CBC Blog
Nov 21 2017 10:42 AM
After almost an hour of legal discussions, Justice Michael Code calls for the jury.
Marlena Meneses is in the witness box.
Dellen Millard stands at a tall wooden podium for cross-examination. He uses a laptop.
"Hi Marlena," he begins.
"By mid summer 2012, you started to spending time at my house," Millard states.
She agrees.
Millard, "You kind of liked me at first. Then you didn't like me. I used to tease you. I asked you trivia questions. You didn't know the answers. It made you feel dumb."
Meneses agreed.
Millard said he laughed at her.
"We smoked a lot of weed together?" Millard asks.
"Yes," she says.
Millard, "I smacked your butt once?"
Meneses, "More than once."
Millard doesn't remember it happening on multiple occasions, he just remembers the one time. He says it was at the hangar.
"You gave me a dirty looking, so I knew you didn't like it. It was unwanted contact... Sorry Marlena."
She maintains eye contact, "thank you."
Millard brings up a text message Meneses sent him, asking where Smich was one night. He'd gone out to spray graffiti.
Millard asks why she reached out to him.
"I thought he may be with you," she explains.
Millard, "If Mark were in trouble, I was someone you could call?"
Meneses, "He was your best friend."
Millard, "Another word to describe it, was brothers... If he was in trouble, he'd call me. Not police."
Meneses, "Depends how bad it was."
Millard asks Meneses if she pays her rent, buys her own food and cigarettes. "I'm sorry I'm having a hard time to find if this is relevant," she says.
Millard responds and says that's up to the Crown to decide.
Justice Michael Code interjects, and agrees with the witness.
Millard continues, "Back then, you didn't have a job."
She says at first, she didn't. But then she got one at Metro.
Millard asks who bought the marijuana she smoked.
"I worked for the weed. That was my payment," she responds.
Millard points out he bought the fast food.
Millard is now going through a list of all the things he bought: gas, snacks at the gas station, shopping trips to Costco to get food for BBQs, booze from the LCBO.
"I paid for everything," he sums up.
Meneses raises her voice. "At the same time, we did work for you. You felt obligated to, because of the work Mark and I did for you."
Millard points out she cleaned washrooms at the hangar, and washed cars.
Meneses said she liked to help out.
Millard points out Smich and Meneses stayed at an apartment he owned, they didn't pay rent. The deal was they would paint another unit he was renovating.
"I never told you the walls had to be scrubbed because they smelled like smoke?" He says he had to pay for a professional clean job. She wasn't aware.
He changes topics, and brings up a time she helped him with a job he couldn't figure out. A small engine repair, she'd taken some courses.
Millard, "Felt good to do something I couldn't?"
Meneses smiles widely, "It felt amazing."
This gets a big laugh from the courtroom.
Millard pulls up a photo of an iPhone in a pink case. He gave her a phone.
"Do you know how much a 4S was worth when it was new?"
"About $1,000" she answers.
Millard, "How do you spell the word hangar?"
Crown Jill Cameron interjects - asking how this is relevant.
Millard says he was teasing the witness.
Justice Code tells him that's not the purpose of cross-examination.
Millard tries again, "Despite the teasing, you learned a lot from me?"
Meneses answers, "Oh I learned a lot from all of this."
Millard, "I functioned as Mark's shield, didn't I?
Meneses, "I guess. If that's what you want to call it?"
Millard, "I mean, if Mark did anything you didn't like, it was my fault."
Millard talks about Meneses relationship with Smich, calling it unhealthy.
"It was a controlling, abusive relationship... He didn't like to call you his girlfriend. He called you *****, or 'the *****."
Millard says he didn't stop Smich. Meneses agrees.
Millard brings up an iPad - one that Mark got in the summer of 2012.
Meneses said Friday Mark got the iPad after she saw the incinerator in use. Millard questions her on the date, asking if she's certain, because there are selfies of her from before that date (court has heard evidence the incinerator was used July 23, 2012 -- the night the Crown alleges Babcock's body was burned). He says the selfies are from July 6, 7, 8 of 2012.
"My recollection could be wrong."
About the iPad, court has heard it was Babcock's iPad, given to her by her former boyfriend Shawn Lerner. It was re-named Mark's iPad after Babcock's alleged murder, which the Crown contends happened July 3, or July 4, 2012.
Millard brings up Meneses' police statement about the incinerator. In it, she told officers "I saw it once."
She tells Millard she later clarified with police that she'd seen it more than once.
In June 2013, Meneses told police she'd never seen the incinerator in use.
Millard, "But before the weekend, you told us you saw it being used."
Meneses raises her voice, "Also in my statement I told police about it being used."
She gave multiple statements to police. Millard focuses on the one from June 2013.
Millard now asks Meneses about the testimony she gave Friday about when she saw the co-accused "test" the incinerator.
She recalled the summer night at Millard's farm, when Millard and Smich told her to stay in the car, listen to music and leave them alone.
Millard says she used the word "they" -- who said which part, he asks?
Meneses, "I don't remember who said what, just that you both said 'stay in the car, don't look back, keep your headphones in.'"
Millard keeps talking to Meneses about her police statement - again, she gave several statements. In one of them, she describes getting out of the car at the farm.
Millard asks, which one is it? Did she stay in the car with her headphones on or get out?
Meneses answers, "everything I said to the Crown on Friday is all in my statement."
Millard shows two photos to Meneses - a pair of her pink and black gloves found by police at his farm.
Now we see what Millard calls "an old school gun."
She saw it at his house, sitting on his bed, she says. She wanted to go to a shooting range.
Millard, "I'm going to suggest you're wrong about that. Agree or disagree?"
Meneses, "Disagree, strongly."
Millard, "I'm going to suggest you fired that gun."
Meneses, "No." Then she changes her mind, when Millard says they went to his farm and she fired it.
"Yes," she responds.
Millard, "So you were lying a second ago?"
Meneses, "Yes, I'm sorry."
Millard asks Meneses about a "tricky scale."
Justice Michael Code asks for a definition.
Meneses explains it's a scale that doesn't weigh accurate. She said it was Mark's scale. And she added to it when selling marijuana to friends.
Millard returns to Meneses police statements, when officers asked her about the incinerator - did she know about it?
In one statement, she answered "No."
Crown Jill Cameron interjects, "I have an issue with this."
Millard says, "The witness has admitted to giving false and inaccurate information."
Justice Michael Code allows Millard to continue.
Millard, "You have lied to police in the past. Been dishonest with police in the past. And you've lied under oath?"
Meneses, "Yes but I've corrected myself after."
Millard, "Marlena, you've told a lot of lies under oath, haven't you?"
Meneses responds, "yes."
That concludes his cross-examination.
Justice Michael Code calls for morning recess. We're back in about 15.
ETA - don't think this was posted and some extra/different info than the tweets....sorry to bombard all at once!
I tried. Mine looks like code not the tweet. As you've seen. Sorry!
