Thread by @socialistdogmom

alex ramos, the second of four men charged in the august 12 assault of deandre harris, goes on trial in charlottesville today. he’s charged with felony malicious wounding.
the first trial ended yesterday with a jury recommending ten years for jacob goodwin.

if it’s anything like monday, and i suspect it is, they’ll have a larger than usual jury pool and a longer than average jury selection process. perhaps not QUITE so long, as elmer tends to double the length of any process... but i’m in no great hurry this morning.

walking to court this morning & just passed the scene of the crime. i will never not see that brutal assault, a vicious beating i’ve watched frame by frame perhaps hundreds of times now, every time i pass the market street parking garage.
justice for deandre. #DefendCville

so many spots around town are tainted now. i’m sitting finishing a cigarette staring at the spot where i watched our police defend the ku klux klan in july. where friends of mine were gassed & arrested for standing up to white supremacist violence.

not that that park wasn’t already tainted by the presence of a monument to white supremacy. tear that thing down. melt it down. tear ‘em all down.
catch y’all at the next recess.

122 jurors were called today. they’ve taken their pool of 21 back for individual voir dire. i figure this will take about an hour, so i’m seizing this opportunity to be anywhere but this courthouse for a bit.

the prosecution says they’ll likely call most of the same witnesses we saw in the goodwin case yesterday: the victim (deandre harris), detective hickey, nurse pryce from the ER, sheriff james brown, and one we didn’t hear from before, CSO brian arndt. defense lists no witnesses.

i’m trying a new two color note taking strategy - i write down so much extraneous shit in my awful handwriting that i’m scrambling at recesses to find the good bits. hopefully marking them in another color will help! getting better at this not-job every time.

the whole jury pool is being released for an hour for lunch. i guess i could go home & let the dogs out. gonna be another long day, i suspect. platania told one concerned juror that they’d “probably” be done in time for her to pick up her kids at 7.

jury pool filtering back in from lunch now! i’m hopeful that jury selection will wrap up quickly from here and we’ll be started before too long. there will likely be another break after final selection so jurors can notify their families... see you then!

we didn’t get to opening statements on monday until 4:20 — we’re definitely ahead of schedule in comparison.

well that’s what i get for getting my hopes up. looks like three jurors didn’t make it through individual voir dire. the folks who did were released for lunch, back at 3:30. should be getting started then.

final jury seated at 3:50. we have three black women, one asian woman, one hispanic man. three white men, five white women. total of nine women and four men.

antony’s opening statement began at 4. it was largely similar to monday’s, with a few small but notable differences. things elmer seized on & wouldn’t let go made their way into her opener — more clarity about the tussle over the flagpole, about what was in his hand, etc.

ramos’ lawyer isn’t even arguing he’s innocent. they know that isn’t a possible outcome. his goal is to have the jury find his client guilty of the lesser charge of assault & battery, rather than malicious wounding.

ACA antony says they’ll call two of their witnesses tonight and they expect to be done by six, depending on how long the defense takes to cross. a similarly late start as monday’s case, but without elmer’s 90 minute evidentiary hearing slowing things down.

if they do call deandre first, like they did monday, they must not be expecting ramos’ lawyer to spend two hours aggressively badgering him on cross the way elmer did.

if they really are wrapping up by 6, this is likely our last break! hopefully the next update will be from the end of the day.

so much for being done by 6. commonwealth has finished their questioning of deandre. brief break before cross examination, defense estimates about 45 min maybe. platania says DEFINITELY done by 7 to one juror worried about her childcare situation.

kessler is accosting two members of the press outside. says “you people ought to be ashamed of yourselves.” a cop interrupts: “we’re not gonna be having any disruptions out here.” says it’s a court order and jason will have to leave if he doesn’t stop.

i believe he’s referencing the order i paid a dollar for a copy of on monday morning

https://twitter.com/socialistdogmom/status/990975396626751490?s=21

the officer tells the reporter any disruption could result in a charge of contempt of court... “but then we’d have to have another trial and this goes on forever.”

we’re done for the day. defense’s cross of deandre was only 20 min (compared to two hours in the goodwin trial) & commonwealth’s second witness, sheriff james brown, took less than 20 minutes total. jurors were asked to show up tomorrow morning at 9:15 for a prompt 9:30 start.

so this is probably the most important point of the day. they aren't looking for a not guilty verdict.

https://twitter.com/socialistdogmom/status/991776344005664772

the verdict form will likely have the same 4 options goodwin's did: guilty of malicious wounding, guilty of unlawful wounding, guilty of assault & battery, or not guilty. ramos' lawyers know it ain't the 4th one, so they're hoping the jury will go for assault & battery.

in his opening statement, which lasted barely 5 minutes, ramos' atty joyce said he mostly agreed with ACA antony's opening statement. "i'm not gonna tell you some whole different scenario happened," re: the events of that day. "he took a cheap shot at mr. harris when he was down"

the defense's argument is that ramos only hit deandre once. one punch. that "everyone else had a weapon" & he didn't. i wonder if the prosecution will raise the question of whether ramos had something wrapped around his fist under the cloth around it.

joyce, re: ramos' actions: "is that malicious wounding? one punch, no weapon. or is that an assault & battery?"
malicious wounding is a felony & carries a 5-20yr sentence. assault & battery is a misdemeanor -- he'd go home on time served.

the commonwealth didn't end up needing to rely on concert of action with goodwin yesterday, but depending on whether the jury believes ramos' punch caused the gash on harris' head, they may need it more here.

strangest thing about today was that it was like watching a movie a second time - so many details you didn't notice before. except some of them had changed... so maybe it's like watching a dress rehearsal & an encore performance of the same play. antony & harris were great today.

ACA antony's opening statement was *mostly* the same as monday's, with a few tweaks to shore up areas that proved to be less strong during goodwin's case. her direct examination of deandre took a totally different approach & was very powerful.

she played a 28 second clip of the assault. no pausing. no commentary. no bumping it frame by frame. audio on. 28 seconds of brutal violence while deandre sat silently on the stand aiming a laser pointer at his own body on the screen.

rather than get into endless debate about exactly how much deandre remembers about the specifics of the assault, his testimony today was simpler.
"i was just trying to get out. to get away. [...] i wasn't sure what was actually happening, i just knew i had to get away."

he'd testified previously about the street medic who first attended to him after the assault. today he told us her name was karen. she poured water on his neck and calmed him down. he asked her, "am i going to live?" and she reassured him.

it was karen who first told deandre about the massive wound on his head. he didn't realize how badly he was injured.
"i didn't even know i was gashed up or nothing. my whole body was just burning. i was just trying to get out."

after elmer's absurd argument implying deandre had faked many of his injuries, the commonwealth came prepared today. they introduced into evidence a series of photos taken immediately after the assault, later that night, and some taken by detective hickey a few days later.

the jury saw photos of the gash on his head, taken just moments after the assault as he sat outside the TV station across the street from market street garage. they saw photos of the abrasions on his knees & elbows (the ones elmer said never existed).

in the photo of his broken arm, he's wearing a splint, not a cast. he says he wore the splint for 3 weeks before he could come back to cville to get the cast put on. he'd moved away to live with his mother after the assault. antony asks why. he says simply "for safety."