So the prosecution has completed the presentation of its case in the trial of William Cottrell, and here are the interesting tidbits:
LOS ANGELES -- The prosecution rested Tuesday in the ecoterrorism trial of Caltech graduate student Billy Cottrell, closing with DNA evidence linking Cottrell to a headband found at the arson scene.
Several hairs were found on the headband, which was discovered at the Clippinger Hummer dealership soon after the $2.5 million arson fire there on Aug. 22, 2003.
Experts at the FBI forensic laboratory at Quantico, Va., found there was a 1-in-370 million chance Cottrell was not the one wearing the headband.
But the defense has not disputed Cottrell was present at the scene. They claim Cottrell's friends, Tyler Johnson and Michie Oe, were the true arsonists and that Cottrell only spray- painted environmental slogans on sport-utility vehicles.
After the prosecution rested, the defense moved for dismissal of all the charges. Judge Gary Klausner denied the motion.
"The evidence in this case is essentially non-existent,' argued defense attorney Michael Mayock. "There is no showing that Billy Cottrell was involved in any way in aiding, abetting or the throwing of Molotov cocktails.'
Mayock paid particular attention to the charge of conspiracy, arguing Cottrell may have been guilty of conspiring to commit vandalism, but not to commit arson.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Beverly Reid-O'Connell argued that Cottrell's admissions to friends who testified for the government provided enough evidence to send all counts to the jury for a verdict.
Klausner agreed, saying there was "more than enough circumstantial evidence to make inference of these charges.'
So far, I'm not surprised: the arrest affidavit (pdf) and the indictment (pdf) seemed fairly uncomplicated and quite damning, and in my legally-naive mind, it would have taken a major breach of process (like an illegal search) that rendered significant evidence inadmissible for the defense to have hoped for a dismissal. But I'm not an attorney.
What does interest me is the defense's strategy, now that the Asperger Syndrome defense ("I-couldn't-help-it", Innocent-by-reason-of-Asperger's-Syndrome") was barred.
What is left to them? Well, first of all there is a rather standard approach of blaming Mr. Cottrell's arrest on the desperation of the FBI to find a scapegoat:
The defense will begin today. The defense is expected to try to call Joshua Connole, a Pomona environmentalist who was arrested for the arsons in September 2003 and later released due to insufficient evidence.
The defense hopes Connole's testimony will show that the FBI was desperate to solve the case, but prosecutors have asked Klausner to declare the testimony irrelevant and preclude Connole from taking the stand.
This doesn't sound very imaginative to me — it's the kind of defense that one offers when there is not much else available. I don't know if the prosecution will be successful in squelching Mr. Connole's testimony, but I don't think it'll make much difference.
Law enforcement agencies follow up on leads, and we would hope they do so vigorously. They put pressure on suspects. And, when the evidence peters out, they release them, to pursue other leads that seem more promising.
How else would one run an investigation?
. . . In an anonymous e-mail to the Los Angeles Times dated Sept. 16, 2003, the writer references ELF attacks that occurred in New Mexico the previous week. The prosecution claims Cottrell wrote the e-mail, while the defense maintains that Johnson wrote it.
On Sept. 5, 2003, a dozen SUVs were spray-painted with ELF slogans at a dealership in Santa Fe. The writer also claimed that bumper stickering attacks took place in New Mexico around the same time, but contemporary media accounts make no reference to bumper stickers.
The salient point seems to be that Johnson, or others, might be responsible for using Mr. Cottrell's e-mail accounts. That's thin if the arrest affidavit is to be believed: on page 36 we find Mr. Cottrell allegedly saying:
A. COTTRELL denied having a Hotmail account, denied having contacted any reporters, denied being a part of any environmental group, had never given his e-mail account passwords or let someone else use his CalTech access card, or has ever participated in illegal activities" (page 36).
It's hard to imagine how Mr. Cottrell can claim that someone else used his e-mail account after having claimed nobody had access to the card that gained him access to the incriminating computer and the passwords for his e-mail accounts.
And it's hard to imagine that Mr. Cottrell was a total innocent who in a moment of panic lied during his interview because of the stress he was under. When he was subsequently confronted by agents with the computer evidence and given an opportunity to tell his side of the story, his immediate reaction, apparently, was to look first at what the government was offering for his cooperation, but saw nothing of value to him.
