Friday, February 06, 2015

"All We're Asking for is Justice": Trial Date Set in "Grim Sleeper" Serial Killings, but Weak, Incompetent Judge Long Ago Lost Control of the Case, Which Has Dragged on for 4.5 Years!

By David in TN and Nicholas Stix

A date of June 30. The defense has likely been hoping for a plea deal less than the death penalty.

N.S.: “A firearms expert who tested guns retired last year, so the testing needed to be done again. Medical examiners and a supervising criminalist at the coroner's office have retired and will need to be replaced.”

This doesn't sound right.

Expert witnesses can be subpoenaed to come out of retirement to testify at trial as to their results. When I attended the George Thomas murder re-trial in Knoxville, TN in 2013, at least one expert witness (a fingerprint expert, if memory serves) had retired since the first trial, and came out of retirement to repeat his testimony. If there is a first trial and a retrial on appeal, and expert witnesses die between the two trials, someone else reads aloud their testimony from the first trial at the re-trial. (That also happened at the Thomas re-trial.) The problem is if experts die before the first trial, which may be the goal of the defense in this case.

If California law requires that experts who retire before trial be replaced, then the law needs to be fixed, since it allows one side to run out the clock. However, the real problem with this case is weak, incompetent Judge Kathleen Kennedy, who should have been removed a long time ago.

At NBC Southern California.


2 comments:

David In TN said...

Absolutely. The defense has been dragging it out by claiming "We need more time to study the evidence." A year goes by and they haven't done a thing. So the judge grants another delay. And another.

The latest ploy was "There was another man's DNA." Still another delay.

David In TN

Anonymous said...

The goal, the guiding principle in any trial involving some horrific negro violence, is to exonerate the negro. This principle is shared by both the prosecution and the defense. In fact, this has become the guiding principle of the entire United States of America. Negroes are victims, even when they are blood-thirsty killers. They are noble savages, magic beings.