Day Three

We start a bit late. The Defense begins its cross-examination of Inv. F_____. It becomes obvious that the Investigator is either over-enthusiastic (at best) or a real hothead. Inv. F_____ has several of his mistakes in his incident report pointed out.

During the direct examination and the cross examination, it becomes obvious that we are not going to be finished by Friday as hoped. Unlike television shows, court cases aren't over in thirty minutes. The prosecutor and the defense attorney ask similarly-worded questions multiple times. The defense attorney asks for exact measurements and distances for an event from fourteen months ago. He also tries to go through elements of the stop and the pursuit, second by second. In short, he's trying to do his best to find a contradiction the State's witnesses. The prosecutor is also trying to do his job by making the State's witnesses as credible as possible. Regardless, we'll be here on Monday and everyone knows it.

During lunch, we go in search of a rumored Sopranos set a few blocks down on Main Street, but don't find it.

The narcotics officer who watched the drug transactions in the sting, Sgt. B_____, takes the stand. He was not involved in the pursuit of Mr. E____ or any of the subsequent events. However, he testified that he spotted Mr. E_____ engage in what is believed to be a drug transaction. Sgt. B_____, like the Investigator, has trouble with the map -- he draws the projects, a parking lot, and where his car was on the wrong street.

He indicates that he would like to say something, but the judge says that a witness can only answer questions. Mr. P_____, the state prosecutor, asks if he can confir with the witness. The judge denies this. The prosecutor asks a question to Sgt. B_____, but doesn't ask the right question. (The right question would have been "Is this area right here on the map exactly where you were when you observed Mr. E_____?") Mr. P_____ sat down with a confused look on his face.

Under cross, Sgt. B_____ testifies that he did not see exactly what the alleged drug dealer passed to Mr. E_____. The defense attorney manages to ask the right question, in which Sgt. B_____ points out his error -- everything should be one block over. The defense attorney jumps all over that as if to make Sgt. B_____'s map error evidence that we should discount his testimony.

During all witnesses' testimony, different objections are raised. "Asked and Answered" is a common one used to indicate that a lawyer is repeating a question that a witness has previously answered. At no time was there an objection due to circumstantial evidence. As a matter of fact, I discovered that you can convict someone charged of a crime based on circumstantial evidence. An illustration of such:

Suppose you wanted to prove that it snowed last night. You could use direct evidence -- someone testifies that they looked outside last night and watched it snow. You could use circumstantial evidence -- someone testifes that when they went to bed last night, there was no snow on the ground. When they arose in the morning, there was snow covering the ground.

Today, we also hear from Sgt. W_____, an officer who followed Mr. E_____ out onto the major highway and was present at the stop. Sgt. W_____ reminds me of Henry Rollins. We also hear from Detective T_____, who was a passenger in the first police vehicle that followed Mr. E_____ onto the major highway. What was interesting about Det. T_____'s testimony is he says that his vehicle was coming from the other way towards Mr. E_____'s vehicle, which means he was not directly behind Mr. E_____ as Inv. F_____ and Sgt. W_____ testified. As a matter of fact, he says that the vehicle behind Mr. E_____ at this time was an undercover police officer in an undercover vehicle.

This is important.

An undercover vehicle is like your car or my car, if we had a police radio in it. An unmarked police vehicle is a vehicle with wall-to-wall cop engine under the hood. The unmarked police vehicle has lights behind/in the grill, strobing headlights and rear red lights, possibly a dashboard-mounted red emergency light, a P.A. system, and a siren.

During a drug sting of this nature, an undercover officer would observe a drug transaction and radio that information to other police officers. An undercover officer would then follow the purchaser away from the drug dealer until actual police officers could come in and intercept the purchaser. This is done far away from the dealer as not to tip off the dealer that anything was happening. Once several arrests were made and evidence gathered, they would pick up the dealer.

In this sting, the dealer got away.

The cross-examination takes us to four o'clock. We are to hear from Sgt. S_____ in the morning. The sergeant was the one driving Det. T_____. If the sergeant was directly behind Mr. E_____, there's absolutely no way Mr. E_____ was not evading.

-Faux "F_____" Pas