“A friend is, as it were, a second self.” —Cicero
Last week a jury found Jose Carrasco guilty of count two domestic abuse by causing corporal injury to his girlfriend, Ana Hernandez, and count three vandalism, the breaking her phone.
Deputy DA Tom Geddes wanted conviction on the far more serious charge contained in count one, assault with means likely to cause great bodily injury, but it’s all the jurors were willing to give him was the two lesser charges.
Why this particular case, which should have been settled for the lesser-included charges to begin with, went to trial in the first place was a mystery.
In Deputy DA Geddes opening remarks to the jury it seemed impossible that the victim could have survived the attack the defendant had allegedly mounted against her.
“Ladies and gentleman, you will hear — not from Ana Hernandez herself, but from what she told Deputy Denton at the hospital — that he, the defendant, Jose Carrasco, backhanded her merely for asking about her boots … punched her repeatedly in the face … dragged her outside by the hair and threw her down … kicked her in the face … hit her with an uppercut while she sat on the toilet … stomped on her head…”—on and on. You had to wonder how she lived to tell about it, but if even half was true, Jose is no gentleman. And, as it developed, Miss Hernandez was not on a night out from the Convent of the Little Sisters.
They had gone to the bar. Ana Hernandez, who had already been swigging from a bottle of vodka, drank more at the bar, got stinking drunk, so drunk she made a pest of herself, tried to hit Carrasco and his friends with the empty vodka bottle for commenting on some other woman at the bar, smashed the empty bottle in the parking lot, lost her shoes the moment she took them off, wandered around falling-down drunk half the night, and ended up at the emergency room where she told Deputy Denton a story about an innocent little girl who only asked polite questions about her lost shoes and was beaten nearly to death by an ogre she thought was her boyfriend of four years, Jose Carrasco.
The trouble was, her injuries — a swollen eye, a bump on the head, scratches on her legs, leaves in her hair — were not serious enough to square with the violence she said she endured at the hands and feet of the defendant. In fact, her injuries were fairly consistent with what you can do to yourself stumbling around in the dark with a fifth of vodka in your belly.
On the stand, of course, Ana Hernandez remembered nothing. She recanted her story of being beaten up by Jose Carrasco — which is not uncommon in domestic abuse cases.
Geddes: “The People call Ana Hernandez.”
Prosecutor Geddes had asked the jurors to watch closely as Ana Hernandez testified and to assess her demeanor for themselves, to judge whether she was recanting in what he called “a classic case of domestic abuse.” The prosecutor was suggesting, it seemed clear, that on sober reflection on having done something unconscionable while drunk out of your mind had caused an edit of Ana’s memory. But Ana was not articulate enough to recall what had happened, if she could recall it or desired to recall her end of the evening. (It takes years of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to get to the reparations part of the 12-Step process, where you can finally come out and say what an ass you’ve been.) Anna just kept repeating, “I don’t recall.” And, “I can’t remember.”
Then again, it was also very likely that she was so drunk she annoyed Carrasco to the point he struck her. (He’d been drinking too.) She seemed to have been pretty exasperating, and Jose Carrasco was no paragon of patience, by all indications. So he may well have hit her and kicked her out rather than take care of her; and that, to my mind, was his obligation to her, no matter how drunk she was.
The victim came in looking like she might die of embarrassment. In a faint, peeping voice with her eyes downcast, her head hung and her face averted, she answered every question with, “I don’t recall,” or “I can’t remember.” So Geddes took up the transcript from the interview with Deputy Denton at the hospital and read from it, to refresh Ana’s memory.
Geddes: “Didn’t you tell Deputy Denton that when you got in the taxi you took off your boots then when you leaned forward to ask Jose where your shoes were, he backhanded you in the face?”
Hernandez: “I don’t recall.”
Geddes: “Didn’t you say, ‘All I was asking was asking was where’s my shoes, and he started punching me in the face’?”
Hernandez: “I don’t recall.”
Geddes: “Didn’t you say, ‘That was uncalled for when all I was doing was asking very politely, and why are you all mad just ’cause I asked for my shoes’?”