The defense, it seems to me, needs to shake this.
And the fact that there were apparently no media accounts of bumper stickers being used to vandalize in New Mexico is similarly weak: the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.
The defense seems interested in portraying Mr. Cottrell as someone who was given to harmless pranks, but not interested in vandalism:
LOS ANGELES -- Caltech student Billy Cottrell had a history of pulling stunts before the August 2003 SUV arsons that landed him in jail facing life in prison, but it was his fugitive friend who spoke approvingly of environmentally motivated fires before the crimes occurred, a friend of Cottrell's testified Monday. . . .
Johnson and Cottrell once placed "Go Metric' stickers, advocating the abolishment of the English measurement system, on surfaces throughout Pasadena, Bloom testified. . . .
Bloom also said Johnson and Cottrell devised a plot to put bumper stickers on sport-utility vehicles that read, "My SUV Supports Terrorism.'
But Bloom said it was Johnson not Cottrell who expressed support for environmental attacks akin to those carried out by the Earth Liberation Front during a car trip to Mt. Whitney in July 2003.
What Mr. Cottrell chose to reveal — or not to reveal — to Mr. Bloom about the level of his support — or non-support — for the ELF is barely interesting and marginally relevant, at least in my opinion.
Perhaps Mr. Cottrell didn't trust Mr. Bloom to keep a confidence, if he really did support the ELF. In any event, if the defense didn't deal effectively with Mr. Cottrell's alleged statements and those of his girlfriend, who claimed Mr. Cottrell said "I did it" with respect to the arson and vandalism, in the arrest affidavit [pdf], it's hard to imagine how Mr. Bloom's "he didn't tell me" could be expanded to conclude that "therefore he didn't do it."
Testimony of the sort Mr. Bloom offered doesn't look very convincing to me when measured against the wealth of evidence that the arrest affidavit contains, including Cottrell denying having given out "his e-mail account passwords or let someone else use his CalTech access card, or has ever participated in illegal activities" (page 36).
But there is more: pranksters can be portrayed not just as innocent, high spirited individualists, but also as arrogant, conniving, self-indulgent, spoiled brats who don't expect to be held accountable.
Now, I'm not saying Mr. Cottrell is any of these things. I'm only saying that portraying him as a prankster is a double edged sword: it can cut both favorably and unfavorably, and the defense uses it at its peril. Again, this seems to me to be an act of desperation: the best defense is an unambiguous one, and the "prankster" defense isn't unambiguous.
Bloom also said Cottrell plotted to carry out the bumper stickering operation on Aug. 22 the night that more than 125 SUVs were vandalized or torched across the San Gabriel Valley.
Bloom said he had no inkling that arson would occur, and was confused the morning after when Cottrell said Hummers had been destroyed.
The defense has argued Cottrell is a prankster and a vandal, but not an arsonist. They have blamed Johnson and Michie Oe, a second fugitive, for setting the fires. They acknowledge that Cottrell spray-painted environmental graffiti on the SUVs. . . .
The defense claims Johnson, who was scheduled to leave town the next day for graduate school in New Mexico, was disappointed when Cottrell told him that the bumper stickers had not yet arrived. Johnson asked Cottrell to refund Johnson's portion of the stickers' cost, but Cottrell didn't have it, Mayock said in his opening statement.
Johnson then insisted they carry out an alternative plan, Mayock said. The defense claims Cottrell was unaware that the plan included arson. . . .
So the jury is asked to believe that for the want of a few dollars for bumper stickers, Mr. Cottrell got caught up in a plan, a course of action, with no foreknowledge of what the plan entailed. And the plan just happened to involve torching or otherwise vandalizing 125 SUV's.
From my vantage point, if the defense can't shake the material in the arrest affidavit, no number of witnesses attesting to what he did or did not say or might have thought, no alternative explanations to his presence at the scene or the use of his e-mail accounts, no appeal to his playful nature as a prankster, will be enough to win a "not guilty" verdict.
Juries are funny creatures — they can decide what they want. But if I were betting, I'd put my money on the prosecution and not look back.
Brian