At 9.16am Seymour Amster, the now sole defense lawyer to Lonnie Franklin (the 'alleged' Grim Sleeper) walks stumbles in the door.. always at approximately 75 mph looking as windswept and as out of sorts as ever.
Beth Silverman and Marguerite Rizzo, on the Prosecution side, had walked in and taken their seats only about 10 minutes beforehand. Silverman was in a loud altercation and making subtle threats to a lawyer from a previous case which was being heard in the same Courtroom. Detective Dupree was seated in the same seat he always sits in, quietly and respectfully just assessing the situation in the room.
I always sit next to the family members of one of the victims, she will remain nameless for now out of respect for the family. However this is the same family that all come to every one of these 'pre-pre-pre Trial Arraignments' which never seem to end and have been going on for 5 1/2 years.
I mentioned to the brother of one of the victims today how shocking it is that they have had to wait for over 5 1/2 years for justice for their sister and how sorry I am for them. To which he responded, "actually we've been waiting over 25 years for justice since he killed her" motioning over to Lonnie Franklin who had been led in to the Courtroom without me even noticing.
How devastating I thought, the two brothers, mother and father have been coming religiously over 1/2 a decade every single time Lonnie Franklin has these short Pre-Trial Arraignments. Yet never once have they had an outburst of frustration. I'm sure they'd like to jump up and do some real damage to who is delaying this Trial, but they all hold it together and just shake their heads in disbelief and mutter under their breath how unfair it is. I agree 100%. A total breakdown in the Justice system at the expense of these families.
Ms Ware, mother of Barbara Ware, was not in the Court today which is a concern as she has come every Arraignment without fail. She is a gentle soul and getting on in age, it also takes her a long time to take the public transport to get her to the Criminal Courts Building... I do hope she is ok.
At 9.17am Judge Kennedy called the Court to order and we waited for Amster to start ranting his usual unprofessional rant, as he always does.
Now the fact is that the lead defense attorney, Louisa Pensanti, in this case has just been suspended indefinitely by the State Bar, a new 2nd Counsel has to be appointed.
Amster starts with: "Norm Callen and the 987.9 Judge are having further discussions as of yesterday so it's out of my hands."
Judge Kennedy: "So I take it that the 987.9 Judge hasn't made her decision whether to appoint Mr Callen yet?"
Amster: "Yes, also Mr Callen is sick right now.. he is eating chicken soup.." nervously laughing "as we speak".. "I have just got the order yesterday authorizing the transcripts so I do have the dockets of the cases but will have to do a bit of work on that. I think by Tuesday I will have that and we can come back to Court on Wednesday of next week."
Silverman said: : "Well we are still giving out the questionnaires to the potential Jurors on December 15th."
Judge Kennedy agreed to all this going ahead and also said that after the questionnaires are given out, then we will all break for the Holidays and the earliest we can come back for Jury selection would be on January 4th, or 11th or the 19th (as there is a Holiday on the 18th).
After that, Silverman was telling everyone where she would be allocating seats for the victims families, the media and the public who win a lottery seat. It's a very small Courtroom so I'm not sure how everyone is going to fit in.
After about 15 minutes that ended the day... to be continued....
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