Summations End; Jury to begin deliberating tomorrow morning

Both the prosecution and defense rested this morning.  The defense called no witnesses and the prosecution called a police witness to clarify a few things in the crime scene report.  This was followed by the closing summations for both the prosecution and the defense.

Jeffrey Schwartz, the defense attorney for Katehis began his closing around 11:00 AM and went on for a little longer than an hour.  Schwartz's closing was a hodgepodge of desperate attempts to make Katehis look human (no easy feat), relying primarily on his young age at the time of the crime (16), villainizing George Weber and highlighting supposed police conduct.  Schwartz seemed to rely on three areas to exculpate his client:

a) his status as a minor.  He played up the fact that George had agreed to meet him for some sort of sexual act, which Katehis couldn't legally consent to, saying that it was wrong for an adult to have contact with a child in this manner.  He tried to imply that George pressured him to do things he wasn't comfortable doing and played up the image of Katehis as just another skittle eating, root beer drinking, knife obsessed regular teenage kid.  He actually said several times in spite of an objection that was sustained and a warning from the Judge "What if he was Jane Katehis and had been a 16 year old girl?". 

b) that  he was intoxicated.  Schwartz tried to play up the one beer that Katehis had as making him loopy and in spite of the fact that the white powder Katehis says George gave him to snort was almost certainly bug powder and not cocaine, continued to insist that whatever it was he supposedly ingested made him act in a bizarre manner.

c) self-defense (or justification).  Schwartz says that Katehis felt threatened when George allegedly pulled his knife out, there was a life or death struggle for this knife and Katehis was merely fending off his attacker.  In my view, this argument fell incredibly flat when one considers that George was stabbed 50 times and Katehis's injuries were limited to some cuts on his hand. 

Scwhartz also tried to create the impression that police, prosecutors and investigators didn't do their jobs well, that they essentially tried to lure Katehis into trusting them and disregarded everything he said about this being |"an accident".  His lone defense for the repeated lies Katehis has been caught in, which we have alluded to in previous posts, was that Katehis was nervous, scared "and just a kid".  Not that I'm objective in the least,but Schwartz's entire closing smacked of desperation, inauthenticity and pure fiction.  I hope and pray that the jury saw the same closing I did.  George's friend and colleage from WABC, Curtis Sliwa, was on hand for the closing as were several of his friends from his neighborhood.

The prosecution summation, delivered by Anna Siga-Nicolazzi COULD NOT HAVE CONTRASTED MORE GREATLY WITH THAT OF HER ADVERSARY.  Ron Kuby, a noted and accomplished attorney in his own rite said it best when he told reporters afterwards that, "not only did she remove any reasonable doubt, but she removed any possible doubt".  Kuby, who was teary eyed throughout most of Nicolazzi's presentation said that it was one of the best prosecutorial closings he had ever seen and while I've seen far fewer, I'd have to agree. 

Even now, it's difficult for me to imagine how my friend spent the final minutes of his life being tormented by this monster and bleeding to death rapidly, without getting nauseous and really broken up.  Nicolazzi used logic and common sense to itemize for the jury all the lies Katehis told police, showed evidence of how they differed with the facts and painted (from my perspective) a very chilling, very accurate portrait of a man who committed an unspeakable atrocity.   While she made no attempt at all to excuse George's inappropriate and illegal behavior, she reminded jurors that although they might be uncomfortable with the circumstances surrounding how they met that it didn't change at all what Katehis had done, intentionally killing George Weber by plunging a knife into his body 50 times.  After telling the jury to take as much or as little time as they needed, she asked them to deliver a guilty verdict on the only charge Katehis is facing, murder in the second degree. 

In my view, Nicolazzi, who in spite of the fact that she's visibly pregnant is as breathtakingly beautiful as she is articulate could not have handled this case better.  While it's still difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that my friend was brutally murdered, Nicolazzi has been the finest surrogate that any victim could ask for.  She came across in her closing and throughout the trial as sincere, truthful and logical.  Her style has been as different as possible from that of her adversary (a former prosecutor himself).  Quite frankly, I don't see how after looking at the evidence, any reasonable human being could come back with a verdict of anything less than guilty.

Tomorrow the Judge will read and explain the charges to the jury.  They should then begin deliberating by 11AM.  They will order lunch in and continue their deliberations through lunch and until they can come to a verdict on what Katehis is charged with, Second Degree murder.  The rest of us will be waiting on the 21st floor of Brooklyn State Supreme Court with baited breath.