Archive for the 'attorneys' Tag
November 21st, 2008, 8:00 am by Nick R. Martin
 Prosecutors are nearing the end of the first segment of their case against Dale Hausner, the Mesa man accused of killing eight people and wounding numerous others in 2005 and 2006 in the Serial Shooter case.
In the past month and a half, jurors in a downtown Phoenix courtroom have been faced with dozens of mostly hard-luck victims who authorities say were Hausner’s targets.
Maricopa County prosecutors call it the “scenes” segment of their case. It gave them the opportunity to lay out the facts of every shooting, stabbing and arson they’ve attributed to the 35-year-old defendant.
The testimony was often emotional for jurors to hear, but it seemed to rarely damage Hausner.
So far, more than 100 witnesses have testified in the trial, but just three have been able to link Hausner to any of the incidents.
Read full story…
Tribune file photo. Dale Hausner speaks at a news conference shortly after his arrest in August 2006. Programming note: The trial is off until Dec. 1.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Prosecution • attorneys • Dale Hausner • Mesa • phoenix • Serial Shooter • witnesses | Post a Comment »
November 5th, 2008, 8:51 pm by Nick R. Martin
Two witnesses. Both with different stories. Both with the same conclusion: It was Dale Hausner.
A month into a marathon eight-count murder trial, two people on Wednesday placed Hausner, the Serial Shooter suspect, at the scenes of separate attacks in May 2006.
It was the clearest link yet between the 35-year-old Mesa man and the 14-month string of murders and assaults that stretched across the Valley two years ago.
Hausner looked fidgety and nervous in court as the witnesses told their stories, but that didn’t keep his defense attorneys from aggressively trying to pick apart the testimony.
The first person to identify Hausner in court was Timothy Davenport, who was stabbed nearly to death by two strangers on May 17, 2006, as he was walking to a friend’s house in west Phoenix.
Davenport, 36, said he was crossing through a church parking lot just after midnight near 73rd Avenue and Camelback Road when a car pulled into the lot and the driver stopped to ask him a question.
“Are you OK?” the driver asked, according to Davenport.
Before he could answer, another man came from behind and stabbed him in the back, side and face. Davenport pointed to the scars he has from the attack.
Asked whether either of his attackers was in court on Wednesday, Davenport pointed to Hausner and identified him as the driver.
“He was the one that distracted me while the other guy stabbed me,” Davenport said. “One hundred percent.”
Read full story…
Programming note: The trial is taking a long weekend, and so is this blog. Live courtroom updates will resume Monday.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Prosecution • Samuel Dieteman • attorneys • Dale Hausner • jeff hausner • knife • Mesa • phoenix • Prosecution • Samuel Dieteman • Serial Shooter • Witness | Post a Comment »
November 5th, 2008, 4:27 pm by Nick R. Martin
 Late this afternoon, a witness placed Dale Hausner at the scene of another attack with which he has been charged. Marianne Thone said Hausner and a dark-haired man approached her the night of May 30, 2006 just outside the scene of where her brother, James Hodge, was randomly shot in the back.
Hausner told the woman that he and his friend were out looking for a runaway cat when they saw her brother get shot, Thone testified. The two men told her they helped take care of her brother until emergency crews arrived. In reality, prosecutors allege, the two men were the shooters and got involved after the shooting as a ruse. The dark-haired man, the authorities believe, was Samuel Dieteman, Hausner’s confessed co-conspirator (pictured).
Thone’s brother, a schizophrenic Vietnam veteran who was off his medication at the time, survived the attack.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Prosecution • Samuel Dieteman • attorneys • Dale Hausner • phoenix • police • prosecutors • Samuel Dieteman • Serial Shooter | Post a Comment »
October 22nd, 2008, 10:22 am by Nick R. Martin
He rolled his eyes. He flailed his arms. He yelled. He cursed. He did everything but spit.
Defense attorney Ken Everett did his best Tuesday to try to discredit a key witness in the case against his client, Serial Shooter suspect Dale Hausner.
 In the end, the full-throated attack on witness John Kane appeared only to agitate the one man no attorney wants to upset - the judge.
“The questions are becoming repetitive,” Judge Roland Steinle warned Everett from the bench. “And nothing more than harassing.”
A day earlier, Kane, a former bartending instructor from Gilbert, testified that Hausner confessed to him about shooting an empty car in December 2005 in the parking lot of the Tempe bartending academy where they first met.
