Monday, July 23, 2012

Friday (7/20): Prosecution Rests, Defense 1st Witness


The prosecution rested and the defense called their firstwitness, an investigator working with the public defender’s office. This manhad interviewed the witnesses on his own and came up with a report summarizinghis findings. The only thing addressed during this witness’s testimony was inregards to his interview with the prosecution’s first witness, the man in thecar who witnessed the collision. The PD’s line of questioning seemed strange tous… it was hard to follow exactly where he was going with it. It appeared hewas trying to get the investigator to read through transcripts of hisconversation with the first witness and eventually contradict what that firstwitness had testified days earlier. Instead, all the PD succeeded in doing was toreinforce and even heighten the damaging testimony that the first witness hadprovided on Wednesday. Some of it was absolutely damning, but two things reallystood out in my mind. The PD asked the investigator about the demeanor of thewitness and asked him if he seemed angry with the defendant. The investigatorresponded, quoting from his notes what the first witness had told him monthsearlier: “This was murder. He might as well have shot him with a .357 magnum.”I looked around at the people sitting next to me in disbelief that the publicdefender had sequestered from his own witness this kind of testimony. The DAsat back and let it ride. The investigator continued (why the PD didn’t stophim is beyond me) to read from the report. I don’t remember the exact wording,but in essence he said: “Mr. [1st Witness] told me, “what reallystruck me was how little he seemed to care for Drew after running him over.””Not only did the PD succeed in admitting damaging testimony for the case, buthe also lost all potential sympathy points for the defendant. He looked like acomplete and utter asshole. Galo fucked up the unprotected turn by going whenhe shouldn’t have and never displayed any concern for what he had done.Meanwhile, people who had nothing to do with the incident were rushing to thescene to help.
The DA dug the knife in deeper and continued to solicit moreof the investigators findings because the PD had opened up the testimony byasking him a variety of questions related to his interviews. The DA tookadvantage of this and reamed the investigator. He got him to testify to evenmore damaging things about the nature of the accident and Galo’s lack ofregard. By the end of the day it seemed as if the defense was in a deep hole.Not a single thing had transpired that suggested that Drew was at fault, and almostall of the testimony placed blame on Galo. Even things that the PD tried tointroduce proved damaging to his own case.

Keeping in mind that all 12 jurors needed to be fairlyconvinced of Galo’s negligence, neither my father nor I held high expectationsabout the chance for conviction. Much of this is related to the general lack offairness and extreme degree of ineptitude that my family had been dealing withfor the previous year and a half.  Givenall of these things, we did not expect much to come of the case. More of thatis available on my father’s website, since it is somewhat (and I say thatlightly) outside of the scope of this particular trial. BUT, things had beengoing so well for our case that it seemed we may get a conviction. But therewas much more to come next week, including the defense’s evidence andwitnesses. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for commenting! Please keep in mind this is a sensitive issue and on-going trial. If you have any questions or concerns leave them here and I will do my best to respond.