U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten today set a hearing on the defense motion for a new trial in the racketeering case for five convicted Crips gang members.
The defense has accused jurors of not being impartial in their deliberations. Last week, I talked to the presiding juror, who explained how the jury approached the case for a story published Sunday in the Eagle.
Marten has set a hearing for 9 a.m. June 29 to take up the arguments.
The men were convicted in April of conspiracy under the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. A sixth defendant was acquitted of racketeering charges but convicted of an ammunitions offense.
A man riding in a truck when it ran over and killed two people last summer is guilty of second-degree unintentional murder and voluntary manslaughter, a jury decided this afternoon.
The jury returned their verdict on lesser charges for Carlos Chavez-Aguilar, 22, who had gone on trial accused of second-degree intentional murder.
Second-degree unintentional murder is a reckless action taken with extreme disregard for human safety. Voluntary manslaughter is a sudden death occurring in the heat of passion.
Chavez-Aguilar is set for sentencing May 15 before Sedgwick County District Judge Joseph Bribiesca. Chavez-Aguilar’s lawyer, Brad Sylvester, said he plans to ask for a new trial, after raising objections to Bribiesca allowing gang testimony.
Police said a fight broke around 2 a.m. on Aug. 23 in the parking lot of the El Alacran Club at Harry and Seneca. An officer with the Wichita police gang unit testified that members of the Surenos 13, Vato Loco Boys and North Side Gangsters started the fight.
A pickup truck drove around the corner of the building and through the parking lot, killing Juan Martinez, 22, and Marilyn Arreola, 54. Carlos Chavez-Aguilar also was convicted of aggravated battery in the injury of a third person.
Rene Chavez-Aguilar, 20, charged with driving the truck, faces trial April 27.
The 89 pages of jury instructions in the RICO Crips trial had lawyers comparing it to parts of the Bible in today’s closing arguments.
“We have jury instructions longer than the Psalms, except there is no poetry in them,” defense lawyer Paul McCausland said of the jury instructions given Friday by U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten.
That was just one of several biblical references by defense lawyers trying to explain complicated charges stemming from RICO, the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act.
Lengthy legal instructions frequently lose jurors with complex vocabulary, grammar and legal rhetoric, experts say.
Weather interfered with the continuation of the federal racketeering trial against six accused Crips gang members this morning.
As sleet peppered the windows of the federal courthouse, U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten halted the trial and sent jurors home under the threat of more severe winter storms this afternoon.
Marten spent nearly 2 1/2 hours reading 89 pages of legal instructions, upon which jurors will base their deliberations.
With the storm expected to pass this weekend, Marten recessed the trial until 9 a.m. Monday for lawyers to present their closing arguments.
The charges stem from the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO.
We will continue live courtroom updates Monday, via Twitter.
After U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten gives legal instructions and lawyers present closing arguments, the jury will get the case.
Marten gave jurors the day off Thursday, as he worked with the lawyers on finalizing the legal instructions that will guide the jury in reaching its verdict.
On television court dramas, witnesses give clear answers to direct questions. After all, the entire story has to wrap by the top of the hour. In real life, testimony isn’t always so easy.
Put yourself in the jurors’ seat for this exchange between Kristen Neuhaus and prosecutor Barry Disney during the trial of George Tiller Monday. Tiller is charged with performing abortions in an illegal business relationship with Neuhaus, another doctor.
In the following video, Neuhaus appears to take pains to keep from saying she “worked” for Tiller, even has she compares what she did in Wichita to a doctor she “worked for” in Kansas City, Kan. This video lasts less than three minutes. Jurors have had to listen to days of this kind of testimony:
A cool part about covering a trial via Twitteris seeing reaction from those following the coverage. That’s the “social” part of the Internet social networking experience. But there’s been an interesting twist in the coverage of the federal racketeering trial of six accused Crips gang members.
Not only is it a first here in federal court, it’s the first trial I’ve had “retweets.” Retweet is Twitter-speak for someone repeating one of the short, 140-character posts to their followers — passing it along to a broader audience.
A few of the posts people have “retweeted” (RT) during the past week of testimony — from Barnegat, N.J. to Seattle:
Alex73013: @rsylvester “Smith initially said he didn’t know anything about the robbery, but he eventually admitted to robbing the store to police.” …
(Police said one of the defendants changed his story during an interview)
LindsayGriffith: Oops! RT @rsylvester: Court just learned that one of the jurors realized she’s a cousin to the fingerprint examiner who testified earlier.
(U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten questioned the juror and later determined she didn’t know the witness well enough to affect her ability to be impartial).
DBallardReisch: @rsylvester Not really clear how anyone remembers what happened in 1995!
(Prosecutors are chronicling 16 years of crimes they say show an organized criminal enterprise by the defendants and witnesses are having to testify years after the incidents)
EmilyMedvec: RT @RSylvester “There was a man in the bathroom, who she said she didn’t know.”
(from testimony about a home invasion)
VBalasubramani: “To get OG status,’you’ve got to put in work.’ That includes riding in retaliation of the enemies.” (@rsylvester - from trial)
(OG stands for “original gangster)
Continue following the trial this week at the box on the left or on my Twitter feed.
U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten told defense counsel that he would allow me to file live posts, via Twitter, from his Wichita courtroom. Twitter is a micro-blogging social network platform that allows users to file and follow short posts of 140 characters or less.