Kane told the jury that he and Hausner had become friends, and that Hausner thought he was doing his newfound pal a favor by shooting the car of a woman who recently filed a sexual harassment complaint against Kane.
The testimony was the first time anybody so far in the marathon trial directly tied Hausner to the Serial Shooter crime spree, which included eight murders and dozens of other shootings.
In court on Tuesday, Everett worked hard to debunk Kane’s story by forcefully and loudly attacking the man’s credibility.
Everett brought up Kane’s four prior felony convictions, his drug use and his alcoholism in an attempt to destroy his character. Then, he went after Kane’s motives for agreeing to testify.
He pointed out that Kane was arrested in April 2006 on drug and gun charges, and the testimony was part of an agreement he struck with prosecutors to get out of jail.
Along the way, the normally baritone voice of Everett grew ever stronger, and his attitude more critical, as he tried to show that not even he believed what Kane was saying.
Read full story…
Photo by pool photographer. Defense attorney Ken Everett questions a witness during the trial of Serial Shooter suspect Dale Hausner.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Judge Steinle • attorneys • Dale Hausner • judge • Judge Steinle • phoenix • Serial Shooter • tempe | Post a Comment »
October 21st, 2008, 2:36 pm by Nick R. Martin
 Ken Everett continued to roll his eyes, yell expressions like “gee, John” and spew expletives throughout the cross examination of the first witness to implicate his client in one of the shootings.
“You told Dale, ‘That’s the (expletive)’s vehicle right there,’ didn’t you?” Everett said, grilling John Kane, the Gilbert man who said Serial Shooter suspect Dale Hausner confessed to shooting up a vehicle on Dec. 29, 2005.
Normally, Everett is aggressive and speaks at volumes above and beyond those of anyone else in the courtroom. But today, he has even crossed beyond his usual level in trying to discredit Kane.
The exclamations and cursing only come when he is quoting somebody else, but Everett doesn’t hold anything back.
This morning, Judge Roland Steinle told him to keep his voice down, but Everett has struggled to do so. This afternoon, Steinle asked the jury to leave the room so he could reprimand Everett once again. “You used other expressions to show that you clearly don’t believe what is being said out there,” Steinle told him, calling many of his questions “nothing more than harassing.”
In fact, Steinle told Everett to wrap up his questions with Kane, saying many of them were “becoming repetitive.” And, Steinle added, “You will stop rolling your eyes and other facial gestures.”
Photo by pool photographer. Dale Hausner’s attorney Ken Everett listens to testimony last week in Maricopa County Superior Court.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Judge Steinle • attorneys • Dale Hausner • gilbert • Serial Shooter • tempe | Post a Comment »
October 21st, 2008, 11:35 am by Nick R. Martin
John Kane, the Gilbert man who said Dale Hausner confessed a shooting to him, is facing a knock-down drag-out attack from the Hausner’s attorney this morning. Attorney Ken Everett has been pushing hard on Kane’s four prior felony convictions and the plea deal he made in exchange for testifying in the trial. The implication is that Kane’s testimony is not to be trusted.
As is Everett’s style, he’s loud and mad. And he’s pushing the envelope of what’s proper. In fact, Judge Roland Steinle just asked the jury to leave the room for a few moments so he could tell Everett to, well, chill out.
“Your questions are becoming argumentative and your tone is going way above,” Steinle said. He called some of Everett’s comments “totally inappropriate.”
“I’m asking you to lower your tone,” Steinle said.
Everett did not respond. But once the jury was brought back into the courtroom, he resumed his questioning at about half the volume.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Judge Steinle • attorneys • Dale Hausner • gilbert • Serial Shooter • tempe | Post a Comment »
October 21st, 2008, 9:27 am by Nick R. Martin
A Gilbert man on Monday gave the first testimony linking Dale Hausner to the Serial Shooters killing spree, making him perhaps the most important witness yet in the marathon trial.
John Kane, 41, became friends with Hausner in late 2005 while teaching him how to make cash and mix drinks at a Tempe bartending school.
But their budding friendship took a bizarre turn in December of that year, when Hausner offered to help Kane deal with a young woman at the school who had accused him of sexual harassment.
