Dotts: The truck can’t fit in the elevator By MAR-VIC CAGURANGAN Staff Reporter

Can you imagine how a truck can fit inside the elevator? Or can you imagine it being driven up to the second-floor courtroom? Can you also imagine the same truck being cross-examined by the prosecutor?

You can’t.

Lawyer Michael Dotts can’t either.

That truck, according to Dotts, has no business being inside the courtroom for the trial of the defendants in a multiple crime case.

For this reason, Dotts is opposing the Attorney General’s Office motion asking Superior Court Associate Judge Timothy Bellas to reconsider his earlier decision ordering the release of the truck owned by the family of Melvin Basa, Jeffrey Basa and Jeronimo Basa, who were among the seven defendants in the case that involved 37 counts of criminal charges including kidnapping, robbery, assault and battery, illegal possession of firearm, and criminal mischief, among others.

Also charged in this case were Frankie Basa, Peter Pangelinan, Isaac Charfauros, and Joaquin Crisostomo.

The AG’s Office maintained that the truck could be used by the government as evidence against the seven defendants in the case that stemmed from a July 11 riot in Koblerville.

The government seized the truck on the day the defendants were arrested.

The arresting officers used the blood-stained truck to transport the defendants to the court. The police also found inside the truck the weapons — a firearm and a baseball bat — allegedly used by the defendants during the “crime spree.”

In his Oct. 5 ruling, Bellas upheld the defendants’ right to retrieve their truck provided that the government “no longer has reasons” to keep it.

The AG’s Office, in filing the motion for reconsideration, said investigators have yet to complete the tests on blood stains found in the interior of the truck.

Describing the government’s motion as “absurd,” Dotts, attorney for the Basa brothers, asked the court not to entertain it.

He suggested that the prosecutors just take pictures of the truck and then release the vehicle to the Basa family “who dearly needs it.”

Dotts said pictures of the truck should be good enough to be presented to the jury during the trial.

“The truck will not fit in the elevator of the judicial complex. It is unlikely that it will be able to be driven up the stairs to the second floor courtroom,” Dotts said.

“Does the government expect to place the truck in a lineup and have the witness pick the Basa truck out in front of the jury?

“Or does the government plan to have the truck seated in the audience at trial with several other trucks and when the prosecutor asks the witness on direct examination ‘do you see the truck in the courtroom?’ the mysterious witness will stand up in the witness box and point to the back row and say ‘that truck, right there!” Dotts wrote in his motion.

Capping the motion, Dotts said the court should not allow the government “to continue with such over zealous behavior.”