Posted on 10/31/2002 7:32:48 AM PST by KS Flyover
Carrs' defense rests; jury deliberation near
After listening to agonizing details of five killings, repeated rapes and robberies, jurors in the capital murder case of Reginald and Jonathan Carr finally had something to smile about Wednesday.
They'll get the case today.
"We rest," said Mark Manna, one of Jonathan Carr's lawyers, after introducing his lone piece of evidence: an Amtrak train ticket from Newton to Cleveland, Ohio, for the morning of a quadruple homicide.
Manna's minute-long presentation brought smiles from jurors, who'd spent the day listening to a DNA expert testify for Reginald Carr. That witness did little to dispute the findings of the state's forensic analyst, and underwent a blistering cross-examination from prosecutor Kim Parker.
But the jury will have to sit a few more hours this morning, starting with what could be the most complex part of an already complicated case.
They'll receive a half-inch thick binder that includes 72 jury instructions, outlining the laws they must follow in reaching their verdicts. Many of those instructions have multiple parts. For example:
The jury can find either or both of the Dodge City brothers guilty of capital murder in the killing of three men and a woman on Dec. 15, 2000, at an east Wichita soccer complex.
It can consider four counts of first-degree premeditated murder.
It can consider four counts of second-degree murder.
Judge Paul Clark will give copies to each juror and read the instructions aloud.
Each side will get up to two hours for closing arguments, but lawyers for all sides have told Clark they don't expect to use all of their allotted time.
Such arguments can be persuasive and often do sway verdicts, but Clark will tell the jury that closings aren't evidence and shouldn't influence their decision.
Observers watching the live televised trial could find closing arguments one of the most interesting aspects of the trial. It's when lawyers try to make sense of the weeks of evidence and cross-examinations and show off their oratory skills.
Reginald Carr's defense, meanwhile, rested after three days of evidence, the main purpose of which was to highlight areas that could crop up on appeal, should the jury return a guilty verdict.
All murder convictions, but especially capital murder convictions, go through extensive review in higher courts. Most of Reginald Carr's defense seemed centered on trying to submit evidence that Clark wouldn't allow, raising legal issues that an appellate court may ultimately have to decide.
Some efforts sparked courtroom fireworks.
Lawyer Val Wachtel, for instance, wanted to try and defend Reginald Carr against charges of fatally shooting Ann Walenta by offering medical records to suggest that the Wichita Symphony cellist died as a result of medical malpractice. Clark repeatedly denied Wachtel's request, which can now be considered on appeal.
But the move spurred Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston to call the tactic "a sham" and produce medical records to show that hospital personnel treated Walenta appropriately.
Clark took Foulston's records and put them aside, with Wachtel's documents, for possible appeal. The jury won't see them.
The sole witness Wednesday was Jami Harman, a DNA expert with a private lab in the St. Louis area.
Harman pointed out that a Kansas Bureau of Investigation analyst had described one piece of evidence in a half-dozen ways.
Harman also criticized the way the KBI lab experts filled out portions of their paperwork and questioned the validity of trying to identify individuals in mixtures that include the DNA of several people.
Although the KBI presented some strong and damaging evidence during the trial, Harman spent most of her testimony explaining the weakest test.
A swab taken from the left thigh of a surviving woman, who'd lived through the soccer complex shooting and suffered several rapes, turned up spotty DNA results. Hers was present, of course. And so was a mixture that might be both Jonathan and Reginald Carr. But since they're brothers, and share much common DNA, the KBI could not match both brothers, but could not rule them out, either.
Neither could Harman.
"Based on the data, he could not be ruled out as a possible donor," she said of Reginald Carr.
Parker, the chief deputy district attorney, focused her cross-examination on the fact that Harman herself didn't do any DNA testing, just graded the reports submitted by the KBI's expert, Sindey Schueler.
Bringing out the state's strongest DNA evidence against Reginald Carr, Parker produced a pair of his red sweat shorts his girlfriend said he wore under his baggy jeans.
Parker pointed to spaces where stains were cut from the shorts and asked Harman:
"As far as you're concerned, Ms. Schueler was correct when she concluded that those stains were Heather Muller's blood?"
"Yes," Harman said. She did not dispute that Reginald Carr was wearing the blood of one of the homicide victims on his underwear.
I personally don't care what color any of those involved are/were. It was a brutal crime regardless of race or hate laws. This deserved media attention because of the heinous nature of the crime. Whether they hated the victims because they were white or the Carr brothers are sadistic bastards is irrelevant. Four people are still dead and charging them with a hate crime won't change that.
These men (and I use that term loosely) are animals and should be treated as such. No, I take that back...they shouldn't be treated as humanely as animals.
so much that practically nobody outside of Free Republic knows about it.
I seriously doubt it would be that way if the victims were black.
Imagine if they were white and their victims were black. It would have been wall to wall media coverage on every network and in every newspaper in the country.
This happened before the 9-11 attack on the USA. These guys might have behaved differently had this happened after we all got a lesson in heroics. My point was these guys are dead and second guessing their actions isn't helpful. Such a tragedy. My hope is the Carr brothers will have to pay for their crimes with their lives.
Also I hope that you're not mad at me.
I last checked on Wednesday (10/30/2002) and their search engines still don't know nuttin about no |"Reginald Carr"| or |"Wichita" and "Carr"| or |"Heather Muller"|.
Unbelievable. If anyone still doubts that we have commissars from the Democrat National Socialist Party running the newsrooms, this fact alone proves it.
"I last checked on Wednesday (10/30/2002) and their search engines still don't know nuttin about no |"Reginald Carr"| or |"Wichita" and "Carr"| or |"Heather Muller"|."
You're right, you won't find any of this anywhere. I believe that the only papers that printed anything about this massacre were papers in KS and possibly, Chicago. Sickening, isn't it?
Sure does. It also proves what a sick bunch of lying racist hypocrites liberals are.
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