With the prosecutor pressing and the defense counsel pulling in the opposite direction — they are less than chums — the scheduled start of the murder trial of National Guard Sgt. Scott Allen Ansman this morning was postponed for at least a month.
Even the new date, four weeks from this morning, Feb. 24, is tentative, hinging on the outcome of scenes still to be played out.
On the eighth floor of the Airport Courthouse, the busy defense attorney Nan Whitfield told Judge James Dabney that she needed at least a four-week continuance for two reasons:
• It is taking longer than anticipated to receive the results of her own DNA crime scene testing from Aug. 24, 2007, when Mr. Ansman, now 36 years old, a married father of three, is alleged to have killed his pregnant girlfriend, JoAnn Crystal Harris, at the National Guard Armory in Culver City.
• Ms. Whitfield, a peripatetic public defender, presently is engaged in a longer-than-anticipated case downtown. It takes precedence, Judge Dabney explained, because multiple defendants are involved and the case has progressed farther.
On the Other Side
Dep. Dist. Atty. Joe Markus, who is tall, square and makes a commanding appearance, once again ardently protested, as he is at each delay.
He pleaded to Judge Dabney that a string of continuances, for what he regards as less than powerhouse reasons, has worked an extraordinary hardship on Ms. Harris’s family, which is anxious for justice to be prosecuted.
The judge, who gives attorneys wide berths, said that he understood Mr. Markus’s perspective. But he was not going to “push” Ms. Whitfield because her reasons for pursuing a delay were valid.
At that point, the peppery Ms. Whitfield, wounded by the implications of Mr. Markus’s assertions, spoke up, not for the first time. She intended to defend herself.
She did not get a chance, though. Judge Dabney said he believed she was being truthful, and that was sufficient.
The judge’s response did not ameliorate Ms. Whitfield’s feelings.
When he repeated himself more volubly, she reluctantly accepted his counsel.
If convicted, Mr. Ansman could face the possibility of life without possibility of parole.
A Mother’s View
Meanwhile, the mothers of the victim and the defendant, Martha Lou Harris and Marilyn Ansman, both aging, grieving and hobbled by chronic health problems, have bookended the spectator section at every hearing during the last year and half.
They may think about each other, but they do not look toward or ever speak to each other.
Ms. Harris, aided by a cane, selects her seat on the far western end of the back row. Ms. Ansman, returning from cataract surgery, walks with the help of a walker. She chooses the far east end seat in the second row from the back.
The shoulders of both women sagged with the postponement, Ms. Harris, particularly. Her permanent home is in Texas. , Since her youngest daughter’s brutal murder, for living conditions, she has been temporarily making-do with relatives in south Los Angeles.
For 17 months, she has been anxious to get back home, where she can mourn away from the glare and the numerous tragic reminders in Los Angeles.
But seeing her daughter’s assailant fully prosecuted trumps all of her mourning.
As for Ms. Ansman, she last visited with her son in mid-January. She found him doing as well as could be expected.
Unfailingly at each hearing, the son has glanced in the direction of his mother, always without altering his somber expression.
This morning, whether disappointed by one more delay or otherwise lost in his thoughts, Mr. Ansman looked down as he left the courtroom, not toward his mother.
