Day 2
This felt like the first real day of the trial somehow, although it was still quite dull. We haven't gotten to the intense stuff yet. The thing that's very difficult about this case is that there were absolutely no eyewitnesses, which makes the prosecution's case pretty damn tough. What the prosecution has been doing is calling in "witnesses" that only barely heard or saw anything. Also, the testimonies have been VERY different from each other. The strangest thing is that the people living RIGHT NEXT to where the crime took place barely heard anything, while someone living across the courtyard heard screams and a thump.
The mother of the victim was called to testify today, and her testimony was one of the saddest things I've ever heard, both as a portrait of a pretty sad life and her sorrow over her dead daughter. I'll tell ya, if I ever become a dramatic writer of any kind, this experience is going to help me immeasurably in terms of understanding human emotions.
Also, today an amazing thing happened. A witness they had called yesterday was being asked questions from a defense attorney about her testimony from the preliminary hearing compared to her testimony yesterday. To call him thorough is an understatement, but by going through page after page of her previous testimony (this process seemed like it lasted over half an hour), he completely tore apart her credibility, at least to me. She got unbelievably testy as he was doing it, to the point where I was surprised the attorney didn't treat her as hostile. But it did seem, at least at times, like she had been flat out making things up or just saying things to say them. She clearly doesn't have the greatest respect for law enforcement and for the judicial system, but still. She didn't exactly help the prosecution today, I'll put it that way.
So overall, a relatively dull day, but an interesting one nonetheless.
Random Notes
There is one HUGE disadvantage to being a defense lawyer. You present your case last and question the witnesses last (or get a rebuttal last). This almost always ends up getting interrupted by needing to take a break of some kind. So your line of questioning almost always gets interrupted in mid-stride. In some ways, I guess this is good because you have a lot of time to revise your line of questioning, but say you get into a rhythm and it gets broken suddenly by needing to take lunch for an hour and a half. Not good.
Today a juror was falling asleep during testimony. She's an older Asian woman, and for the life of me, I don't understand why they picked her. She doesn't talk to anyone when we're outside of the courtroom, and the couple of times I've heard her speak it sounds like she doesn't speak English very well. Shows you the randomness of the system.
I still can't figure out the dress code. I went home today for lunch and changed into more comfortable clothing (I've been wearing a blazer these past couple of days) and no one batted an eye. I'm going to risk jeans tomorrow and see what happens. I doubt anyone will care.
There was a projector in the room today, and it was only used once, to show a picture of the victim. All well and good, except that the projector was completely out of focus! Why they didn't try to fix it, which would have taken about ten seconds, is beyond me. Someone was asked to identify if the picture displayed was the victim, and as they said yes, I was having trouble telling it was a person! Craziness.
There was also a tape that was played today of the first few seconds of a 911 call to CHP. When the call was first placed, the caller was put on hold for about fifteen seconds, and music started up. What did they play while the caller was on hold? Bone Thugs N Harmony. Crossroads. Everyone, including the judge, was trying to not crack up while this was heard.
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I'm curious about the contradictory witness. How did you determine whether her testimony was more accurate then or now?
ReplyDeleteWe basically determined that her testimony was inaccurate ALL of the time, especially after the evidence came out and contradicted most of what she had said to both the police and in the preliminary hearing. As it turned out, it didn't matter much at all when we deliberated, but we all agreed that she and the other witnesses were unreliable based on our eventual breakdown of what actually happened, which I'll write about later.
ReplyDeleteI'm forgetting the exact moment that I realized she was totally untrustworthy, but I think it was related to the murderers shirt. She told the police that it was dark (it was white and underneath a greyish white sweatshirt), and then at the preliminary hearing, which was less than six months after the crime, suddenly claimed that the shirt had bright colored spots all over it, like a painter's shirt, and that she assumed he had been painting; it of course had absolutely nothing of the kind on it. The defense attorney asked her point blank if she had made up the spots, and she got stymied for a little bit before claiming that her memory had been faulty back then. Seems like a weird thing to randomly remember, doesn't it?