’S COA APPEAL,
SOME LINKS RELATING TO ONE OF THEIR MOST LIKELY ARGUMENTS: THAT EXCESSIVE PUBLICITY LED TO INTIMIDATION OF MITIGATION WITNESSES, THUS DENYING THE HER CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO “FULL MITIGATION”
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1. Sealed Evidentiary hearing, October 6, 2014.
Start at 38:00. Prosecutor is intimating prospective mitigation witnesses (denying full mitigation); discussion is about Dr. Geffner and Liar McGee.
Start around 45:00. Wilmott: McGee (and his family) have been threatened and he feels too intimidated to appear in court; doesn’t have screenshots of any of those alleged threats (made on Justice4Travis site) with her but will submit them to JSS later for filing.
Start around 51:00.
Nurmi explicitly links JSS rulings on PR to excessive publicity to witnesses being harassed and intimidated to denial of ’s right to full mitigation in DP case.
Start around 53:00. JM says he believes Nurmi’s argument that witnesses, including Marc McGee, are too scared to testify (part of another motion to dismiss) is “made for appeals purposes.”
He mentions “tweets” between MDLR and Michael Kieffer and says that MDLR told Kieffer that the DT’s motions relating to threats to witnesses were being filed for strategic purposes (to ensure the issue of witness intimidation could be raised during appeals). (JM attached those “tweets” to a motion he filed, so they are included in the trial record.
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Also during this hearing: Nurmi requests and JSS grants a sealed hearing to take place to hear/rule on Nurmi’s arguments why can’t receive a full mitigation because of witness intimidation.
Included in that Motion are the names of witnesses Nurmi claims felt too intimidated to testify, and what their testimony “would have been.” Marc McGee was on that list, and Nurmi lays out what Marc McGee’s testimony “would have been”: that Travis was sexually abused as a child; that he stored child *advertiser censored* on the Bishop’s computer.
Note: we already know about these and other incredibly vile lies by told by Marc McGee, because those lies--and others by other anonymous witnesses afraid of being destroyed on the stand by JM--came in during PP2 via “expert” testimony.
Whatever Nurmi argued in the sealed hearing JSS granted on this date (10/6/2014), it is likely he used as predicate JSS’s (sealed) ruling on November 14, 2013. That ruling sealed the electronic record for the duration of PP2, a ruling made because JSS apparently accepted Nurmi’s argument that public access to ANY pretrial proceedings and motions would prejudice the ’s rights.
Nurmi referred to JSS’s 11/14/2013 ruling while arguing in front of the COA about the sealing of court, and again, after the COA ordered JSS to reopen court, when he complained, bitterly, to JSS that she seemed to be backtracking on her rulings of that date.
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2. COA hearing on the sealing of court for ’s testimony
Begin around 9:45. Nurmi argues why the Court should be sealed: he explicitly blames excessive publicity on JSS not ruling in his favor at the beginning of trial, then links that publicity to threats and thwarted mitigation.
Highlight: Judge Howe telling Nurmi to put on his big boy spidies about those alleged “threats” being made against him.
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3. COA written ruling ordering JSS to open the courtroom for ’s testimony
http://cdn-static.wildabouttrial.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/CourtOfAppeals.pdf
(Clues about how the COA might respond --again-to attorneys' arguments about publicity and intimidation and the like).
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4. Judge Stephens' denial of the DT's request to dismiss DP (issued on January 14, 2015)
Lists many (perhaps most) of the issues Nurmi wanted to preserve for appeal.
JSS's full ruling:
http://media2.abc15.com/html/pdf/AriasJan14motion.pdf
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