Archive for the 'Defense' Category
December 18th, 2008, 4:13 pm by Nick R. Martin
Since the beginning of the trial, Dale Hausner has been wearing a special security brace around one of his legs to keep him from bolting from the courtroom. He wore it underneath his pants, and it was worn instead of shackles or cuffs.
 Last week, Hausner asked Judge Roland Steinle to let him remove the brace because he has shown good behavior throughout the trial. The Maricopa County attorney’s and sheriff’s offices strongly opposed the move. But today, Steinle said he would grant the request starting on Jan. 5, when the trial resumes after a few weeks off.
Basically, he said, neither the prosecutors or sheriff’s deputies provided any reason other than the crimes he’s accused of to keep the leg brace on. “If I read the case law correctly, I have to have something more than that,” Steinle said. He told prosecutors that the decision could be appealed to the Arizona Court of Appeals, if they’d like.
Hausner will still have to wear one security device on him during the trail — something called a “rack belt,” which is controlled by a remote control and can send an electrical shock through Hausner, should he act up.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Judge Steinle • Prosecution • Serial Shooter | Post a Comment »
December 17th, 2008, 3:22 pm by Nick R. Martin
Of the two shotguns seized from Dale Hausner’s property on the night of his arrest, neither one had his fingerprints on them, a Mesa police fingerprint analyst testified this afternoon. Instead, investigators found six fingerprints of Samuel Dieteman, the man believed to be Hausner’s co-conspirator, on one of the guns and two mystery prints — which could not be linked to either suspect — on the other gun, said analyst Kelly Speckels.
 This is significant for Hausner’s defense. Throughout the trial, his attorney, Ken Everett, has floated the theory that Dieteman (pictured) took his friend’s guns and car and did all the shootings by himself. Dieteman has already pleaded guilty to two homicides in the Serial Shooter killing spree and agreed to testify early next year against Hausner, who has maintained his innocence.
This information is also a big deal because it means Hausner, so far, has not been connected forensically to any murder weapon. In the early part of the killing spree, authorities believe the Serial Shooter used a .22 caliber rifle. However, no such rifle was ever recovered from Hausner’s property. Investigators also believe Dieteman was only present for the later part of the spree, which all took place using shotguns. Though Dieteman will point the finger at Hausner for the later shootings, he probably has no intimate knowledge of the earlier shootings.
It’s not clear how damaging the analyst’s testimony is to the case. She was intended to be a witness for the prosecution, but this information seems to more strongly benefit the defense.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Prosecution • Ken Everett • Mesa • police • Serial Shooter | 1 Comment »
December 11th, 2008, 11:01 am by Nick R. Martin
For the length of the trial so far, Dale Hausner has worn a brace around one of his legs. It is a mechanism put on to keep him from bolting from the courtroom, and whenever he’s walking to or from the defendant’s table, he can be seen sort of hobbling through the courtroom.
Today, Hausner asked the court to remove the brace for the remainder of the trial, on account of good behavior. He’s asked for this before, and Judge Roland Steinle denied the request. But he’s asking for it again, with his attorney’s pointing out that he has not caused any trouble since the trial began. The Maricopa County attorney’s and sheriff’s offices are opposing the request, but Steinle said today that he would think about it and rule soon.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Judge Steinle • Prosecution • maricopa county • Serial Shooter • sheriff | Post a Comment »
December 10th, 2008, 12:16 am by Nick R. Martin
Out of the soft fuzz and hiss of background noise came a voice, rough and deep.
“It now brings the total to six,” the man said, talking about news reports of a spate of recent killings throughout the Valley.
“It’s higher than that!” said another, his voice higher-pitched and louder. “What about the guy I (expletive) shot at twice at 27th Avenue in the yard?”
Jurors on Tuesday in a downtown Phoenix courtroom heard the garbled recordings of two men boasting and cheering about the Serial Shooter killing spree, which in reality had left eight people dead by that point.
Dale Hausner, the man heard with the higher-pitched voice, was only a few feet away in the courtroom, sitting stone-faced and listening as prosecutors and police said it helped prove that he and the other man, Samuel Dieteman, were responsible for the killings.
In all, prosecutors played about a dozen snippets from more than four hours of secret police recordings made on Aug. 3, 2006, just prior to midnight when they arrested the pair at their Mesa apartment.
