Trial date set for student charged in bloody assaults

The Philadelphia District Attorney's office has set a tentative trial date of April 23 for College junior Justin Majors, 21, charged with assaulting a Penn student and a University Police officer when he was intoxicated last September. Majors originally received two charges of aggravated assault for the bloody September 28 incident. After the altercation, College senior Erik Metzroth fell to the ground and opened a large gash in the back of his head, requiring him to get 20 stitches. While a judge upheld all of the charges against Majors at a November 6 hearing, the DA's office reduced the charges last month from aggravated assault to simple assault and remanded the trial from the Criminal Justice Center at 13th and Filbert streets to a municipal court at 61st and Thompson streets. Although a trial was originally scheduled for yesterday, the District Attorney's office failed to subpoena Majors or his lawyer, Joel Trigiani, until this week, prompting Trigiani to ask for more time to prepare for the trial. Trigiani said he was pleased that the charges had been reduced, noting that the incident had been "blown out of proportion." "Aggravated assault cases are not these one-punch cases," he said. "The point is the criminal intent of the person and you don't have that here." Trigiani maintained that his client would still plead "not guilty" to the charges. Also, Trigiani said he would ask that Majors be given the chance to enroll in an Accelerated Rehabilitation Disposition seminar, which would erase all criminal charges from his record. "Mr. Majors, other than this incident in his life, has had an exemplary record," Trigiani said. "An ARD program would be more appropriate in this case. I'm going to make my pitch and see what happens." Majors, who is from Cranford, N.J., was not available for comment yesterday. Metzroth refused to comment on the incident itself, but emphasized that the Philadelphia District Attorney's office had exacerbated his frustration by perpetually failing to inform all parties of the proceedings. "The Philadelphia court system is absolute shit," he said, adding that the District Attorney's office had requested his appearance in court for judicial proceedings twice without issuing Majors a subpoena. "I showed up for court once, and they told me to go home because they forgot to subpoena Majors for today. And then they call me yesterday and tell me it happened again," Metzroth said. "How do you do that twice?" Majors' alleged assault on Metzroth and the police officer was the most serious of four alcohol-related assaults that occurred during the weekend of September 27-28 last semester.