Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
I'd better hurry up with this story, before it escapes completely from my mind!
The defense attorney initially called some fairly uninspiring witnesses: a couple of friends or acquaintances of Larry (our defendant). One testified that Larry had been paid for jobs in a particular way (with $50 bills), and another testified as to his living situation.
Earlier in the process, during jury selection, the defense attorney had made a big deal about what we would think if the defendant didn't get up and tell his own story. The general concensus in the room seemed to be that, while not technically incriminating, it would introduce doubt about him. Certainly based on what we'd seen so far, I think the jury would have come to a guilty verdict pretty quickly -- of course, I don't know that, since we weren't allowed to talk about it, but that's the impression I had.
So with this setup in place, there was a little thrill of surprise that ran through the jury when Larry was called to the stand. Alas, I won't possibly be able to do his testimony justice, but I'll do what I can.
His story, told through a series of mumblings, speaking too fast, two people speaking at once, objections, instructions from the judge to answer the question at hand, giant plot holes, logical loops, etc., was about as follows (I've assembled the story much more coherently than he told it):
He was driving along, minding his own business, but looking for drugs, at 3 am. Danielle leapt out in front of his car, or possibly flagged him down, and asked if he was looking for drugs. He said he was. I lose the thread at this point, but somehow this evolved into a long conversation on the sidewalk between Larry and Danielle, which included a trip into the friend's house, next to Danielle's apartment building. This was to call the dealer. She came back out, and they went down to the area next to the house to do some resin hits (smoking out of a used pipe which still has crack residue, but no actual fresh drugs). They came back up, and Danielle disappeared into the house again, to call the dealer and see what's up. Larry clarified at some point that this was to be a "breaking bread" arrangement, where he would by drugs through Danielle's dealer, and split the drugs with her as a courtesy for using her dealer.
At some point, the dealer shows up in a shiny black SUV with heavily tinted windows, a thumping stereo, and chrome wheels. Larry has, by this point, given his $50 bill to Danielle, and she takes it with her into the SUV. It then drives down the block, possibly making a U-turn at some point, where it disgorges Danielle. She comes back bearing a baggie with 5 rocks of crack, and leaps into Larry's car. They drive down to an alley, where she directs him to park.
They slip inside a garage which numerous individual policemen have already testified was so securely locked up that they felt no need to search it, and proceed to smoke some crack. Danielle does an heroic amount of crack (an entire rock in one hit, as Larry says), goes all wild-eyed, then announces to Larry (and here he imitated her face and words), "I'm gonna suck your cock!" She proceeds to yank down his pants in an ecstasy of crack-high, and starts going at it like a milking machine (I'm pretty sure Larry didn't use this similie, but it's what he was trying to indicate). Meanwhile Larry is looking down in horror at the scene playing out below where his belt would be if he were wearing one, and thinking to himself, "Wait, but... I have a girlfriend... Wait.. Stop..." but fails to actually say any of these words or give Danielle any indication that he wants her to stop.
Events were a little unclear at this juncture, but somehow Larry got his pants back on, and handed Danielle another $50 bill, for the purpose of acquiring more crack -- the first 5 rocks were just a sample, to make sure she was selling him high-quality drugs. There was also a counter-story that the $50 he gave her was for services rendered in her putative role as a prostitute, although he was clearly confused on that point. She then departed the scene at speed, and he figured she was making off with his money, with no intention of delivering the promised crack cocaine. He caught up to her and detained her, while having probably seen her stuff the $50 into her purse. Maybe.
They go around onto Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd again, and had another long conversation. Possibly she went back into the friend's house to call her dealer again. At some point (there's a gap here where either the story was too incoherent, or my own memory is starting to fade), they end up a couple dozen feet up the street, and she has some kind of a seizure. He searches her purse, and discovers an asthma inhaler, which he tries to administer, thinking all the time that she's OD'd on crack, and he's going to be blamed with the death because it was his crack that did it. The inhaler gave up the ghost after two and a half puffs, but she seemed to revive a bit.
Now her attitude has changed, and she's threatening to go get her brother and beat the crap out of him, for reasons which were never entirely clear to me. He takes it as a real threat, and beats a hasty retreat, headed down past the friend's house, trying to take a shortcut to get to his car, which is parked in the alley behind the house. He gets caught up in the undergrowth and trees which dominate that section of the block, and gets turned around. He's panicking, convinced that at any moment he's going to be beaten within an inch of his life for an offense he doesn't understand.
He blunders back to MLK, where he runs up the street and around a corner. He finds some bushes, and plunges into them, to hide and avoid his beating. He hears several footsteps rush by, and is starting to think maybe they've given up when he hears or sees a dog running towards him.
The dog savagely attacks, ripping up Larry's arm, swinging him to and fro like a ragdoll (note that Larry is a stout man of about 220 lbs, and the dog has been described as about 15 lbs). He sees the dog's controller, a policeman, standing off an indeterminate distance, pointedly looking at the birds with his arms crossed. Poor Larry is calling to the policeman to help, to call off the dog, he didn't do anything wrong! The policeman is deaf to his cries, but finally deigns to take notice of the situation, after a period of 30 to 60 seconds, and calls back the dog. He completes the ignominy by handcuffing Larry and arresting him.
Larry has meanwhile dropped the crack cocaine and crack pipe he was carrying, somewhere there in the bushes where he'd been hiding. Possibly he threw them from him, possibly he just dropped them; both stories were related. He was still clutching the $50 bill and Danielle's purse, though.
Thus endeth Larry's story. I have to say, my head was spinning by the end of it -- the story was so completely different from all the previous testimony that I was having a hard time integrating it into the narrative and facts that we already had. I remember thinking to myself at the time that his story placed them in about the same locations at about the same times as her story. Obviously, her story hadn't included any drugs at all, and the various policemen who'd testified hadn't mentioned any drugs. Indeed, the dog hadn't given any indication of drugs either, which seemed unusual.
The story as I wrote it includes the cross-examination by the prosecuting attorney. Her questions mostly served to clarify or amplify one or two of the less-clear parts of his story. I had the impression that if she weren't in a courtroom, her reaction to his testimony would have run along the lines of, "You have got to be kidding me."
The trial wrapped up pretty quickly after Larry got off the stand. Closing arguments were brief, and the defense attorney's closing argument was almost comical in the extent to which it didn't refer to the trial. He pulled out a lot of quotations, and went off on a tangent about justice and the jury system and such vague things as slide completely out of my memory. The state's closing argument was comparatively rock-solid, and reiterated the facts of the case, which didn't look good for Larry.
Up next: deliberations.
Posted at 15:28 permanent link category: /misc
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater