Nunez walks … but for how long?

Ulster County DA Holley Carnright. (Photo by Dan Barton)

The defense team also argued that Nunez had no motive to kill Kolman. Linda Kolman testified that by mid-November of 2011, she had decided to break off the relationship with Nunez after the holidays. But the defense used affectionate text messages and emails and a card Linda gave Nunez to mark their 11-month anniversary on Nov. 16, 2011 to argue that no such plan existed.

The defense also pointed to Linda Kolman’s own testimony that her husband remained friends with and even grew closer to Nunez after learning of the affair in July as evidence that he had no plans to stand in the way of the relationship. Lipton suggested that Linda Kolman’s testimony was an effort to assuage her guilt over the affair.

Finally, the defense disputed evidence from a vehicle identification expert who testified that a vehicle seen pulling up next to Kolman’s car in the Planet Fitness parking lot the morning of his death was an exact match for Nunez’s 2010 Nissan Pathfinder. Nunez sold the SUV a week after Kolman’s death; detectives spent a year looking for it before tracking the vehicle to an Oriskany man and taking it to a local repair shop for inspection. The examination turned up a loose fog light that prosecutors argued was identical to that seen on a white SUV that appeared on a “gauntlet” of Ulster Avenue security cameras heading to the plaza and pulling up next to Kolman’s car in a secluded area of the parking lot.

In his summation, Lipton questioned vehicle identification expert Grant Fredrick’s ability to positively identify Nunez’s Pathfinder based on headlights glimpsed by security cameras at a distance.

“Headlight-spread analysis is not a science, it’s not even a thing,” Lipton told jurors. “You can’t match a car based on the spread of its headlights.”

Albanese argued to the jury that the disparate threads of circumstantial evidence pointed directly at Nunez as Kolman’s murderer. Nunez, she said, was the only possible source of the Midazolam. She mentioned the deleted texts and the video evidence of the white SUV in the parking lot and painted Nunez as a calculating deceiver who “impersonated” Thomas Kolman’s best friend while plotting to ruin his marriage.

Albanese asked jurors to recall testimony from one of Nunez’s tenants who said that just a few days before Kolman’s death, the dentist had expressed frustration that his girlfriend’s husband was having trouble “moving on” from the marriage.

“He told her, ‘I want this man out of my life, I want this man out of my girlfriend’s life,’” Albanese told jurors. “And a few days later, Thomas Kolman was out of his life. He was dead.”

Nunez left court a free man on Tuesday. But his conviction on two counts of felony first-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument and pending fraud and perjury charges could mean his freedom will be short lived. Last year, prior to his indictment in Kolman’s death, Nunez was indicted on a felony charge of third-degree grand larceny. That charge stems from allegations that he filed false insurance claims following a fire at a building adjacent to his dental practice at 387 Washington Ave. in Kingston. Nunez also faces a felony perjury charge based on allegations that he failed to disclose on a pistol permit application that he had been dishonorably discharged from the Marine Corps for desertion.

Nunez faces a maximum sentence of two and a half to seven years on the forgery charges. If he’s convicted on other counts, the sentences could be imposed consecutively sending him to prison for a decade or more.

On Tuesday, County Court Judge Don Williams said that he would wait on the disposition of the fraud and perjury charges before sentencing Nunez on the two forgery counts. Williams told the defense team to be prepared to bring their client before a jury again later this year.

“There will be no plea deal,” Williams told Shargel and Lipton. “This is going to trial.”