The lawyer of a woman who is facing child abuse charges in the death of a 3-year-old boy asked the Superior Court last Thursday to declare the proceedings in the case a \u201cmistrial\u201d and accused the prosecution of not following the rules of evidence.<\/p>\n
During the fourth day of the jury trial of Stacey Laniyo, defense counsel Mark Scoggins aired frustration over how slow the trial was because of what he described as the \u201cprosecution\u2019s endless efforts\u201d to prove that one of its key witnesses, Lynn Fitial, is a hostile witness. He then verbally requested Superior Court Associate Judge Joseph Camacho to declare a mistrial.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis trial needs to end, this is a mistrial. This prosecutor will not follow the rules. I\u2019ve never seen anything like it. I don\u2019t understand how we can have a fair trial under these conditions. It\u2019s the worst I\u2019ve ever seen. It\u2019s the most unethical behavior I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Scoggins\u2019 main argument to support his verbal motion for a mistrial was that the prosecution, led by assistant attorney general Coleen St. Clair, continued to ask questions \u201cthat were not even relevant\u201d to what Laniyo was being tried for\u2014child abuse. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe believed going into this case that the sickness of the boy was not going to be the focus, but what else have we talked about? Who gives a crap about how many times he vomited? It has nothing to do with whether this woman abused him and that\u2019s all we\u2019re talking about,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
In addition, he said it is no longer a fair trial because the prosecution does not follow the rules of evidence. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never seen anything like this. I\u2019ve never been in a trial where we get to the fourth day and we\u2019ve had maybe an hour of substantive testimony. How many hours have we spent listening to arguments about hostile witness? As soon as counsel gets the opportunity, she starts making statements, from her mouth, not the witness\u2019, about how there are inconsistent statements in the police reports and continuously trying to introduce facts not in evidence,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
About the alleged tampering of statements that Fitial had alleged, Scoggins argued that the trial is no longer fair, now that the prosecution has made it seem like the witness was lying about that. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe led the court to believe that this witness was a liar. The worst part is that some of this was presented to the jury,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
After counsels spoke with Department of Public Safety investigator Rosa Rios, she told them that the statements were not in order when it was presented at court and that she did review the statements with Fitial and asked her to sign it upon reviewing it. <\/p>\n
Fitial stood firm on her claims that she did not sign off on some of the statements, Rios had them mixed up with other witnesses, and that she did not see those statements when Rios reviewed them with her. <\/p>\n
Camacho moved forward with the trial, called back the jurors, and instructed them to disregard the portion that Fitial read out loud and said she did not see. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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