GUILTY DC - Savvas Savopoulos, family & Veralicia Figueroa murdered; Daron Wint Arrested #23

[OTPTarheel2018]

CLOSING ARGUMENTS IN THE #MANSIONMURDERS TRIAL: The Defense:

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The defense continued to press its claim that Daron Wint was tricked by his brothers Steffon & Darrell, and had nothing to do with the murders.

Judith Pipe told the jury:

“When Daron Wint took the stand he was calm and respectful. He answered all questions with a yes or no ma'am. You saw true emotions from him but not from his brothers. He is not the monster who did this and that is a reason to doubt".

Here are my colleague Paul Wagner’s notes on Judith Pipe’s closing arguments:

This was not done by one person—it’s not possible. Daron Wint was not coordinating with anyone and there are reasons to doubt.

Steffon and Darrell are the ones who did it. Just look at the calls made between the two on the 12th. Back and forth the calls went. These two men are coordinating. The calls go on and on until they stop ‪at 6:04‬ on the morning of the 13th.

The abductions took place much earlier than ‪3:15‬ as the government wants you to believe.

Steffon and Darrell were talking on the 14th for 8 minutes—around the time the Porsche was torched. What were they talking about??? The phone calls line up. ‪On May 15th at 6:41 PM‬ Steffon and Darrell are on the phone for 45 minutes. What are they talking about? There were two more calls from Darrell to Steffon just before the van was set on fire.

The Government got their theory wrong.

How about the pickup being seen where the van was set on fire. Steffon drives a white pickup but cannot tell you what if anything is written on the sides. .

The hair in the bedding. It is 2 centimeters long—it’s curled up. It’s a tiny hair. Daron has long hair—he has dreds—it is not Daron’s it belongs to Steffon!!

Steffon sat in that witness stand and told you lies. He lied when he told you he didn’t know that Daron had a blue mini van. Everyone knew he had the van.

It is a reason to doubt.

He lied to you about what happened in the apartment with Daron and his sister. He lied to you because he wanted “to dirty him up”.

The man in the video running from the Porsche fire was not Daron. It was Steffon running in the direction of his apartment.

How about Darrell? He has all of the money and that is why Daron was not involved.

Use your common sense—if someone has all of the money they are the ones who pulled off the crime. He had the money for the lawyer—he had the money to give to the girls to buy the money orders. He had all the money in the truck when they got pulled over.

The people who did this knew what they were doing. When Darrell was running around with al the money he didn’t have his phone with him.

Think about the work records on the 21st. They were filled out by the foreman and were false. Darrell did not work from 7 to 4. He told you that.

And look at Steffon’s records. The government did not put a supervisor on the stand to explain his records. He uses a general code on those two days so that he could be at any job site and still be working under the rules. He can be anywhere.

His work records do not tell you where he was on the 13th and 14th..

When Darrell goes in to see Laura Bach on the 25th he cannot remember where he was on the 13th and 14th. And that’s because he was at the house on Woodland drive..

He testified that he knew Dominos delivery number by heart. So why didn’t he tell them that he ordered a pizza ‪around noon on the 14th‬!! Would they find out that it was Garnett who signed the receipt?. He didn’t tell the government about it because he wasn’t the man who ordered the pizza. The only single outgoing call on the 14th from Darrell’s phone is to the pizza place. The rest are calls coming in. The text messages? You will never see them because the govt didn’t do an extraction on his phone.

The first call to Steffon on the 14th is ‪at 5:43 PM‬—a few minutes after the Porsche is set on fire.

Darrel lied about being at Unity trash all week long. No one sees him at Unity on the 13th.

As for Ikea Williams .. Look to the govt for reasons you did not hear from her. What would she say about the day Darrell came up to see the video? (Ikea is the girlfriend of Anthony Anderson- who testified Darrell was with him on 5/13, the day he uploaded his music video)

Brandon Cooper said Darrell had several numbers. Garnett lied to the govt about renting the hotel room until he got immunity.. Darrell had lots of phones. He was a drug dealer. He told you he had a burner phone..

There is so much that Daron said to you that makes sense. The evidence backs it up.

Darrell was driving the Porsche. The witness said the driver was in a black tee shirt. Daron was in a white tee.

Why did Savas phone ping off tower in Dupont because Darrell was driving up Mass ave after picking up Daron.

Thank, @TFNYBRKS !

I can’t believe they didn’t get DarrW Goo’s text records...
and IKEA—-?

Wow.

JMO

 

[TFNYBRKS]

Pipe also sought to raise questions about some of the DNA evidence linking Wint to the crime scene, saying the dozens of firefighters and law enforcement personnel responding to the burning mansion had likely contaminated evidence. In addition to DNA on the crust of a pizza that had been delivered to the Savopoulos home during the time the victims were held captive, forensics experts testified Wint's DNA was also found on the handle of a knife found propping open a window in the basement.

“The problem with the scene being contaminated is that people's DNA gets on items that they never touched,” Pipe said.

