Prosecution finished up on Tuesday, but won't make their closing argument until tomorrow. Yesterday defense started their case, beginning with defense attorney #3. She drops the ball. She has dropped the ball so much that I'm not sure she was ever holding it. She tried to call a number of the protesters as witnesses, and most of them had more sense than she did, refusing to testify because they weren't credible witnesses. She calls the boy her client had a crush on, the boy who invited her to the demonstration. He talks about how they met at an animal rights meeting, how they flirted, how he asked her to come with him, both of them dressed as medics. He shows up neat and clean and looking respectable, something he couldn't do at our arraignment. Prosecution hates him, of course. He plead guilty to a minor charge to avoid a probation violation and six months in prison. The prosecutor screams at him and gets sarcastic, to the point where one of the defense sides objects and is sustained on the grounds of sarcasm. He does okay, better than we'd thought. He's articulate, personable.
My codefendant herself is an actress, and she is little and cute and kind of flaky-sweet. She has seven counts against her, and if she walks, it's likely that we all will. The jury eats up her testimony, empathizing with her crush on the wrong boy and her desire to help out a stranger who got hurt. The stranger was my other codefendant, as they discovered after the fact, but not in time for his testimony.
His testimony is about the same as last time. The judge is almost deferential to her, and mostly repeats his testimony back to him. Simple. I am nervous. The last defendant to testify, the second to last witness, and the one with the attorney the prosecutor hates.
We start my testimony late yesterday. I'm not prepared. I've forgotten a lot, blocked other things. I thought I wouldn't have to remember anymore, not until the civil suit starts. Not so. I qualify my answers, to the best of my recollection, I think. Direct examination is fine, but I end up crying again when I see myself get shot. I am not as accessible to the jury as my codefendant, who just gets upset when she cries and manages to look cute. I was shot and I'm upset about it and I'm pissed off. The prosecutor takes advantage of this, and asks me about the civil suit, which shouldn't even come into this. He asks me if I know someone I may have been arraigned with, conspiracy evidence that shouldn't come in at all. He asks me if my memory is failing. He asks me why I can't remember the order to disperse if it was such an important event in my life. He makes a lot of my linguistics background, conflating it with apparent inability to understand the dispersal order. He refuses to believe that I couldn't hear it, that I didn't choose to get shot. We had a doctor testify about how it was physically possible not to hear things in a stressful situation. Apparently my prosecutor was too stressed out to hear him.
He goes on at the last witness, too, a man who walked out of work and got shot, saying he got shot on purpose so he could sue the city. There was more screaming and the jury got even more bored than they already were, with one or two looking like they're trying not to fall asleep, which is always a little scary for me - they're going to decide whether I have a criminal record or not, and they can't stay awake through the evidence. At the same time, I know the case is boring. Too bad I'm not accused of a flashier crime, or rather that the prosecutor is going on and on about nothing, and has been for two weeks, longer than my last trial took.
Tomorrow we hear closing arguments, the jurors are instructed as to the law, and I can go stress out at home.
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