The audio recordings were some of the most-anticipated and explicit evidence to be presented by Maricopa County prosecutors as part Hausner’s lengthy murder trial.Dieteman, believed to be the accomplice, has pleaded guilty to two murders and agreed to testify against his former roommate in the coming weeks.
The recordings, played publicly for the first time, revealed that Hausner and Dieteman talked almost obsessively about media coverage of the Serial Shooter killing spree, which had been going on since May 2005.
In one snippet played for jurors, they talked about a news report that mentioned a “new” detail that the Serial Shooter often roamed and circled around certain areas of the Valley looking for victims.
“You think?” Hausner shouted on the recording. “You dumb (expletive.) It took you a year-and-a-half to come up with that? Wow.”
In another snippet, the men talked about their individual techniques.
“I try to wait to the last second when somebody’s getting near me,” Dieteman said. “I don’t even think I get it level. I just get it to where it’s pointed at somebody.”
Hausner was heard mumbling something inaudible in the recording, then mimicking a gunshot. “And bam!”
Read full story…
Submitted photo. Dale Hausner shakes hands with boxer Mike Tyson in this undated photo. Hausner was heard on secret audio recordings Tuesday saying he hoped Tyson would volunteer his time searching for a suspect in the Serial Shooter killings that plagued the Valley in 2005 and 2006.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Judge Steinle • Jurors • Prosecution • Samuel Dieteman • Andrew Thomas • maricopa county • Mesa • Mike Tyson • phoenix • police • Serial Shooter • wire • wiretap | 1 Comment »
December 9th, 2008, 1:45 pm by Nick R. Martin
The secret recording of Dale Hausner and Sam Dieteman will likely be hard for the jury to ignore, but it almost didn’t make it into the trial at all. More than a year ago, Hausner’s defense team started trying to get the recordings thrown out, saying they were illegal because they were obtained without a search warrant.
At issue was the somewhat unconventional way that authorities went about getting approval to plant bugs in the car, apartment and telephones of the Serial Shooter suspects. Instead of going to a judge and getting a warrant, authorities went to Maricopa County’s chief prosecutor, Andrew Thomas, for what’s known as an “emergency” wiretap. Under state law, an elected prosecutor can OK the secret wiretap under dire circumstances. Once it’s approved, a judge must sign off on the already-planted bugs within two days.
Hausner’s defense team basically said the procedure was unconstitutional. The issue even became political as one of Thomas’ challengers prior to his re-election in November said the prosecutor put the entire case in jeopardy by approving this unusual procedure.
The defense ended up forcing a series of hearings on the recordings, which peaked in April with dramatic testimony from Thomas himself in which he said he approved the emergency wiretaps to “stop the killing.”
Eventually, in June, Steinle approved the wiretaps, giving jurors the change to hear the recordings.
Today, those wiretaps will be heard in public for the first time as prosecutors begin to present hours of the recording, beginning any minute now.
Photo by pool photographer. Dale Hausner, left, listens to testimony with one of his attorneys, Timothy Agan, in October.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Judge Steinle • Jurors • Life in trial • Prosecution • Samuel Dieteman • Andrew Thomas • maricopa county • Serial Shooter | Post a Comment »
December 4th, 2008, 2:21 pm by Nick R. Martin
With the trial off until Monday, take some time to catch up with some of the stories from it you might have missed in recent weeks.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Prosecution • Samuel Dieteman • Mesa • phoenix • police • Serial Shooter | Post a Comment »
December 3rd, 2008, 3:08 pm by Nick R. Martin
 If you were one of the hundreds of people who went to community meetings about the Serial Shooters killing spree in the summer of 2006, chances are you were recorded and tracked by the police.
Phoenix police detective Clark Schwartzkopf, the lead detective in the case, testified this afternoon that the license plates of every attendee were recorded and investigated by the Serial Shooter task force. It wasn’t clear from his testimony how deep the investigation into the license plates went or how long the information was kept.
“You were running the license plates of the vehicles that were coming to the town meetings. Is that correct?” asked defense attorney Ken Everett.
“Yes,” replied Schwartzkopf.
