It took less than a day of trial and the jury less than 10 minutes to acquit my client. I was disappointed because I told the jury they shouldn’t be out more than a few minutes before acquitting. This was a case where because of the “policy” of the State’s Attorney’s Office, every convicted drug dealing liar gets to use the State’s Attorney’s Office when they have a vendetta against someone. The convicted drug dealer managed to get my client charged in 3 separate cases. Two of them were investigated and cleared by a detective before a different police officer and Court Commissioners got snookered into issuing charges. When I summonsed the investigating detective and the other officer who investigated those cases to court the prosecutors spoke to them and then dismissed the charges, without even bothering to speak to the “victim” who was sitting in the rear of the courtroom. This convicted drug dealer was humiliated because my client ran off with his girlfriend and spent a few days of bliss. Unfortunately it became widely known that my client had committed the offense of unauthorized use, thereby resulting in embarrassment to the convicted drug dealer. This is a well recognized street crime, that in some places in this State gets you ” a cap in your ass.” In the course of leaving with the girlfriend of the convicted drug dealer, my client had to break the window of the girlfriend’s car because she locked her house keys inside the car. The car however belonged to the convicted drug dealer and was on loan to the girlfriend. My client refused to pay for the damage to the car. He had now committed a second street crime. Three weeks after the unauthorized use, the convicted drug dealer claimed he was pushing his baby in a stroller when he got hit from behind by someone wearing all black and a black bandana. I told the jury it must have been a Ninja roaming the streets of South Baltimore waiting for the convicted drug dealer to stroll his baby at 10:30 PM. The convicted drug dealer admited on cross-examination that he did not live in that area, and that my client did not have a clue that his “baby’s momma” (what ever happened to the expression, “my daughter’s mom”) lived in the area. My client lived 5 miles from the scene of the assault. How would he know the convicted drug dealer would be out and about strolling a baby at that location at any time of the day or night? An immediate canvas of the area by the police failed to turn up the Ninja. Even Jet Li doesn’t make it 5 miles down Ritchie Highway (a MAJOR thoroughfare) without being seen. The victim tells the police he only saw the assailant running away, but he knew what my client’s walk looked like. As I told the jury he must be a connoisseur of toucheses (Jewish for tush). I had asked him about that on cross-examination, and for some reason he did not like the question. Go figure.
SIX months later on the eve of the last trial date the victim tells the prosecutor he wasn’t knocked to the ground (he was treated for abrasions to his knees!), but with his head bashed in, he instead turned around and looked my client dead in the face and he was struck in the elbow, the third blow (according to the hospital report, there was no injury to the elbow and only 2 blows to the head reported by the victim). Two days after the assault, he spends an hour with the police officer, but it must have slipped his remembrance (obviously related to the pitcher Andy Petite who said Roger Clemons told him he used HGH) because he doesn’t tell her he saw the face, and sticks to the “know how his touches moves” story. But he NOW tells the police officer that he was strolling the baby when he got hit. This police officer, who arrived at the scene within minutes of the attack, saw no stroller, no baby, no baby’s momma. The convicted drug dealer told the jury the first thing he did was call the baby’s momma to come get the baby, and that she stayed there with the baby and the stroller until the medics released him to her (while the police officer is there). The State failed to pick up on my Ninja theme and explain that the baby, the baby’s momma, and the stroller were also invisible because of some cosmic Ninja Karma that is only found in South Baltimore, and on the movie sets of cheap Japanese movies. No, my client is not Japanese. Neither is the convicted drug dealer or the baby’s momma. HOWEVER, the stroller might have been made in Japan instead of China. The State failed to investigate that possibility to explain the police officer’s inability to see them. Of course, the State wanted the jury to believe that what else would a convicted drug dealer be doing out on the street at 10:30 PM, other than strolling his 11 month old baby.
While the case was pending and up until the second trial date, we called it the ass case, because the victim was going to have to explain the distinctive features of my client’s backside. He actually tried to do that on the witness stand, but realized that by claiming he saw the defendant’s face it would be persuasive. Notwithstanding this BS, the prosecutor told me that she had no choice and had to try the case. I hate bringing up that when I was a prosecutor nobody second guessed me, if I thought a case was crap and threw it out. Now however, even if you catch the victim in a lie about the identification, if the medical records contradict his new story, the police officer disputes the new story, you have to tell the jury that he was just convicted of dealing drugs and that it affects his credibility, you know the motive to get even with the defendant, and know that two separate prosecutor’s and a detective have found that the victim and the girlfriend trumped up the other related charges, you HAVE to try the case because the victim now says he saw the defendant’s face.
My client spent almost a year in jail on a 1/2 million dollars bail! I told the jury this prosecution was disgraceful and unjust. They agreed. As the jury was filing out after the verdict, and my client was crying and hugging me, one of the jurors looked over, smiled, and wished him good luck. It was a kind and compassionate gesture. I got him home in time for Father’s Day. The moral of this tragedy for my client is that the next time he wants to take a girl on a trip, he better check her ownership papers and the registration card of the car she is driving.