[ << previous | index | next >> ]
| For obvious reasons, the following diary contains no names. It also contains no specific dates or places. |
Defence began his cross-examination by questioning the witness, at great and pedantic length, about the semantics of why he told trainee security guards about the lower brainstem as a potential shooting target. I could feel the other jury members rolling their eyes as Defence went over and over and over again the proposition that telling trainee guards about a spot not to shoot someone is irresponsible, and nitpicking over the wording of a formal statement given by the witness at an earlier court hearing that said, "the lower brainstem is small and hard to hit, but has high stopping power." Defence argued persistently that this meant the witness had said that the lower brainstem was a good place to shoot someone. The witness, to his great credit, remained calm and cool under this barrage of semantic drivel, and simply repeated that he never claimed the lower brainstem was a good place to shoot someone; that it was only mentioned as a place with high stopping power to convey the message that there were parts of the body which, when shot, would incapacitate someone rapidly, but that shooting those parts was not optimal and to be avoided because it was too hard to hit and always fatal, when a security guard's intent should never be to kill.
After this line of questioning petered out, Defence launched a similar attack on the witness' evidence that he saw a boat at Business Premises sometime around the time Deceased disappeared. Defence produced an earlier statement, in which the witness had recorded that he had seen the boat in the month two months before Deceased disappeared, "or possibly the month after". In that statement, the witness had also said that the boat in photos shown to him by a police detective was "definitely not the same boat". Defence asked why his story had changed since that statement, so that in the current trial he had given evidence that he had seen the boat in the month before Deceased disappeared or the month Deceased disappeared, and that he had not ruled out that the boat he had seen might be the same boat as in the photographs. The witness said he was uncertain about the time he saw the boat; that either estimate might be correct. He also said that his evidence given the day before had not indicated that the boats might be the same; he had said the boat in the photos looked newer than the boat he remembered. Defence greeted this with a look of disgust and confronted the witness with, "You're changing your story to make things look bad for Accused A, aren't you?" The witness remained cool and calm, and simply denied that he was.
Defence asked the witness about different calibres of bullets. The witness confirmed that 0.357, 0.38, 0.40, and 9mm bullets were all very similar in size, but that 0.22 bullets were "three or four" times smaller. I presumed this referred to cross-sectional area, as a 0.22 bullet is more than half the diameter of the other calibres mentioned.
After morning tea, we filed back into the court. We sat down, the court officer locked the door behind us, and Defence started cross-examining the witness again. Suddenly I heard Juror B behind me call out in a loud whisper the name of the court officer. He quietly turned around and walked back to see what was the matter. The court officer on the other side of the room looked up in alarm, did a counting gesture towards each of us, and her eyes widened in shock. She dashed across the floor of the court and caught the atention of the judge's personal assistant, and indicated the jury box in a panicked fashion - all the while being quiet while Defence continued asking his question. The judge's assistant tapped the judge on the shoulder and pointed, at which point the judge stopped Defence and said, "Sorry, we're missing one of the jury!" The court officer went back out to the jury room and retrieved the missing Juror F, who had been in the toilet cubicle when we were called into the court, and emerged to find the jury room empty. Juror F walked into the court with a very embarrassed look, and the judge said, "Welcome back," which caused a murmur of laughter around the court.
Defence questioned the witness about when Accused A had instructed him not to discuss the subcontract with Another Security Company (ASC) with Deceased. The witness said this had been mentioned in a brief meeting with Accused A and Witness 34. Defence went to great pains to have the witness confirm that Witness 34 was also present for this conversation. In a later recess, we noted that Witness 34 had said Accused A never told him not to discuss the subcontract with Deceased.
Defence asked if people employed by Security Company as casual guards, such as Accused B, were entitled to sick leave; the witness said no. Defense then had the witness confirm that Accused B had been sick for a period of a few weeks on one occasion. The implication here seems to have been that Accused B was still being paid weekly by Accused A as was the apparent custom, perhaps as a favour to avoid financial hardship on Accused B's part, but that Accused B was not earning a wage at that time because of illness, so naturally he would incur a debt to Accused A - but that was not stated explicitly. Defence asked how many times the witness had seen Accused B drinking Coca-Cola; the witness answered a few times, then added he'd also seen Accused B drink coffee on occasion.
Before the next witness was called, Crown suggested to the judge that it might be best to go over the admissability of some material with Defence in the absence of the jury before the trial proceeded any further. The judge said we could go to an early lunch - it being about 35 minutes to the designated lunch break. As we filed back to the jury room, someone asked the court officer if we could go for a walk outside, as we had done on Day 11 when there was spare time in the middle of the day.
After asking the judge, the court officers said we could go for a walk in the park across the road, but only if all of us came, we stayed together the whole time, we didn't discuss the case, we didn't talk to anyone else, and we were escorted by the court officers. Given that almost anything was better than being cooped up in the jury room for an hour and a half, we agreed.
For lunch we reverted to the bland sandwiches we had had during the first week of the trial; the court officers told us the caterers had not received our hot lunch orders. Some jurors had complained wholeheartedly about the quality of the food we were being given each day (or lack thereof) - mostly just to fellow jurors. Today the court officers heard and told us that we could elect to bring our own lunches and receive a $5 meal allowance. About half of us instantly chose to do so. Being a starving university student at one stage, I still felt that a free feed was worth having, so stuck with the camp declaring themselves "too lazy" or "too indifferent" to bring in their own lunches.
After lunch we were called into the court. The judge explained that the trial was entering a "new phase" of evidence, and it would be best if the barristers and him discussed it without us being present first, so that the presentation of the evidence could be streamlined, and that they would use the entire afternoon to do that. So we were dismissed for the day.
[ << previous | index | next >> ]