“Twitter is on,” Marten told the lawyers in a brief hearing this afternoon. Marten said he will allow attorneys to file any objections they have for the record.
Marten is tech-savvy, and led efforts to make sure the renovation of the 1932 federal courthouse in Wichita included updates for a wired environment. The courthouse has wireless Internet connections that allow attorneys to access files back at their offices from the courtroom, for example.
I’ve covered several trials, hearings and other proceedings in state court during the past year. But this will be the first time I’ve been allowed to do it in federal court.
Federal court traditionally has tighter rules. For instance, federal courts do not allow cameras, video or audio recording in the courtroom.
“I don’t see this as prejudicial,” Marten said.
Marten will tell jurors not to view news coverage, including the posts on Twitter, which also feed into this blog and accompany related stories on Kansas.com.
A lot of the people using this meme have blogged about trivial stuff. My time has been absorbed by the grim reality of the justice system, so that’s what I’ve chosen to write about. Here are thoughts, observations and personal notes that are helping me process the trial I’ve covered the past three weeks — a day after seeing Justin Thurber sentenced to death for killing Jodi Sanderholm:
The details I don’t, and won’t, report about the brutality of the crime are the ones that keep me awake at night.
There is no way to try to make sense of a senseless crime.
Here’s something else that doesn’t make sense. Even after being convicted, under overwhelming evidence , Thurber told a psychologist a version of how he claimed to kill Sanderholm — by stabbing her — that could not be supported by any other physical evidence.
Defense attorney Ron Evans gave one of the most stirring closing arguments I’ve ever heard. But even that didn’t convince a jury to spare Thurber’s life.
In a country where everyone is guaranteed the right to a legal defense, I have to respect lawyers such as Ron Evans and Tim Frieden, who choose to represent defendants charged with the worst crimes.
Cowley County Attorney Chris Smith asked that people remember the Thurber family’s suffering, even after he’d spent two years working to prosecute Thurber. I’ve known Smith for years, and that tells you how compassionate he is.
For some, the stress doesn’t stop — assistant Kansas Attorney General Vic Braden will go from prosecuting this case to being deployed to Afghanistan for the Kansas National Guard in April.
Cindy Sanderholm, Jodi’s mother, told me she realized that large groups of people had offered support to their family throughout the past two years, but Thurber’s family had little community support.
Brian Sanderholm, whose family had been in the news spotlight for two years, thanked reporters after the trial for their sensitivity. It’s something you don’t hear often in my job.
Burying myself in my stories is a way to deal with the pain I see in the courtroom.
“It’s given me insight into our court system that I hadn’t had before.” Comments like that, from Skyler Lovelace, and others who follow my coverage on Twitter, remind me why my job is important.
I woke up with chest pains Tuesday morning, before the verdict, caused by the anxiety of the trial.
I was in tears on the drive back to Wichita from Winfield Tuesday, trying to absorb all the emotions I’d experienced.
I celebrated my birthday and my wedding anniversary during the trial.
I just have to sit in the courtroom and hear words and see pictures. The police are the ones who actually see the crime up close and live with it.
I especially have to admire the police who sifted through the waste tank at the lakeside latrine where they retrieved Jodi Sanderholm’s shoes, jacket and belongings. Anyone who’s held their nose while using such a restroom can only imagine the dedication that must take.
I wonder how Dave Falletti of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the lead investigator of the case, digests all the brutality he’s seen.
The police in Arkansas City, a town of 12,000, showed the same high level of investigative skills as what I’ve seen from Wichita police in similar cases. That speaks well of law enforcement training, no matter what the department’s size.
After seeing the pictures of the crime scene and the state of Jodi Sanderholm’s body, I keep asking myself, “What would enrage someone to the point they’d be capable of this?”
They were some of the most disturbing crime-scene photos I’d ever seen.
I have no doubt Jodi Sanderholm was tortured.
After I go through weeks like this, I make sure I have someone to talk to about the worst of it.
I hope more testing is done on Thurber’s IQ and mental state before his death sentence is carried out.
After a decade of covering capital murder trials, and seeing the violence people are capable of inflicting on each other, I’m still not sure how I feel about the death penalty.
There is nothing more sobering than watching 12 people condemn another human being to die.
Norton now lives in Arkansas City but she’s from Oklahoma, where her father and stepmother were killed in January 1990. The man convicted of killing them, Robert Knighton, was executed by lethal injection on May 27, 2003.
“It was 13 years of wondering what would happen next,” Norton said. Then she watched Knighton’s execution.
“I can tell you, the death penalty is not absolution,” she said. “It didn’t bring them back.”
Norton may have gotten a little too involved in the Sanderholm case, Cowley County prosecutor Chris Smith said. Two weeks before the trial, when Thurber offered to plead guilty to killing Sanderholm, her family learned about it from Norton.
“We would have liked to have been able to present this to them and talk to them about it,” Smith said.
Don Anderson of the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty also sat through the trial, as he has done in every capital murder trial in the Wichita area since I began covering courts in 2000.
Anderson was adamant that the state should have accepted Thurber’s plea. Afterwards, Anderson released a written statement:
The terrible murder of Jodi Sanderholm was an unspeakable tragedy.
The coalition affirms that life without parole is a sufficiently severe punishment for Justin Thurber that also protects the public.