Live from the courtroom: The star witness of the case, Samuel Dieteman,has just walked into the courtroom. He was brought in surrounded by heavily armored SWAT team members and wearing jail stripes and chains. He will likely testify for just an hour today and return at least tomorrow and Thursday for testimony. Follow the testimony live here at HEAT CITY. I’ll be posting all the major developments.
A witness testifies in October 2008 during the opening days of the trial against Dale Hausner. Pool photo
Live from the courtroom: With Samuel Dieteman expected to testify this afternoon, security has been tightened in the courtroom. Jurors and spectators already have to pass through a metal detector when they first enter the courthouse, but the court security staff has set up a second detector just outside the door to the courtroom.
On top of it, a small contingent of deputies combed the courtroom during the lunch break, looking for devices or weapons that might have hidden in secret places. They even inspected the jury box and the judge’s bench, just for safe measure.
These are rare moves, but given the high stakes of today’s testimony, they seem warranted.
Live from the courtroom: Bright yellow crime scene tape was hanging from a couple of the benches in the viewing gallery this morning, just behind where Dale Hausner was seated this morning in the courtroom. It was the kind of tape you see faux-police on TV or the movies walking beneath on their way into some grisly crime scene.
The tape was there to keep spectators away from Hausner on the day when the courtroom is expected to be packed for the testimony of the star witness. But Hausner’s attorney objected to its use. Attorney Ken Everett told Judge Roland Steinle that the tape would make his client “look dangerous” to the jury. “It certainly gives a very bad impression to the jury, in my view,” he said.
Steinle agreed. So before the jury came into the courtroom, he asked a deputy to pull down the tape. Still, he asked that his staff members keep the first row behind Hausner clear for security reasons.
Dieteman
Live from the courtroom: The courtroom is filling up this morning as spectators, journalists and survivors get ready to hear the most anticipated testimony of the trial. Samuel Dieteman, the confessed second half of the Serial Shooter duo, is expected to take the stand against his former friend and roommate, Dale Hausner, who on trial, suspected of some 87 crimes, including eight murders.
“Today is the day,” survivor Paul Patrick told me this morning before the day’s proceedings began. Patrick was someone I profiled back in November. He has been in the courtroom every day since the trial began in October and sees his spot in the in the viewing gallery as “his beautiful duty.”
“He’ll do the right thing,” Patrick said of the testimony, hinting at some doubt that Dieteman will fully come clean on the stand.
Your trusted freelance journalist and blogger has only had a website up for 18 hours or so, and already the reviews have begun. People are talking about HEAT CITY, and I’m grateful for all the feedback and input.
It probably helps that, on the same day, several of my friends and former colleagues launched a subscription-based political news site called Arizona Guardian. Journalists love a trend story, after all. Still, it shows that some of the laid off many in Arizona journalism are trying new things, and experimentation is vital in our painful media market.
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Dale Hausner listens to testimony in the opening days of his trial on 87 felony counts. Pool photo.
I wrote it time and again over the past year. The eight-count murder trial of Dale Hausner has always been scheduled to be “a marathon.” And that’s proved true over the past several months. In fact, it has already lasted far longer than the average death penatly case in the Phoenix area and it is not even halfway done.
But beyond that, Hausner”s is an important trial, too. It is arguably the biggest murder trial in Arizona history. The 35-year-old Mesa man is accused of some 87 crimes in what became known as the Serial Shooter killing spree of 2005 and 2006. The crimes affected nearly everyone in the metropolitan Phoenix area, with some residents even refusing to leave their homes for fear of being shot by some random, anonymous killer.