Posted on 08/27/2002 8:55:29 PM PDT by dread78645
The judge in the David Westerfield case said yesterday that he has decided which prosecution witnesses will be allowed to testify at the penalty phas e of the murder trial, but he refused to be specific.
Superior Court Judge William Mudd made his announcement following a closed-door hearing with the lawyers. He didn't identify the witnesses or the nature of their testimony. He simply said some prosecution witnesses "will testify, others will not".
Westerfield was convicted last week of kidnapping and killing 7-year-old Danielle van Dam. She was discovered missing from her bedroom Feb. 2; her body was found more than three weeks later in a brushy area off Dehesa Road in East County.
Tomorrow, the jury will begin hearing evidence on whether the 50-year-old Sabre Springs design engineer deserves the death penalty or life in prison without parole.
Westerfield's lawyers objected to some, if not all, of the prosecution's witnesses. They also opposed airing a videotape of Danielle, which the judge will allow.
Westerfield's lawyers raised constitutional challenges to the death penalty. The judge said he will consider those arguments at a hearing today when he also is scheduled to decide whether to disallow still photography during the remainder of the trial.
The issue arose after a Union-Tribune photographer took a picture of Danielle's parents in the courtroom gallery as the jury returned its guilty verdicts.
The judge said photographer Dan Trevan violated a court rule that prohibits photographing spectators. The newspaper says the van Dams weren't spectators but witnesses who testified during the trial and who have been photographed frequently inside and outside court.
Brenda van Dam hopes to have the foundation running by Sept. 22, which would have been Danielle's eighth birthday.
"With all the other missing children, we felt there's got to be something we can do," said Susan Wintersteen, a van Dam family friend who is helping to organize the effort.
Danielle's parents are prohibited by a gag order from speaking to the news media about any issue related to their daughter until after the sentencing of David Westerfield.
A jury on Aug. 21 convicted Westerfield of kidnapping Danielle from her bedroom and killing her in February. The penalty phase of the trial is scheduled to begin Wednesday.
Brenda van Dam and five friends met over the weekend at Wintersteen's home, not far from where the girl was kidnapped, to work on the details of what is to become the Danielle Legacy Foundation.
Modeling their group on Mothers Against Drunk Driving, they plan to use the network of volunteers who helped in the search for Danielle to promote child safety and promote programs like the nationwide Amber Alert system, Wintersteen said.
The system, named in honor of Amber Hagerman, a Texas girl killed in 1996, is a way of quickly disseminating information about a missing child through news media and other outlets. It's used in more than a dozen states.
The San Diego effort follows other advocacy and safety groups born out of tragedy. They include the Laura Recovery Center, named for Laura Kate Smith, murdered in Friendswood, Texas, in 1997. The group fields volunteer searchers in child kidnapping cases.
Laura Recovery coordinated thousands of searchers after Danielle was reported missing Feb. 2. One of the volunteers found her body along a rural road nearly a month after the abduction.
Marc Klaas created the Klaaskids Foundation, after his daughter, Polly, was kidnapped and murdered in Northern California in 1993. Another group is named for Carole Sund, who was killed with her daughter, Juli, and the girl's friend Silvina Pelosso while they were visiting Yosemite National Park in 1999.
"A lot of families tend to start an organization in their loved ones memory, so there are a lot of them out there," said Kim Petersen of the Carole Sund Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation, based in Modesto. "It can be very healing."
It can also be very difficult. Foundations trying to raise donations often find themselves competing with similar efforts or overshadowed by larger o rganizations, said Klaas, who lobbies, speaks on child safety and helps other groups.
Still, "There's always room for innovation, for fresh new ideas," Klaas said.
Wintersteen, whose daughter was in school and Brownies with Danielle, said one of the group's first efforts will be to distribute identification kits that parents can use to set aside their child's fingerprints, DNA and a recent photo.
Investigators had to scramble to collect such identifiers when Danielle disappeared in February.
"We still feel there is change that needs to be done," Wintersteen said.
I agree with most of everything you post, but I sometimes think you focus a bit too much on minor apparent weirdnesses / quirks about the vD's. I don't think there's anything to the passport photo question.
I am also not especially bothered by their lies, the inconsistencies in their stories, or their odd behavior in the weeks following Danielle's dsiappearance.
I can imagine that they -- assuming they had nothing directly to do with it themselves -- must have still felt a tremdous amout of guilt, especially due to the lifestyle issues. It seems reasonable to me that they might try to cover up some things. It also seems reasonable that their memories might get jumbled and that they might engage in "coping" behaviors that appear to be very strange to rest of us.
But I still can't get DW going into that house that night, locating her room, snatching her out with getting caught or leaving any forensic evidence. And then getting her back to his house without being observed.
The hand print in the MH also bugs me. It implies -- assuming that that it wasn't planted -- that she was alve when she was in there.
How would DW have accomplished that without leaving evidence all over the place? He had to go get the MH at a point in time when he was supossedly already in possession of her and while she was still alive. Where was she?
Again, count me as confused.
I am not one of those that can't stand to have my theory shot down. I long for it as it just minimizes the possibilities.
I have given this a fair amount of thought. Not as much as many of the other folks that post to these threads, but still a fair amount. I can't come up with a complete scenario. I can get some of the dots to connect, but there are some major gaps.
Another problem I have, is with him parking his MH on the side of that road and hauling her body up the side that steep hill.
Now, somebody had to have done that, so maybe it was him who did it.
But a 49 y.o. man in average physical condition to choose that particular location and then get away with doing it? Fifty pounds is not that light. Traffic coming. Motor home very conspicuous.
Maybe so. Maybe he got into a panic and just did the first thing that was available. He'd planned to dump her body out in the desert, but he got an image of being stopped and searched by the Highway Patrol. And, then he got lucky and nodody saw him.
But there is a whole lot of luck in that whole scenario. Too much for me. But maybe so.
You do a good job of that. I quite appreciate you keeping these threads on track. No matter how awful she may be, I get a bit weary of all the posts about what's-her-name and the politics at FR.
Three points. ;)
The porblem I have is with the pieces that are missing. I can accept a few missing pieces -- after all, you never know everything.
In terms of "reasonable doubt", I think there was a ton of that. Especially given the way the the investigation and the trial were handled.
But there is still this other question of whether DW *probably* did it. After having read over Jennifer's N's testimony, I think just maybe he did do it. Not sure.
(such as)
His hands were in his pants, he was jacking off, it might not have been his finger.
Tastless accusations that have no place in the media..
No proof, but I think Damon did.
Maybe accidentally.....but he was drunk/doped & there was a big space of time when he could have.
Certainly we've heard of parents abusing/killing their own children.
Why is the media so sure DW is such a monster, but Damon couldn't possibly be?
Damon had plenty of time to do it, & get her out of there before the party people came home at that late hour.
That's why I think he made a point of NOT checking on her....because he knew she wasn't there.
IT IS MINDBOGGLING how the Nancy Grace/Lisa Bloom/Catherine Crier can take one little nugget & run with it till it grows larger, and larger, and becomes totally unrecognizable!!
They are all despicable creatures!
I'm sounding tired & cranky....better go to bed.
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