Anand Jon's Defense Rests
Well, no one at Google got arrested Tuesday -- although 1,500 folks at Yahoo were laid off. Judge David Wesley was ready to issue an arrest warrant for Google’s custodian of records, since the search-engine giant hadn’t responded to defense requests to cough up email records related to Amanda C, who alleges that fashion designer Anand Jon sexually assaulted her. During the Tuesday lunch recess, however, Google did fax over the records and so the warrant was quashed – and with it, much of the closing drama of the defense’s case, which rested this morning. It ended without Jon’s lawyers recalling, as promised, Amanda C to the witness stand, as well as summoning an ex-roommate who was to testify about Amanda’s alleged attempts to organize former Jon associates into a kind of class-action rape prosecution against the 34-year-old runway maven.
Tuesday, however, provided one last bizarre diversion. This came in the form of a deeply upset woman whom the defense had called to testify that she’d heard alleged rape victim Britny O admit, before last year’s grand jury began hearing evidence, that Britny “had to get her story straight” before testifying against Jon.
Alicia Haman, 27, and Britny lived up the Central Coast and had toiled together for years in the purgatory known as Radio Shack. Haman, her former boss, claimed to be great friends with Britny, although this didn’t prevent Haman from describing her younger friend as “a habitual liar [who] will lie about anything.”
These words were music to the ears of Jon’s defense attorneys, for they could potentially pull the rug out from under the prim, good-girl persona Britny had projected during her own testimony. That music, however, soon turned to a discordant racket during prosecutor Frances Young’s cross-examination. Young’s questions suggested the D.A.’s office had information that Haman was a drug user and suffered from a bipolar disorder. Haman denied Young’s implications, but immediately became defensive and combative.
“If you want to bring up the scar on my face, by all means,” Haman repeatedly told Young, apparently referring to a spousal-abuse incident that Young never mentioned.
“For you to bring that up is disgraceful,” Haman would continue. “And you know what? You don’t laugh about it!”
For about 40 minutes Haman confused Judge Wesley’s courtroom for Judge Judy’s, while Jon’s attorneys sat in ashen silence, occasionally giving each other you-thinkin’-what-I’m-thinkin’? glances.
“I’m big-fat pregnant and tired,” Haman told Young toward the end of her testimony and when the prosecutor was finished Judge Wesley asked Tony Brooklier if he wished to ask any redirect questions of his client.
“No thanks!” Brooklier wisely answered.
Jurors will hear closing arguments beginning next Wednesday and should get the case by Halloween.
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