams is facing a re-trial on charges of reckless manslaughter related to his 2002 shooting of his chauffeur, Costas Christofi (at his 2004 trial, Williams was convicted of a lesser charge, but the jury hung on the reckless manslaughter charge). His lawyer has been trying to prevent the new jury from hearing what Williams did immediately after shooting Christofi. Here, according to a New York Times article, is what Williams' lawyer argued to the New Jersey Supreme Court yesterday:

On Monday, Mr. Williams’s lawyer, Joseph A. Hayden Jr., argued that the actions of Mr. Williams after the 2002 shooting stemmed from panic. He said that including such details as Mr. Williams’s removing his clothing; restaging the site to make it appear that the driver, Costas Christofi, committed suicide; and asking witnesses to provide false statements would be “enormously and potentially prejudicial to the jury.”

I am sure that is true, but isn't that sort of the point?

While I don't know what the law is in this area, I do find it surprising that two lower courts have sided with Williams and ruled that the actions described by his lawyer cannot be brought up in court. How those actions differ from those of a bank robber running out the door with bags of cash or, as one of the justices noted, a hit-and-run driver fleeing an accident scene, escapes me. If the question for the jury will be whether this shooting was an accident, it seems that evidence of someone desperately trying to cover up an "accident" is highly probative of that question.