OAKLAND — The jury trial against a Berkeley man accused of killing three men more than a decade ago began this week with opening remarks and testimony signaling that it could be a complicated trial filled with reluctant or defiant witnesses.
Given the nature of the case, the court has increased security at the Oakland courtroom, requiring people to show identification and go through a second metal detector to enter the gallery.
Joseph Carroll Jr., 37, is charged with three counts of murder for the deaths of three men in Oakland from 2009 to 2011: Nguyen Ngo, 18, Nehemiah Lewis, 24 and Andrew Henderson Jr., 23.
In her opening remarks, prosecutor Natasha Jontulovich told jurors that some witnesses will be testifying unwillingly and others have been compelled by subpoenas to do so.
Carroll’s attorneys, Todd Bequette and William Welch, assert detectives failed to take routine steps in their investigation, leaving the prosecution to rely on the word of “convicts, murders and fraudsters” interested in selling Carroll out to benefit themselves.
Two women, who were between the ages of 14 and 16 at the time of the 2009 killing of Ngo shooting, testified Monday. The pair had been walking back to one of their homes from a corner store on 45th and Market streets in North Oakland when, both told officers, they saw a tan car pull up and a three-foot-long gun shoot from the driver’s side at Ngo and three others with him. In court, they said they couldn’t recall giving statements to police or seeing the incident, given how long ago it took place. Both also told Jontulovich they did not want to be testifying 15 years later.
Another woman who testified Monday came forward with information nine years after the shooting. She testified that less less than a minute after she heard gunshots as she waited for a relative getting a haircut, she said, she saw a gold car with two Black men inside drive parallel past her before a second dark colored Dodge Charger driven by an old acquaintance, Greg Fite, who she referred to as “George Fife,” crossed in front of her at a stop sign soon after.
The witness would tell detectives that Fite ran in the same circle as Carroll and his brother, and claimed Joe Carroll was crouched in the back seat of the gold car while his brother drove.
On the witness stand, she walked back those statements, claiming her memory could be tainted because she read a transcript of an interview Fite gave detectives that was being shared in Berkeley. She said she could not say either way whether the Carroll brothers were in the gold car or not.
Like the other two female witnesses Monday, she said she did not want to testify, saying she feared retaliation.
“Sometimes you remember things correctly, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you want to help the police, sometimes you don’t,” the woman said.
Also called to testify was the woman’s nephew, a friend of Carroll’s who told detectives in a 2009 police interview played for the …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