In fact, DNA from three different investigators wound up on items from the house.
Emily Head, a forensic biologist the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, revealed in her testimony during the trial that two bathroom towels she was swabbing for evidence tested positive for her DNA — the result she said of her lab coat brushing against the towel.

“There was more DNA from Emily Head on that towel than from Daron Wint on that knife,” Pipe said.

The defense attorney also noted that the knife was not collected into evidence until nearly a week after the killings — after Wint was identified as a suspect in the killings based on the pizza-crust DNA — and was transferred to the Department of Forensic Science central evidence unit the same day police took clothing and personal items from Wint's father's house.

“Did Daron Wint's property brush up ever so slightly against the knife like Emily Head's sleeve?” Pipe asked the jury.

DC mansion killings: Daron Wint on trial

 

[tmar]

Thanks again @patriciah for giving us your front row account. Let's hope that jurors understand the jury instructions that DW is guilty even if they believe he didn't act alone. MOO

I hope by Wednesday morning, the Jury has their result.
Fast, similar to the Moorer Case today.
MOO.

 

[SeesSeas]

Melanie Alnwick FOX 5 DC
Melanie Alnwick FOX 5 DC
7 hrs ·
You could forgive jurors in the #MansionMurders trial if they were left feeling a little mentally whiplashed after the final closing arguments today.

Public defender Judith Pipe continued her pointed argument against the government’s evidence, using loaded words and phrases like “sinister” and “they are lying to you.”

Take, for example, witness Margaret Pressler. Margaret testified that she saw Amy Savopolous - nicely dressed in a light colored skirt, light blouse and dark sweater - walking a few blocks away near the Oyster School at 3:25pm on May 13. This is critical to the government’s timeline theory: that Amy was out of the house on a Starbucks run - and 10 year old Philip was home alone with Vera Figueroa when Daron Wint broke in. We know now that Amy was killed wearing the same outfit - white ankle length pants and a blue top with a white lace placket down the center - that she was wearing in security camera footage that morning. She and Philip had gone to the dermatologist.

Judith Pipe told the jury that Amy, Philip and Vera were likely taken hostage much earlier in the day, and that prosecutors knowingly put on a witness to mislead the jury because it fit their timeline. “It wasn’t one man. It wasn’t Amy Savopolous that Margaret Pressler saw, and Daron Wint didn’t do it!”, Pipe asserted.

Assistant US Attorney Laura Bach fired back on rebuttal - that it doesn’t matter if Margaret Pressler didn’t correctly remember what Amy was wearing, because Margaret knew her, and was positive it was Amy. She also said that if the defense wants to place the time of the kidnapping at 11:30am - it works to the government’s favor. “If it’s 11:30am, it’s absolutely not Darrell Wint, because he’s in Gaithersburg!”

Pipe also took issue with the parking lot video outside the La Fontaine Bleue in Hyattsville that the government showed to the jury. 2 angles were time stamped around 5pm - and showed no blue minivan. In fact, the parking lot was completely empty. Daron Wint testified he was spotted pacing in that parking lot at 5pm because he was looking for the keys to the van he had towed there. Pipe showed the jury another security camera - which showed a full lot (also time stamped around 5pm), and she’d circled what looked like a minivan on grainy video. “Why didn’t the government show you Camera 1? If that makes you pause and hesitate - and it should - then you must find Daron Wint not guilty.”

Bach countered that there is no way to tell if that is Wint’s blue minivan - and asked the jury if it’s reasonable to think a tow truck would be able to neatly place the minivan in between two parked cars. She also noted that the location of the van in the video - is not the same place in the parking lot Daron Wint circled with a pen when she asked him to show where the van was.

Pipe also went after the DNA evidence, claiming the crime scene at 3201 Woodland Drive was “so contaminated by May 15 that it doesn’t mean a thing.” She alleged that Darrell Wint was the one who burned evidence on the evening of May 14 (in between trips to Walmart) because he stopped for a small amount of gas at a Shell station at 12:42 am on 5/15.

One angle of defense that seemed to incense prosecutors … was a failure to investigate. Pipe told jurors that the government dropped the ball because investigators did not extract any data from the cell phones of Steffon Wint or Darrell Wint. The defense continues to claim the two younger brothers are responsible. “The lack of evidence makes you pause,” she said. Jordan Wallace came back up again too. Pipe alleged that if Wallace’s phone had data extracted from it, then jurors would know if he had contacts with any of the Wint brothers. She also questioned why prosecutors didn’t prove that Darrell Wint picked his kid up from school, that he didn’t smell like smoke or burn bloody clothes, or have video of Steffon Wint’s job sites to prove Steffon was actually working like his time sheets say he was.

The defense said Daron Wint acted like an innocent man when he returned from NY to DC - and wanted to get a lawyer before he went to police. Pipe told the jury “as long as each one of you has one - one single reason to doubt, you must find Daron Wint not guilty”. Finally, she gave them an ominous warning: “You get the final word. Once the verdicts are done, there is no taking that back… your verdict will be final”

“Nonsense” - said Laura Bach, telling the jury they need to read the instructions on reasonable doubt. “They are trying to distract you from the evidence.” Bach said that “there is not a single reason to doubt the government’s evidence” and “it is not reasonable doubt if there are questions you can’t answer.”

