Former officer’s trial nears end
Prosecutor: Phoenix police altered crime scene in murder case
A former Phoenix police officer’s murder trial has been cast as a case that pits one officer’s word against that of another.
But Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Juan Martinez threw a curveball at jurors during his closing arguments on Monday when he proposed that a handful of Phoenix officers conspired with Richard Chrisman to alter the crime scene and destroy evidence outside a south Phoenix trailer in October 2010.
None of the other officers standing outside the trailer that night was ever accused of, or investigated on suspicion of, destroying or failing to preserve evidence, but Martinez raised the prospect as a way to explain how some evidence might not have been collected outside Danny Frank Rodriguez’s trailer.
Superior Court Judge Warren Granville read guidelines to jurors earlier in the day, including an instruction that they should consider missing evidence in favor of Chrisman.
The notion that Chrisman could get credit for his fellow officers altering or destroying evidence gave Martinez the opening he needed to unveil his new theory.
“We don’t even have to explain the loss, destruction, failure to preserve because it was, if you will, his (Chrisman’s) friends,” Martinez said. “You have officers trying to change the (crime) scene for him.”
Chrisman was arrested on suspicion of murder and animal cruelty hours after he shot Rodriguez and Rodriguez’s dog in the trailer that Rodriguez shared with his mother.
Chrisman has maintained that the shooting was justified because he feared Rodriguez was going to hit him with a mountain bike and because his other efforts to subdue the domestic-violence suspect were unsuccessful.
But the idea that a prosecutor would raise the prospect of a conspiracy among Phoenix officers in closing arguments made Chrisman’s attorney, Craig Mehrens, incredulous.
After Martinez ended his three-hour closing arguments with a lengthy reference to Don Quixote (he compared Chrisman to the would-be knight), Mehrens drew from another piece of classical literature, quoting “Macbeth”: “a tale/ told by an idiot/ full of sound and fury/ signifying nothing.”
“That was quite a performance. What it lacked in substance it made up for in fire and brimstone,” Mehrens said before attacking the premise that Chrisman intended to attack Rodriguez and that his fellow officers covered it up.
Martinez offered little new information in his closing. The prosecutor instead focused on the facts he presented and drew the jury’s attention to Granville’s instructions and how the evidence may apply.
Martinez said Chrisman knew he could cause Rodriguez’s death when he fired his weapon twice into Rodriguez’s chest, and Chrisman knew he would cause Rodriguez some apprehension when the officer drew his weapon upon entering the trailer. The arguments explain Chrisman’s second-degree murder and aggravatedassault charges, Martinez said.
Chrisman testified that he drew his gun upon entering because he was afraid of Rodriguez’s dog and wanted to encourage the animal’s owner to get the dog under control.
But Martinez said Chrisman’s decision to draw his gun when he entered the trailer — before he engaged in a physical struggle with Rodriguez, shot him in the face with pepper spray and attempted to shock him with a Taser — also serves to undercut the officer’s self-defense claim.
“He went immediately to deadly force, but is it immediately necessary that he do that? No,” Martinez said.
Mehrens presented about 20 minutes of his closing arguments late Monday afternoon, debunking some of the theories Martinez had raised, and he again played for jurors the 911 call that Rodriguez’s mother made in which she accused her son of domestic violence on the afternoon he was killed.
“Put aside our rhetoric and think about the evidence,” Mehrens told the jurors. “See if what makes sense in your mind fits with the evidence and the photographs that came into evidence.”
Mehrens is expected to finish his arguments today, allowing the jury to begin deliberations.