Westerfield Closings Set For Tuesday, 8-6-2002: More Revelations Continue "Out" Of Jurors Sight!

Court TV ^ | August 6, 2002 | Harriet Ryan

[FresnoDA]

Westerfield closings set for Tuesday

The defense for David Westerfield, left, opted not to call a last forensic witness, clearing the way for closing arguments Tuesday morning.

By Harriet Ryan
Court TV

SAN DIEGO — After two months and 116 witnesses, jurors in the capital murder case of David Westerfield will hear closing arguments Tuesday.

"We'll be ready to rock and roll tomorrow morning," Judge William Mudd told lawyers Monday.

Defense attorneys for Westerfield, who is accused of kidnapping and killing his 7-year-old neighbor Danielle van Dam, had considered calling a forensic anthropologist as their final witness. After weekend discussions, however, they decided to rest their case, defense lawyer Steven Feldman told Mudd.

The judge imposed no time limits on the arguments Feldman and prosecutor Jeff Dusek will make, and closings in the trial, which included 199 exhibits and weeks of complex forensic testimony, could stretch into a second day.

At the hearing Monday, Feldman made yet another attempt to have the panel of six men and six women sequestered during deliberations. He cited front page articles about the case in the local paper as well as an article about swinging in San Diego magazine.

"The land mines keep growing, Judge," he told Mudd.

As he had before, the judge denied the request and said he trusted the jury to follow his instructions about avoiding media accounts of the case.

Westerfield, 50, faces the death penalty if convicted of Danielle's slaying. The second-grader was abducted from her bedroom last February. Searchers found her naked body on the side of a road three and a half weeks later. Prosecutors claim Westerfield sexually assaulted and suffocated her, but the defense says forensic evidence indicates she was dumped after the defendant was under police surveillance.

Comprehensive case coverage

[Lanza]

Feldman may have had a slow start, but when I turned on the tube today Dusek couldn't even remember the name of a witness he wanted to quote testimony from. He even said "Forgive me, can't remember the name." Now that's what I call unprepared. Biggest case of this guy's career and he can't remember a witness name? Obviously he is "winging it" at times and not following notes. Bad idea.

[fnord]

k thanks

[connectthedots]

I know you are not an attorney. I know you have sat in many a court rooms though, fighting the system.

The 'system' in the State of Washington will be screwed big-time by the end of the year and the story may go national.

[Jaded]

They couldn't identify the blue fibers.

[UCANSEE2]

SOME OF THE MOST RECENT GOLDEN COMMENTS

No one can write fiction stranger than this case....

Reports of dogs fainting from bleach in the garage, searchers are drawn to an area by the stench of a roadkill dog, but no one smells a 2 to 4 to 6 weeks (choose your entomologist)dead body have eaten, with a thriving maggot mass.

A single man has pictures of naked women on his computer and deleted (did I understand that correctly?) animated child porn files on his computer. Folks are calling for his head, but feel buckets of sympathy for a mother of young children trolling for sluts to come to her home for a night of orgies.
ala Mr. Traficant: Beam me up!
I'm trying really hard not to be sarcastic, but this is sheer lunacy! by pinz-n-needlez

I have my own reasons for believing he is innocent. Since I believe he is innocent, I see certain things in that context. Mudd's increasingly blatant bias upsets me. Please: the fingerprint proves the kidnapping which in turn proves everything else. He could make his instructions shorter, "Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, go into that room, write the word 'guilty' on a piece of paper, come back and hand it to the baliff." by Yeti

Dusek was done after 15 minutes, and was finished by lunchtime.
All he has to do now is stop speaking.
By CONNECTTHEDOTS

[UCANSEE2]

Darn keyboard.

DId you get to hear FELDMAN. He might as well have been copying the description from your website. "STEALTH Ninja Dave", snuck in to a dark house he was unfamiliar with, unlocking doors, but leaving no prints, past the dog (invisible and smellless), up the stairs, down the hall, past Damon lying in bed with the door open watching TV, grabbed Danielle, carried her out past the boys rooms, past Damon, past the dog, left the house, and left "NO" PRINTS/HAIRS/FIBERS/DNA/ or SCENT.

[Lucky]

Damon is my first suspect too. Remember Feldman saying he knew something as explosive as a confession; I always thought it maybe had something to do with a telephone call the VanDams got when their phone was tapped. What ya' think?

[Spunky]

What kind of internet connection did DW have?

I think Neal testified to it being Dial up.

[sawsalimb]

If memory serves,the porn was said to be found on his hard drive.(I may well be wrong in this)

Now here's my take on that-if I read the owner's manual correctly when I bought the contraption I'm typing on now,pretty much everything I do goes on the hard drive. So,what might have happened is that Westerfield clicked a link,gagged when he saw what he was looking at,and never went back. And if anyone else had access to Westerfield's comp,it might not even have been Westerfield who clicked(I'm thinking that his son is a teenager,and teenagers have teenage friends,and if the kid had a friend over,it might have been the friend that did it.)

And then when Westerfield was charged,and the cops looked at his hard comp,they said those magic words,CHILD PORN!!! HE MUST BE GUILTY!!!

[UCANSEE2]

Obviously he is "winging it" at times and not following notes. Bad idea.

That was my thought too with the way he kept going in circles. Like he had all these ideas about what to say and just "went with it".

[the Deejay]

"Feldman hammered about how Damon lied to LE and was more worried about his own reputation than his missing daughter."

Something else about that pair of parents(?), if "swinging" is one's lifestyle & it's legal, why would they decide to cover their butts to a police investigation?

As far as smoking pot, doesn't one have to be caught in the act, by police, to even get a $100. fine? If so, then why
bother to be concerned about "what to tell the police"? One's child is missing!!! Don't stop to worry about theswinging & dope smoking. I should think those parts would be the furthest thing from one's mind.

[Jaded]

I missed that. Trust me, that office has that website addy. Maybe they have been taking notes.

[the Deejay]

I'd pay a $100. to find out about that phone call on the 16th of Feb., & on the 20th., BVD told the media they expect to find her soon. (Or something like that.)

Apparently, the vdams didn't know there was a trap & trace placed on their phone by police. According to BVD's testimony. Well, no one made that up. Feldman *knew* their phone had a trap & trace placed on it. (And the police can do this without permission.)

[nycgal]

Neal testified it was high-speed.

[Spunky]

past Damon lying in bed with the door open watching TV,

I never realized this. Once you get up the stairs, is the parents bedroom before Danielle's?

Everytime I see the picture I think the parents room is at the very end.

[fatima]

Right,the judge said Feldman left that door open and now we know what he meant,did he print it from his computer or buy.Must have been found in his room not son's.

[nycgal]

The parents' bedroom is to the right of the stairs. To the left of the stairs are the kids' rooms...Danielle's was between the two boys' rooms.

[Lucky]

Yep, and when Feldman questioned BVD about that call, the court wouldn't let her answer.

[KnutCase]

I believe that when Feldman realized that the clock was going to cut him off today that he intentionally went into his "Ben Matlock state of confusion mode" so that the only thing that the jury would have on their minds was HIM and his problems....not focusing on Duzek's arguments. Usually the last thing that occurs in the courtroom is what comes to mind first. This takes the focus off Duzek, gives Feldman a fresh start in the morning to go back to the beginning and place things in sequential order, thus clearing things up for jurors who, hopefully, have long forgotten most of the logic of Duzek's closing argument. Am I making sense yet???

[nycgal]

If the medical examiner could not determine cause of death and speculated that Danielle was suffocated, why is the blood evidence important? Also, were Danielle's bedroom and the MB ever luminoled?