“The thinking there was that the actual perpatrator of these shotgun shootings might be so brazen that they might show up to the meeting,” Everett said.
“Yes, sir.”
Update (3:35 p.m.): Schwartzkopf just testified that every license plate at four separate town hall meetings was recorded. While he gave no estimate of how many cars were investigated, he said each meeting was “crowded.”
Update (4:06 p.m.): A review of previous Tribune stories, linked above, puts the number of attendees at these meetings as well above 1,000.
Tribune file photo. Cecilia Perez, right, of Mesa, holds her daughter, Priscilla, 10, while attending a meeting Mesa police held about the Serial Shooter on Aug. 1, 2006 at Longfellow Elementary School in Mesa.
Posted in: Defense • Prosecution • Clark Schwartzkopf • Mesa • phoenix • police • Serial Shooter • town hall | Post a Comment »
December 3rd, 2008, 11:46 am by Nick R. Martin
In July 2006, the Valley was dealing with two sets of serial killers. One, the Baseline Killer was targeting and raping women in south Phoenix. The other, the Serial Shooters, were randomly shooting pedestrians in the east Phoenix area.
Because of the danger and tension gripping the Valley, Phoenix police, along with Silent Witness, set up tip lines and asked the public to help find these serial killers. On the witness stand this morning, Phoenix police detective Clark Schwartzkopf said that some 2,000 calls came in during a single two-day period in mid July.
Because of this, “there were a lot of mix ups between task forces,” Schwartzkopf said. Some of the tips intended for the Baseline Killer case were being routed to the Serial Shooter investigators and vice versa.
On top of it, there were a lot of off-the-wall calls that weren’t helping. “I had one person call and say they thought it was the Zodiac Killer, the infamous Bay Area serial killer,” the detective testified. “I had psychics. I had people with crystal balls. I had all kinds of people calling in to tell me who they thought it was.”
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Prosecution • Clark Schwartzkopf • phoenix • police • psychic • Silent Witness | Post a Comment »
December 3rd, 2008, 11:19 am by Nick R. Martin
A woman named Debbie Dryer testified briefly this morning about her relationship with Sam Dieteman, the confessed co-conspirator in the Serial Shooter killings. She met Dieteman in a west Phoenix bar called Pollock Joe’s where she often went with her lover, Ron Horton, who later became one of the key witnesses in the investigation. Her relationship with Dieteman was as an acquaintance. She and Horton would give him rides home from the bar sometimes, but they never quite knew exactly where he lived, only a general area where they would drop him off.
 Dryer’s testimony was brief, but it wasn’t supposed to be that way. Before she took the stand, Dale Hausner’s defense attorney, Ken Everett, got most of her testimony suppressed. Prosecutors were trying to have her testify about a conversation that she had with Dieteman (pictured) one night at the bar.
Prosecutor Vince Imbordino put it this way: “When she’s closing up a bar, Mr. Dieteman said, ‘There’s been a lot of shootings going on around here. A lot of them have not been on the news yet.’ Then he told her, ‘Keep watching the news.’”
However, the defense objected to this type of testimony, saying it was heresay. Judge Roland Steinle agreed. Dryer’s testimony could have been key to the case, yet it’s very likely the jury will never hear it.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Judge Steinle • Prosecution • Samuel Dieteman • Dale Hausner • phoenix • pollock joe's • ron horton • Samuel Dieteman • Serial Shooter | Post a Comment »
November 18th, 2008, 3:31 pm by Nick R. Martin
 It has been almost a month since a young juror in the front row was caught napping and told to stay awake. He denied he was sleeping, but still promised to load himself up with “a couple Red Bulls” to remain alert during testimony. Well, according to defense attorney Ken Everett, it hasn’t been enough.
This afternoon, while the jury was out of the room on a short break, Everett complained to Judge Roland Steinle that the young man was again seen with his eyes closed and appeared to be snoozing during testimony. Steinle said he would keep an eye on it for the rest of the day. When the man came back into the room after the break, he was carrying a bottle of Mountain Dew.
Photo used under free distribution licensing from Wikimedia Commons.
Posted in: Defense • Judge Steinle • Jurors • Life in trial • Dale Hausner • Judge Steinle • Jurors • phoenix • red bull • Serial Shooter | Post a Comment »
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