ALBANY, N.Y. -- Thursday afternoon,
cable network Lifetime was granted an order that allows the movie, "Romeo
Killer: The Chris Porco story" to air as scheduled on Saturday.
Porco won round one in this fight
Tuesday, when a Supreme Court judge ruled Lifetime could not air the movie
stating it was not remotely accurate.
"This type of
movie that will air on Saturday is based on the real world events that happened
and involved Porco," said Michael J. Grygiel, Co-counsel for Lifetime Entertainment Inc.
Lifetime appealed the ruling and won
Thursday in an appellate court in Albany.
That movie is back on the schedule
now for Saturday at 8 p.m.
An Orange County jury found
Christopher Porco guilty of murdering his father, Peter Porco, and trying to
murder his mother, Joan Porco, with an axe in 2004. Jurors heard seven weeks of
testimony from more than 80 witnesses - but it took them just six hours to find
the Delmar native guilty.
One year after he was found guilty,
his defense attorney Terry Kindlon worked on an appeal. At the center of that
appeal was the head nods Joan Porco gave to a police detective as she lay
bleeding from massive injuries, indicating it was her son that attacked her.
"Joan Porco was, in effect, an
unavailable witness," Kindlon claimed. "If you have no recollection,
if your memory has been erased, then you might just as well be dead, you might
just as well be unavailable."
But lead prosecutor and former chief
assistant district attorney Michael McDermott claimed, "at that point in
time she was aware, she was alert, she was meaningfully communicating - and it
was a communication of significance, rather than a random nod of the
head."
"I can't blame Chris
Porco from wanting to stop this from being shown," says Kindlon.
Christopher Porco is serving his 50
years-to-life sentence at Dannemora State Prison, near Plattsburgh.
"It's not a happy place, it's a
place where you do the best you can," said Kindlon. "And he's doing
the best he can, which in Christopher's case, is pretty well."
Joan Porco now lives in Rochester
near family. She still visits her son in prison, and maintains he is innocent.
Christopher Porco and Matt Barr, the actor that will play him in the Lifetime movie.
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