Bach recounted the DNA results pinning Daron Wint to the crime scene - evidence that he hasn’t tried to refute until now. As for the unintentional transfer of some of the forensic and crime scene examiners’ DNA on 5 items, Bach reminded the jury: “DNA doesn’t float, it doesn’t mysteriously land”, and that those investigators were in extremely close proximity to the items in question.

She also brought up that Daron Wint is the only one (out of the people the defense has pointed the finger at) who had any connection to the Savopolouos family. “We’re supposed to believe that Steffon Wint and Darrell Wint picked them at random?! Daron Wint worked for Savvas! The man who fired him then wouldn’t give him a job when he called back twice!”

As for the minivan, “we do not know why the van was parked at 2400 Pennsylvania Avenue. There is no evidence Steffon Wint or Darrell Wint were there.” Bach noted that Daron Wint had the van’s keys, and Duglas Ventura (the tow truck driver) said Daron gave him directions to the van.

“We’re not misleading you. We want you to check us, check what we’re saying”

Bach told the jury that investigators did check into Darrell Wint’s activities on the days of the murders. “We asked. We investigated. We corroborated.” Bach then called out Daron Wint’s testimony on the stand as a complete fabrication, using evidence he’d been privy to for 3 years and had a constitutional right to see. “But he has no constitutional right to falsely implicate innocent people”. Bach followed it up with quite a challenge: “Anyone on the jury who thinks what that man said is true - go ahead and acquit him.”

Echoing Judith Pipe’s words, Bach summed up with this: “The defense told you your decision is final. You know what’s final? What he did to that family and Vera Figueroa is final, and it is time to hold him accountable for that.”

The jury dismissed for lunch. They have 44 pages of jury instructions to go through - then volumes and volumes of testimony and evidence.

They will deliberate from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm each day. Fox 5 DC

 

[oceanblueeyes]

I am stunned by what prosecutor stated -
And about Daron Wint’s testimony:
“Anyone on the jury who thinks what that man said is true, go ahead & acquit him.”

I don't think a prosecutor should ever say the words "go ahead & acquit him", even if it's sarcastic, or using Reverse Psychology, or whatever it is.
It's unprofessional conduct, and is disrespectful of the jurors.
JMO

Melanie Alnwick on Twitter
Melanie Alnwick‏Verified account @fox5melanie
Prosecutor in #MansionMurders trial: “it is not reasonable doubt if there are questions you can’t answer.” And about Daron Wint’s testimony: “Anyone on the jury who thinks what that man said is true, go ahead & acquit him.” @fox5dc
9:29 AM - 23 Oct 2018

I have seen other prosecutors basically say the very same thing.

And it does hit home for the jurors imo. I dont believe any of them will believe 'that man' either.

The same man who wants them all to believe he was totally innocent and only ate pizza in the dead family's home at the very time they were all being tortured and murdered. I believe the jury felt highly insulted by his poor pitiful me...ridiculous testimony.

I dont think it was said scacastically. The prosecutor meant exactly what they said.

It certainly isn't unethical or misconduct to do so either. It is a great strategy used by a lot of prosecutors.

His testimony was ridiculous and the DA thinks the jury is going to agree. I do too.

It shows the DA is confident in their case and all of the evidence and over 70 witnesses who have shown Wint is nothing but a bald face liar who has the most vested interest to lie above all others.

I am happy DW decided to testify. It was a gift to the state. When defendants testify it makes the appeals almost diminish once they are convicted.

Jmo

 

[ilovewings]

For those of you who have followed this case much closer than I have, do you believe Daron Wint is guilty and do you think the jury will see it that way? did the defense make a good case? thanks for your input

 

[Harmony 2]

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VERDICT WATCH - DC - Savvas Savopoulos, family & Veralicia Figueroa murdered; Daron Wint Arrested #24

 

[Inthedetails]

I have seen other prosecutors basically say the very same thing.

And it does hit home for the jurors imo. I dont believe any of them will believe 'that man' either.

The same man who wants them all to believe he was totally innocent and only ate pizza in the dead family's home at the very time they were all being tortured and murdered. I believe the jury felt highly insulted by his poor pitiful me...ridiculous testimony.

I dont think it was said scacastically. The prosecutor meant exactly what they said.

It certainly isn't unethical or misconduct to do so either. It is a great strategy used by a lot of prosecutors.

His testimony was ridiculous and the DA thinks the jury is going to agree. I do too.

It shows the DA is confident in their case and all of the evidence and over 70 witnesses who have shown Wint is nothing but a bald face liar who has the most vested interest to lie above all others.

I am happy DW decided to testify. It was a gift to the state. When defendants testify it makes the appeals almost diminish once they are convicted.

Jmo

I hear ya, but from my previous life in marketing, you never put an idea in someone's head that you don't want to be there. You don't suggest acquittal when you're going for a guilty verdict. Too risky for my tastes.

I do hope the jury sees through everything and finds DW guilty. I think they will, but part of me is nervous.

jmo