The statement evoked swift admonishment from Judge Eleanor Hunter, who said that Grayson should know better than to bring up potential sentencing of the defendant, since such talk could affect a jury’s decision. Returning to the discrepancies in the reports of the height of the shooter, Grayson assured the jury that this was not a minor detail, pointing to Watson and saying, “Someone’s life is at stake, he’s looking at life.” He went on to call the case against Watson a “sloppy, incompetent mess, ” describing the prosecution’s case as one “built on sand that has now crumbled.” Grayson began his final statement to the jury by saying, “Arlon Watson did not shoot Dannie Farber.” A college girl playing basketball should not have to be arrested to do the right thing.” “One would hope that people would be lining up to testify, but that’s not the reality. There’s the feeling of ‘you could be next,’” Porras said. “That message that you hear starting in kindergarten-‘Don’t tattletale’-has taken a bastardized turn in snitching. Failing to show up in court after being subpoenaed, Webb was arrested at her college basketball practice and brought to testify. He emphasized the stigma of snitching in the gang community and how hard it was to get witnesses to come forward. Porras also reminded the jury of testimony from people like Ashley Webb, who last week said that Watson had told her directly that he shot Farber. Summing up the major points presented in the two-week-long trial, Deputy District Attorney Joe Porras brought up several phone calls made by Watson from jail once he was arrested last year in which he expressed a willingness to “strike a deal” about a possible prison term. The prosecution argued that it wasn’t necessary to quibble over such details in reports by traumatized witnesses when there was such compelling evidence that pointed to Watson as the shooter.
The discrepancy over heights reported by witnesses to Farber’s shooting played heavily into the closing arguments of Watson’s defense. Lindsey saw that night to be Watson, a 22-year-old Compton resident and suspected gang member.
#Compton courthouse tattoo trial#
In the trial of the accused murderer of Dannie Farber, a high school student fatally shot at a Louisiana Fried Chicken on the 1900 block of West Rosecrans Avenue, the prosecution believes the man
She couldn’t remember exactly how tall he was–only that he was taller than her own five-foot-two-inch frame. “I know he wasn’t a midget,” Debra Lindsey testified from the witness stand. On the final day of arguments in the trial of Arlon Watson, defense attorney Tracy Grayson asked a witness about the height of the man she saw running away from a fast food restaurant in Compton on the night of May 24, 2009.
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