Category Archives: Witness stand

Verbal volleys from the Tiller trial

March 25, 20095:10 p.m.

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:

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Recapped: A glossary of gang slang

March 12, 20094:09 p.m.

The Crips trial going on the past couple of weeks has revealed a life within our city where violence visits regularly. Not only are details of testimony about the gang lifestyle foreign to many, so is its language. You don’t need the Urban Dictionary to keep track. I’ve compiled a list, according to witness testimony the past few weeks.

  • OG: original gangster.
  • Jumped in: being beaten up as an initiation to joining a gang. You can also leave a gang by being “jumped out.”
  • Blessed in: being taken into the gang on the word of a current member.
  • Do work: committing crimes, including robberies and drive-by shootings.
  • Rock it up: make powder cocaine into crack cocaine using baking soda and boiling water.
  • Half a bird: 10 ounces of crack.
  • Snow white: cocaine.
  • Greens: marijuana; (syn.) trees.
  • CK and/or BK: Initials for “Crip killer” or “Blood killer” used by members of those rival gangs.
  • Shot caller: A gang member, usually an OG who gives orders to younger members.
  • Spot: a house or apartment run by a gang member for selling drugs and stashing guns and money.
This has caused questioning such as the following exchange between lawyer Carl Maughan and witness Prentice Byrd this week:

Q. You testified about “OG” meaning original gangster. There is also some other terms, right? “BG,” what does that mean?

A. Baby gangster.

Q. That’s baby gangster. “YG?”

A. Young gangster.

(transcribed by Jana Hoelscher, court reporter)

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Woman says man impersonated police officer to gain entry to her house

Feb. 26, 20097:01 p.m.

A 35-year-old woman testified this morning that a man posed as a police officer as a ruse to attack her inside her Wichita home.

Sedgwick County District Judge Joseph Bribiesca ordered Michael W. Young to stand trial on two counts of aggravated kidnapping, one count of aggravated robbery and one count of attempted rape following a preliminary hearing.

Young, 51, pleaded not guilty.

The woman identified Young in court as the man who blocked her car with his vehicle in her driveway Sept. 5, as she tried to leave with her 3-year-old daughter. She is not being identified because of an Eagle policy not to name potential victims of sex crimes.

She said Young displayed a badge and a gun and told her he had a search warrant to look for a man, who he named, but whom she didn’t know. She testified Young ordered her and her daughter into the house in the 1300 block of North Pershing, and took her to the basement. There, he pulled a gun on her, took her cell phone, threatened her and tried to sexually assault her.

At one point, the woman testified, she thought she was going to die and asked to say good-bye to her daughter.

The woman then said she fought with the man in the basement and the kitchen, where they both reached for knives. She ended up grabbing a pizza cutter and he a butter knife.

The woman said she and her daughter eventually scrambled out of the house. Young, she said, jumped in his car and drove away.

Young’s trial is tentatively set for April 20.

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What more do you need to know about Paul Morrison and Linda Carter?

Jan. 8, 20095:56 p.m.

People have been asking me this week about what Linda Carter’s affair with former Attorney General Paul Morrison has to do with a criminal case against Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller. Tiller’s lawyer Dan Monnat tried to show that Morrison so wanted to please Carter that he’d do anything for her. Since she opposed the late-term abortions Tiller has performed, Carter testified she wanted to see Tiller charged.

Such actions would have been uncharacteristic for Morrison. To present circumstantial evidence that Morrison wasn’t acting like himself back in 2007, Monnat questioned Carter about other behavior that was out of character for the prosecutor, such as getting a tattoo, as she explains in this video:

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Courtroom drama resumes today in Kansas v. Tiller

Jan. 6, 20095:00 a.m.

A former Kansas attorney general who crusaded against abortion, his successor and the successor’s former lover are all scheduled to take the stand in a Wichita courtroom this week.

Sound like a political soap opera? No, it’s just the latest hearing in the case of Kansas v. George Tiller, the Wichita abortion doctor.

You can follow live updates from the courtroom, via Twitter, by refreshing the box to the left of this blog, or going here.

Phill Kline, who as AG began investigating Tiller in 2003, began testifying in November but had to postpone his testimony because of conflicts in travel plans. He is set to retake the stand today.

Kline’s successor as AG, Paul Morrison, is also scheduled to testify this week, as is Linda Carter, whose extramarital affair caused Morrison to resign. Carter also worked for Kline, who assumed Morrison’s old role as Johnson County district attorney.

Tiller’s lawyer, Dan Monnat, is arguing that Kline overstepped the bounds of his authority in investigating Tiller, including by enlisting Carter’s help in getting Morrison to file charges.

Tiller faces 19 misdemeanor charges alleging that he had an improper financial relationship with a doctor who provided second opinions for women seeking late-term abortions.

The case is now being pursued by current Attorney General Steve Six, through prosecutor Barry Disney.

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One witness who won’t testify in Burnett murder trial

May 5, 20082:59 p.m.

Ted Burnett’s capital murder defense won a rare victory before his trial begins next week.

Judge Ben Burgess ruled that Steven White’s testimony was unreliable, or hearsay. White had claimed he had information from Burnett’s girlfriend, Trudy Guthrie, that Burnett confessed in a jailhouse telephone call to killing Chelsea Brooks.

Guthrie denied taking such a phone call from Burnett. Then under cross-examination during the preliminary hearing 18 months ago, White couldn’t remember for sure where Guthrie had heard it.

The information was not just hearsay, lawyer Gary Owens argued for Burnett, but “double hearsay.” Burgess agreed.

Prosecutors had fought to keep the testimony in, because it might have bolstered Everett Gentry’s testimony that Burnett strangled the pregnant teenager in what the state says is a murder-for-hire scheme.

Burnett, 51, goes on trial for capital murder, when jury selection starts next week.

Watch for blog updates during jury selection here and then on the Kansas.com home page for live updates from the courtroom during the trial.

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Mommy, witness

March 6, 200810:42 a.m.

Prosecutors sometimes have trouble locating witnesses for a murder trial. But Elizabeth Munos not only showed up to testify in the trial of Eric Martinez, she did so just days after giving birth.

Munos had a baby on Saturday and took the stand on Tuesday to say that Martinez fired the shots that killed his uncle David Martinez and wounded his cousin Adrian Martinez last summer.

“We’ll try to make this quick, so you can get back to that baby,” prosecutor Shannon Wilson said as she began her questioning.

Update:  Wilson later said that Munos’ labor went so quick, she ended up giving birth in the restroom at Via Christi Medical Center/St. Joseph’s campus.  Father Angel Martinez helped deliver the couple’s fourth baby.

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