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ON THE CONTROVERSIAL TRUCK AGO: Bring the jury outside the court By MAR-VIC CAGURANGAN Staff Reporter
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Posted on Oct 20 1999
Can’t fit in the elevator? Can’t be driven up to the second-floor courtroom? Then, put up a makeshift court outside the judicial building so that the jury can view the truck, which the prosecutor insists is a valuable evidence in a multiple crime case.
Just when Superior Court Judge Timothy Bellas thought he had put an end to the tug-of-war over the truck, the prosecutor and the defense simply won’t give in to each other’s arguments.
Defense lawyer Michael Dotts last week asked the court to deny the government’s demand to keep the truck, and order its release to the family of the defendants.
Dotts suggested that the prosecutors just take a photograph of the truck and present it to the jury during the trial.
It is, after all, impossible for the truck to be brought up to the court room, Dotts said.
Assistant Atty. General James Benedetto disagreed with Dotts. “The idea that a picture should suffice — or to put it in another way that the probative value of photograph is equal to that of the object itself — is a judgment call that we cannot leave to the defendants or to the judiciary,” Benedetto wrote in his motion.
Benedetto said that contrary to the defense’s “glib assertion,” the size of the truck “is not a serious concern.”
“The Commonwealth can move the court to allow the jury to view the evidence outside the courtroom when bringing the evidence to the jury would prove impractical,” Benedetto said.
Benedetto maintained that the truck could be used by the government as evidence against seven defendants in the criminal case that stemmed from a July 11 riot in Koblerville.
Defendants in the case were Melvin Basa, Jeffrey Basa and Jeronimo Ada, Frankie Basa, Peter Pangelinan, Isaac Charfauros, and Joaquin Crisostomo, who are awaiting trial for 37 counts of criminal charges including kidnapping, robbery, assault and battery, illegal possession of firearm, and criminal mischief, among others.
The arresting officers used the blood-stained truck to transport the defendants to the court. The police found inside the truck the weapons — a firearm and a baseball bat — allegedly used by the defendants during the “crime spree.”
