What began this morning as an almost excuse-me tiff between dueling lawyers before the jury entered the courtroom, exploded an hour later into a rhetorical brawl, causing the targeted attorney to seek a mistrial.
Judge Kevin C. Brazile, presiding calmly over the Bennett-Harris family’s wrongful death civil suit against the California National Guard in the Downtown courthouse, swiftly denied the appeal by Dep. Atty. Gen. David Adida.
Plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Geragos ignited what seemed to be a vexing but probably harmless verbal brushfire before the 12-person jury was admitted into the room. In an aside rather than a head-on type of gesture, Mr. Geragos suggested that Mr. Adida may have committed at least ethical awkwardness. Within the last two years, Mr. Geragos told Judge Brazile, Mr. Adida had been the attorney for National Guard Sgt. Erik Hein, a key witness in this suit. The two no longer were legally aligned, but it was uncomfortable and perhaps inappropriate, the lawyer said.
Momentum Building
Mr. Adida, who did not seem particularly aroused by the accusation, sturdily, evenly, rejected any notion of discomfort or unorthodox conduct. The judge waved off Mr. Geragos’s concerns after hearing from Mr. Adida.
Meanwhile, Sgt. Hein, who worked closely every day at the Culver City National Guard Armory in the summer of 2007 with convicted killer Sgt. Scott Ansman, returned for his second day of testimony.
In contention is whether and how much Guard officials did or should have done to ward off the battering murder of pregnant JoAnn Crystal Harris by the married Mr. Ansman, Aug. 24, 2007, at the Armory minutes before the gala Fiesta La Ballona started next door.
Sgt. Hein contended stoutly that Ms. Harris’s torturous death “could have been prevented” if his Guard superiors had responded to his complaints about Mr. Ansman’s summer-long “weird,” “bizarre” behavior in the workplace and intervened.
But it was Mr. Adida’s intensely personalized grilling of Sgt. Hein near the end of his testimony that rocked the room and infuriated Mr. Geragos.
As Mr. Adida was plumbing for more penetrating reasons that Sgt. Hein was upset with his employer, he pursued an incident between the Guard veteran and Culver City police. The grilling led down a path to his wife’s fatal illness.
Emotionally overwhelmed, Sgt. Hein abruptly stopped after saying “I lost my wife.”
As Mr. Adida finished, Mr. Geragos, focusing intently on Sgt. Hein, immediately said “I apologize. Do you need a few minutes?”
Demurring, Sgt. Hein said, “It just caught me off guard.”
As he stepped down, Judge Brazile called for a break for an unrelated reason. That is when the tempest between Mr. Geragos and Mr. Adida brewed to a furious boil, inflamed words being pelted back and forth in the short airspace between them.
(To be continued)
