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..Mark has made a career on Pollys death, and Brenda will too
This makes me sick too
If you happen to run across that statement from brenda, will you ping me to it please?
The purple shirt was on the floor w/the blood on the cuff but I, too, thought the white shirt from the passport pic was the only shirt in question on that Friday.
Now I can understand why DW would not want them shown....to spare them further attacks from the media, etc.
But as we have witnessed....Brenda, et al, make the most of their appearances, playing to the cameras....especially Damon.
I thought DW's sister's testimony heartbreaking.
Even off camera, you got a real sense of a lovely, caring person.
O f course, Brenda had to take over that spotlight too.
This is what I call be tried by the media.
...but couldn't they give that man & his family just a few minutes of uninterrupted time.
If you watched courtTV today, you would have been able to hear more of the testimony from the sister, etc.
..yesterday, Nancy Grace & others kept interrupting it.
Yes I agree.
I just could not watch it any more. I shut it off yesterday because of Nancy Grace and company.
Nancy Grace will have to answer to a higher judge, than Judge Mudd, someday.
She is to be pitied.....what a hardened heart she has developed.
...She has a pretty face, but it gets all gnarly & twisted when she talks nasty.
I wonder how soon the appeal could happen?
Well, I'll be here some this weekend....
..but anyway, have a great holiday.
It is a terrible thing to watch her absolute hatred for this man.
...She is vicious...
And she (& the others) conveniently mangle the facts to suit their purposes.
He didn't.
The family members of Westerfield that took the stand were not shown on camera at the request of FELDMAN.
Judge Mudd granted the request.
Today, during repeat testimony from yesterday, the lower half of the screen kept printing out that the judge requested these family members not be shown.
I heard Feldman make the request before the jury was brought in yesterday.
...but I can certainly understand the reasoning.
The media (almost without exception) has been bloodthirsty & vile toward any mention of Westerfield.
I can only imagine what his family must be going through.
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