With the weight of evidence against his client building steadily over the last month, defense attorney Glenn Brown had a daunting task ahead of him today as he offered his closing argument in the double-murder trial of Jason Anthony Warren.

As it turned out, his defense was noteworthy as much for what wasn’t argued as what was. While Brown attempted to poke holes in individual elements of the prosecution’s case, he offered only the vaguest hints of an alternative narrative.

Prosecutor Paul Sequeira spent Wednesday afternoon telling a dramatic tale about how Warren lay in wait before torturing and killing Hoopa woman Dorothy Ulrich with a samurai sword early on Sept. 27, 2012, and then fled in a stolen car toward Eureka, eventually deliberately using the car to plow through three runners on Myrtle Ave., from behind, killing HSU lecturer Suzanne Seemann and seriously injuring Terri Vroman Little and Jessica Hunt.

Before Brown got a chance to dispute that narrative, Sequeira was allowed to finish his opening remarks, which had been cut short the day before. He took aim at the defense’s case, particularly the expert witness Brown had called to reconstruct the collision on Myrtle Ave. That witness, a former California Highway Patrolman named Steven Walker, had described the section of Myrtle Ave. approaching the accident scene as having a “remarkable” curve that might have caused a driver to accidentally drift off course. 

Sequeira mocked that interpretation with an allegory involving Abraham Lincoln. During a debate, Sequeira said, the 16th president once asked, “How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg?” The answer, the prosecutor said, is four. “Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.”

Sequeira was confident that the People had proven their case beyond a reasonable doubt. “We’ve proven when, we’ve proven where; we’ve proven how, and most importantly we’ve proven who” is responsible for the murders, he said. Jason Warren.

Next it was Brown’s turn, and as Warren sat quietly at the table behind him, Brown began much as Sequeira had yesterday, by thanking the jurors for their service and expressing sympathy for the victims, their family and friends. That said, he continued, “You promised to deal with your sympathy … and maintain objectivity. That’s all I’m asking.”

He called it “a tragic case in every sense you can think of,” though he asked the jury to think about it in terms of two unrelated tragedies, and to consider the areas he’d pointed out as worthy of reasonable doubt.

Here are some of the places where Brown argued that doubt is warranted, along with his reasoning:

  • Yes, Warren had been seen on security footage at Ulrich’s property for the 18 hours leading up to her murder, but there were some blind spots in the four-camera system. Someone could conceivably have approached the trailer in the dark, unseen.
  • True, law enforcement found no windows open when they inspected the trailer after the murder, but it had been really hot the day before. So it would be “reasonable to infer that windows were open” at some point before the murder.
  • The security cameras showed a dog barking and captured some outdoor sounds between 3:43 a.m. and 4:03 a.m. Sure, the police officer who inspected the recordings dismissed it as normal sounds and dog behavior in a rural place like Hoopa, but the dog stood erect and there were distinct sounds at 4:02.
  • Granted, Ulrich’s blood was found on Warren’s shoes, tank top, thermal shirt, shoes and shorts, but the blood at the murder scene was described as spatter, whereas the blood found on Warren was more like stains or spots, which could have come from simply touching objects at the scene. It’s clear Warren was there at or immediately after Ulrich was killed, Brown allowed, but “the absence of spatter raises doubt” about whether he was the attacker.
  • There was a spot of apparent blood on Warren’s shorts that didn’t test positive for Ulrich or Warren. Whose was it?
  • Ulrich was bludgeoned and stabbed to death, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she was tortured, at least not according to the legal definition of torture. Her attacker may have simply been trying to kill her. “It’s pretty clear this is not a case where torture was present,” Brown said.
  • Warren clearly knew there was a surveillance system on the property, since he helped fix one of the cameras while he was there. “Wouldn’t you think that if he were to leave with with weapons he would grab” the video evidence? Brown asked.
  • Yes, a person identified by law enforcement as Warren could be seen leaving Ulrich’s trailer after her murder and heading toward a Kia Spectra, which soon drove away. But you can’t tell for sure whether Warren actually drove the car. Maybe someone else got into the car, and Warren was just a passenger.
  • Yes, windshield glass was found all over Warren’s clothing, but again, maybe he was in the passenger seat.
  • Even if the jury concludes that Warren was driving, they must answer the question of what caused the collision, and since the front driver’s side tire was low it’s possible that the car simply drifted to the left. Or he might have lost control of the car after coming over a crest in the road. He’d been up all night and might simply be a “crumby driver.”

Sequeira was given a chance to offer one last counter-argument, and he dove right in.

“Who killed Dorothy Ulrich?” he asked the jury. “Who drove the Kia?” The defense would have you believe it was some “mystery dude,” he said. But “what about what Dorothy Ulrich told you?” The security system captured audio of Ulrich screaming amidst the blows of her attacker, uttering the words, “Stop, Jason, stop,” Sequeira reminded them.

And we know who was driving the Kia, Sequeira said, because Ulrich’s blood was found on Warren’s shoe and on the driver’s side floor mat — and here he took out those two pieces of physical evidence and smacked them down on the lectern.

Sequeira also argued that Warren passed the three northbound runners on Myrtle from the opposite direction, and then turned around with the explicit purpose of running them down from behind. “For whatever reason, and I don’t know why … in that murderous rampage state of mind, he turned around — that’s the only reasonable interpretation of the evidence — and aimed that two-ton weapon at Suzanne Seemann, Terri Vroman Little and Jessica Hunt, and he ran them down,” Sequeira said. “That is what makes sense when you hear the evidence in this case.”

Sequeira recalled the 2001 crimes that Warren, who was 16 at the time, pleaded guilty to — attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon for stabbing a cab driver, stealing the car and later deliberately veering toward a cyclist in Arcata. That, like the current case, was a continuous course of conduct, and the jury should look at each instance as a whole.

Sequeira concluded by saying Brown is a fine lawyer, but he can’t change the facts. Warren, he said, has now had his day in court, his good lawyer and a conscientious judge. “And now it’s time to hold him accountable for his actions. Justice for Dorothy Ulrich, Suzanne Seemann, Terri Vroman Little and Jessica Hunt is now in your hands.”

The jury left the courtroom to deliberate at about 10:45 a.m. 

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