On trial? Listen carefully!

When you are on trial, you have to listen carefully to the questions asked of you. And you have to answer carefully. In addition to answering truthfully, you have to choose "how" you are going to answer. It's probably not a good idea to accuse the prosecution of asking you questions that are manufactured and twisted to cause you to say that a crime was committed, when it was not.

During the past few weeks some questions have continued to nag me after the trial and conviction of a police sergeant from the Algonquin P.D. The sergeant was found not guilty on two of the three charges, but the judge found him guilty on one charge of domestic battery.

Even though the alleged victim had testified extensively that her husband had not hit her, the prosecutor kept drilling away on her red left ear. She had testified that she had been crying and that both ears and her face were red. The prosecutor was trying to get her to say that her husband had hit her left ear with his right hand from his position behind her.

Now, picture this. A person is walking away from you. You are right-handed. How do you hit the person's left ear with your right palm?

First, I never heard the prosecutor present any evidence from the sergeant that he was right-handed.

But here is the source of my concern. The prosecutor tried to create a scenario in which it would have been possible for her left ear to be hit hard enough with his right hand to redden it. As I recall, he said something like, "So, if you had turned around toward him, then he could have hit your left ear, is that right?"

Now, how do you answer that question? Should you answer it? She had stated that she was walking away from him. She had not stated that she had turned around.

I immediately thought of Gary Gauger's "confession." "Well, if you had blacked out, you wouldn't remember; right?" Well, duhhhh......

And the victim was supposedly the witness of the prosecution, and she was getting badgered pretty well by the prosecuting attorney. At times it was hard to remember that she was his witness, not a defendant. And I guess a defense attorney doesn't object to a prosecution's badgering his own witness.

Was it that testimony that gave the judge his basis for convicting the sergeant of battery?

Frankly, I hope the sergeant appeals his conviction and that he wins. Based on the sworn testimony in the courtroom that I heard, no crime of domestic battery occurred.