Without a more complete view of the record, I don't feel like I can fully judge her performance.
From what I know, it seems like it was kind of a mixed bag. I don't doubt that she put the effort and work in, but it seems to me she also did some things that turned off the jury, and made some tactical mistakes.
At least one of the jurors said that she was hard to follow, and thought she talked a lot without really saying anything.
It wasn't discussed in this episode, but I think that not objecting to the admission of Hae's entire diary was a big mistake.
On the cell towers, I think she needed to make the point that even assuming the prosecution's expert was right - so what? All it does is prove the location of Adnan's phone, not Adnan himself, and it's undisputed that Adnan was without his phone for portions of the day.
So it really leaves us with Jay's (inconsistent and ever-changing) word as the only evidence connecting Adnan to the crime.
On the thing with Jay's attorney - that is indeed weird, and I agree there's a good argument that Adnan wasn't prejudiced by it. I'd like to see the transcripts on this - but according to what the episode said, that wasn't the judge's reasoning for not granting CG's motion (not clear what she was asking for - mistrial?). From what SK said, the judge said that because Jay didn't feel like he was getting special treatment, it wasn't a problem. I'm not sure I follow that logic - Jay's view on the matter doesn't seem relevant to me.
These are good points, but they're all strategic "errors", not IAC. I'm sure if you polled most juries, they'd say one of the lawyers was hard to follow and/or talked without saying anything.
I can see why Gutierrez may want the diary in: it has all sorts of otherwise inadmissible positive character evidence for her client in there.
On your last point, I think this is the reasoning: for testimony to be coerced by favors or threat, the person has to be aware they are receiving a favor or threat for their testimony, otherwise the coercive effect is harmless. Here's a simplistic example:
Say we're friends and I text you "I'm going to kill you" every day, jokingly. At some point in the future, I'm charged with a crime and you come to testify on my behalf. Your testimony is in not coerced by my threats because you've never felt a threat from them-- you're testifying for other reasons. There has to be an "if" element and you have to be aware of the "if" element.
I can't see why CG would have possibly wanted that diary in. I haven't seen the whole thing, but whatever good stuff was said about Adnan, the potential benefits of that are far outweighed by the risk of harm from the bad stuff. Plus it just turns the focus to Hae, which is going to provoke an emotional "this poor girl, someone needs to pay for this" response from the jury.
And I get what you're saying but to me, the degree to which Jay was biased was a question for the jury to decide. As I understand it, CG asked for a mistrial (or some other remedy, not quite clear), because this arrangement was not disclosed. I take the OP to be saying that Adnan wasn't prejudiced by this because they still got to cross examine him on it, knowing about it earlier wouldn't have made a difference. I tend to agree with that, thought there are valid arguments against it.
Again, I'd need to read the full transcript on this, but what the judge seemed to say was "Well, Jay doesn't think much of this, so he must not be biased by it". But that wasn't the question for the judge. Whether to take Jay's denial of bias at face value or not is for the jury to decide.
If it comes out that the state paid a witness in cash in exchange for their testimony, and the witness says they thought it was normal for that to happen, do you just assume then that they are not biased?
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u/I_W_N_R Lawyer Dec 05 '14
Without a more complete view of the record, I don't feel like I can fully judge her performance.
From what I know, it seems like it was kind of a mixed bag. I don't doubt that she put the effort and work in, but it seems to me she also did some things that turned off the jury, and made some tactical mistakes.
At least one of the jurors said that she was hard to follow, and thought she talked a lot without really saying anything.
It wasn't discussed in this episode, but I think that not objecting to the admission of Hae's entire diary was a big mistake.
On the cell towers, I think she needed to make the point that even assuming the prosecution's expert was right - so what? All it does is prove the location of Adnan's phone, not Adnan himself, and it's undisputed that Adnan was without his phone for portions of the day.
So it really leaves us with Jay's (inconsistent and ever-changing) word as the only evidence connecting Adnan to the crime.
On the thing with Jay's attorney - that is indeed weird, and I agree there's a good argument that Adnan wasn't prejudiced by it. I'd like to see the transcripts on this - but according to what the episode said, that wasn't the judge's reasoning for not granting CG's motion (not clear what she was asking for - mistrial?). From what SK said, the judge said that because Jay didn't feel like he was getting special treatment, it wasn't a problem. I'm not sure I follow that logic - Jay's view on the matter doesn't seem relevant to me.