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| | Closing Arguments By The Prosecution Brilliant, Not Credible By The Defense In The Kelly Soo Park Trial For The Murder Of Juliana Redding. The Jury Now Deliberates
By Lonce LaMon - May 23, 2013
The closing arguments took place yesterday, May 22nd, with the prosecutor, Stacey Okun-Wiese speaking first, defense attorney George Buehler, speaking second, and Stacey giving her final rebuttal and response to Buehler’s closing arguments last.
Stacey was confident, spoke fluidly and smoothly as she always does, and carried on for about an hour before the jury as she presented her case.
She spelled it out. Juliana Redding had a relationship with Munir Uwaydah and she broke it off after her father told her Uwaydah was married. She had told Uwaydah her father was a pharmacist. That prompted meetings with Uwaydah and her father, as Uwaydah was looking for a pharmacist. But Greg Redding got suspicious when he read on the Internet that Uwaydah was married, had children, and was older than what he had represented to Juliana. That issue caused a break for both Juliana and her father in relating to Uwaydah, however after Uwaydah gave assurances and convinced Redding that all the information on the Internet was phony, Greg Redding began negotiations with Uwaydah again.
But after several more weeks, Greg Redding got uncomfortable with what was obviously to him a big manufacturing operation. The manufacturing of compound pain creams. He saw tens of thousands of these little containers, and saw this operation was way more than the company was prepared to do legitimately. He withdrew himself as a candidate for the position of pharmacist with Golden State Pharmaceuticals in Camarillo, California. Five days later, Greg Redding’s daughter was found murdered.
The prosecutor emphasized the hard-core direct evidence. There was Kelly Soo Park’s fingerprint which was found on an orange plate in the sink of Juliana Redding’s apartment. There was Kelly Soo Park’s DNA on the door handle of the back door, on Juliana’s tank top, her neck, her cell phone, and on the knob of the stove. There was also Kelly Soo Park’s DNA found in a spot of blood that was enmeshed in the fingerprint found on the orange plate. That spot of blood was found by a criminalist who examined the latent print card months later.
With so many of the DNA samples that could not eliminate Kelly Soo Park as a contributor, the criminalist, Annette McCall, who testified, stated there was a one in a trillion chance that some other contributor would have the same profile and not be able to be eliminated on more than half of them. That, the prosecutor insisted to the jury, would take 143 times the present population of the planet Earth to find another contributor of DNA that could “not be eliminated as a contributor”, as the buzz phrase was perpetually expressed by Annette McCall.
Then there was the circumstantial evidence. For one, Kelly Soo Park and Juliana Redding did not know each other. They had never meet. Kelly Soo Park would have no reason to be in Juliana Redding’s apartment. How did the DNA get there? In no other way than that Kelly Soo Park entered the apartment and killed Juliana. It got there directly.
But the defense, represented in closing arguments by George Buehler, argued that the DNA was transferred to Juliana’s apartment. They got an Interior Decorator to testify yesterday morning, before closing arguments, that she had seen both Juliana and Kelly Soo Park in a Beverly Grove house of Uwaydah’s during the time she was doing her work on the interior there.
She was not an impressive witness and her memory presented itself as very sketchy. She also seemed annoyed by some of the questions. She was not clear with her answers, and she tried to express that she may have seen Juliana and Kelly Soo Park together on one occasion in the kitchen of that house, but when grilled by Buehler as to whether she definitely saw the two women together in the same room, she could not say she was definitely sure.
It was clear that the defense was trying to make their case that the two women did, indeed, know each other. Buehler went on to insist with conviction in his voice and with well-crafted rhetoric, that the DNA could well have been transferred to the crime scene. After all, Juliana had been doing some spring cleaning the day of the night of her murder, and she was moving things around. She was moving furniture and taking out dishes—some dishes she was going to give to a neighbor—and these dishes could have very possibly come from Uwaydah’s Beverly Grove house.
Juliana had only moved out of Uwaydah’s Beverly Grove house five months prior, and since she and Kelly Soo Park had both been in that house, Kelly Soo Park could have touched the dishes back in Beverly Grove, according to Buehler’s defense theory. Kelly Soo could have touched a towel, and that towel could have been rubbed on the tank top and the phone and the stove knob. And Juliana could have used the towel to dry her neck. The DNA could have been transferred. What Buehler repeated, both in his opening argument and again in this closing argument, was that the DNA was there, “but we don’t know how it got there.”
This possibility presented by Buehler of the DNA being transferred sounded way too far-fetched and didn’t—even with his excellent skills of rhetoric—pass the sniff test, according to the common sense of this writer. He came up with every far-out possibility. He even said to the jury, “you may think this sounds far-fetched, even fanciful…” and indeed it did. During jury instructions, the judge more than once instructed the jury, “Use your common sense.” And common sense wouldn’t believe that Interior Decorator who acted like she had a mild case of amnesia, plus the idea of so much DNA being transferred to the crime scene. It just doesn’t pass the sniff test.
Closing arguments ended by around 3:30 pm. Then, more jury instructions were read. The jury began to deliberate in the jury room in the back of Department 109 just before 4:00 pm. But, by 4:15 pm, the jury was excused.
Now, the front and third rows of the court room are empty, and it’s Thursday morning, May 23rd. The prosecutor, Stacey Okun-Wiese, is talking to the bailiff at the clerk’s desk.
Patricia Redding is wearing a beige suit with a colorful striped blouse. She has her hair up and back in her usual and attractive personal style of the French twist. The Redding family is seated in the second row. A pretty young blonde woman is with them. She looks like a 26 year old; that’s the age Juliana Redding would be if she were alive today. She was most likely one of Juliana’s friends.
I sit down in the third row, all by myself.
Tom Chronister is here wearing a grey flecked sport coat, black pants, and a blue and white striped shirt. He is sitting by the woman I think is his mother. The Kelly Soo Park family is in row four. Right behind me. There’s Tom down towards the end, his mother, Kelly Soo’s Aunt Valle, Kelly Soo’s uncle.
Kelly Soo is directly behind me seated next to her mother. She looks beautiful, as always, in spite of her red eyes, swollen bags underneath, and the obvious strain on her spirit. She’s wearing a light weight, light pink sweater, a white shirt, and her usual and customary black pants. Tom is also seated with his mother. So, Tom and Kelly Soo are this time not together but with their mothers.
It’s so quiet in here. The bailiff demanded a few times that all cell phones be turned off and all bells and whistles on all devices be turned off.
Natasha, the young woman who cried so sweetly and sincerely on the stand, is here with the Reddings.
We are all waiting…
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