Hernandez: “I don’t recall.”
Geddes: “Didn’t you tell Deputy Denton that when you got home and were only asking for taxi fare to go to your sister’s house you accidentally knocked over his bong and broke it, and that he then dragged you outside by the hair, threw you down the ramp, kicked you in the face and stomped on your head’?”
For breaking a bong? Lots of excess can be laid at the feet of the stoners, but this one seems a bit much.
Hernandez: “I don’t recall.”
Geddes: “Didn’t you tell the deputy that said you would leave but needed to use the bathroom and when you were in there he came in and struck you with an uppercut that chipped your teeth?”
Deputy Denton saw no signs of chipped teeth, nor yet any other injury to her mouth or jaw.
Hernandez: “I can’t remember.”
Geddes: “And that when you were trying to call for a ride and he threw your cell phone down and broke it? Twice?”
Ouch! That’s really laying it on — broke it twice!
Hernandez: “I can’t remember.”
Geddes: “Didn’t you tell the deputy he did all this because you merely asked for money for a taxi?”
Hernandez: “I don’t recall.”
Heidi Larson of the Office of the Public Defender tried to refresh Ana’s memory: “Isn’t it true that you didn’t go to the bar in a taxi, at all, did you Ana?”
Hernandez: “I don’t recall.”
Larson: “And isn’t it true that you went in a friend’s car and you took the bottle of vodka with you?”
Hernandez: “I don’t recall.”
Larson: “Do you recall trying to hit Jose and his friend with the vodka bottle for commenting on another woman at the bar?”
Hernandez: “I don’t recall.”
Larson; “Do you recall throwing the bottle and breaking it in the parking lot at the Perkins Street bar?”
Hernandez: “I can’t remember.”
Larson: “Do you remember falling down when you tried to hop over a fence?”
Hernandez: “I don’t recall.”
Larson: “You told the deputy that all you wanted was money for a taxi, and you asked for it very politely, but if you look at this photograph, here, isn’t that $21 and change, next to your cell phone at the hospital?”
Hernandez: “I don’t recall.”
Larson: “Jose’s father actually gave you money for a taxi, didn’t he?”
Hernandez: “I don’t recall.”
Larsen: “How did you get to the hospital at around 6:00 am the next morning?”
Hernandez: “I don’t recall.”
The People called Deputy Christian “CJ” Denton. Deputy Denton confirmed that Ana told him the story about how she’d been beaten by Jose Carrasco, and admitted that he waited for over an hour to speak with her, because she’d been given morphine by the doctor and was sleeping when he arrived at the emergency room. So, from closing time at the bar, 2:00 am until after 7:00 am at the hospital, Ana had come down considerably from the vodka OD, but as any one with any experience with booze — and the jurors must have had some experience to judge by their verdicts — she was still in a state of vindictive jealousy from the comments made at the bar by Jose and his friend, so she piled it on in the physical abuse department, and Deputy Denton related it all just the way it was told to him.
Then came the part where the jury gets to listen to the recorded interview with Ana in her hospital bed. From the outset it was obvious that she was in a cloud of alcoholic and narcotic stupor, delivering a slurred, garish nightmare of a narrative. Three times prosecutor Geddes stopped the recording on DVD, noting the disapproval on the faces of the jurors, saying it wasn’t a true and accurate version of the recording, and finally he put it on an old boom-box type CD player, which was no better. The evidence, to put it mildly, was weak. And yet someone, higher up the chain of command, no doubt, had insisted on going for the maximum possible penalty — assault with great bodily injury.
The doctor at the emergency room was called and he said that yes, Ana’s eye was swollen from a pink-eye infection, but the swelling was more than that. So she had either been hit or fallen on her face. Nothing conclusive there. The leaves and debris in her hair could have resulted from falling over fences or being thrown down. Nothing conclusive there, either. Same for the bump on the head and scratches on her leg.
Across the hall another jury trial ended much the same way — the jury found the defendant not guilty of the main charge, a dope DUI, and only guilty of the lesser charge, possession.
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