“I asked him what he was going to do about it,” Kane testified at Hausner’s eight-count murder trial in Maricopa County Superior Court. “He said, ‘Don’t worry about it. You’ll know it when it happens.’ ”
A few nights later, on Dec. 29, a car believed to belong to the young woman was shot in the parking lot of the ABC Bartending School near Mill Avenue and Baseline Road.
No one was hurt in the shooting, but the bizarre event set the school on edge.
The next morning, Kane said, he had an abrupt conversation with Hausner in the offices of the academy.
“I sat down at my desk and said, ‘What the (expletive) are you doing?’” Kane testified.
“He just smiled and said, ‘Taking care of business.’
“I asked, ‘Did you do that?’
“He said, ‘Yeah.’”
The shooting at the academy is just one of dozens of crimes prosecutors say Hausner committed between May 2005 and August 2006 across the Valley.
Hausner, 35, of Mesa, is accused of being the main half of a duo that became known as the Serial Shooters during that period.
Read full story…
Photo by Ralph Freso, Tribune. Serial shooter suspect Dale Hausner attended the ABC Bartending School in Tempe where, in December 2005, prosecutors say he tried to shoot a woman who also attended the school.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Prosecution • attorneys • bartending • Dale Hausner • seial shooter • sexual harassment • tempe | Post a Comment »
October 20th, 2008, 2:55 pm by Nick R. Martin
During a break this afternoon, attorney Ken Everett complained to Judge Roland Steinle that today was at least the second time a young juror has been seen sleeping on the job. Everett said he even wanted to “ask that he be excluded right now” — lawyer speak for kicking him off the trial.
The 20-something man in the front row might be forgiven for having heavy eyelids, though, especially today. The room is a little warm and the air is stale. The testimony this afternoon is entirely from Maricopa County medical examiner Robert Lyon, who is going over detailed autopsies in which the most interesting info is a brief but intricate discussion on how lividity helps determine time of death. It’s dry stuff.
Steinle told Everett he wasn’t ready to yank the juror just yet. But, the judge said, if the man continues to nap, the court may revisit this issue sooner than later.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Jurors • Life in trial • attorneys • jury • Serial Shooter | Post a Comment »
October 20th, 2008, 1:08 pm by Nick R. Martin
Last Tuesday, I wrote about a brief blackout in the courtroom that happened just as testimony was getting underway for the day. Lights went out for about 30 seconds in the windowless courtroom, and guards fumbled with their flashlights to shine them on the defendant, Dale Hausner, who is accused of eight murders.
Now, Hausner is disputing the story. Standing in the courtroom during the lunch break today, Hausner was reading through a handful of newspaper stories printed since the start of the trial. Remember, prosecutors have called Hausner a “narcissist” because he reportedly cut out and saved dozens of newspaper clippings about the Serial Shooter killings while the they were ongoing. In the near-empty courtroom a few minutes ago, he read aloud part of my story published the day after the blackout. “About 30 second later, the lights came back on,” Hausner read. “All the jurors sighed with relief.” (Note: Hausner added a couple words for emphasis.)
“Come on!” Hausner said to his attorneys, apparently not knowing the writer was in the courtroom. “The lights were out for about seven seconds and when I looked over, all the jurors were fine.”
“Be careful,” his attorney Ken Everett said, “I think the reporter is right over there.”
Hausner looked back at the gallery, mumbled something, sat down and laid the story on the table. He read other stories silently to himself.
Photo by pool photographer. Hausner listens to testimony last week during his trial in Maricopa County Superior Court on eight murder charges.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Life in trial • attorneys • Dale Hausner • Serial Shooter | 2 Comments »
October 20th, 2008, 10:49 am by Nick R. Martin
 Phoenix police detective Robert Wenrick opens the day with testimony about the Nov. 11, 2005 shooting death of Nathaniel Schoffner. Schoffner was the 45-year-old homeless man shot and killed trying to save a dog from the so-called Serial Shooters. Wenrick said Schoffner had just stolen three cans of beer and a bag of chips from a nearby Circle K convenience store minutes before the shooting.
Though it came fourth in the series of murders, the Schoffner killing was the final one linked to the Serial Shooters. It only became tied to the case after the other suspect in the killings, Samuel Dieteman. Dieteman told prosecutors about the Schoffner killing earlier this year after pleading guilty to two murder charges and agreeing to testify against his former friend, Dale Hausner.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Prosecution • Samuel Dieteman • attorneys • Dale Hausner • police • Samuel Dieteman • Serial Shooter | Post a Comment »
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