By Nigel Parry
The U.S. Courthouse at 700 Grant Street in Pittsburgh. (Photo: Nigel Parry)
DAY 5, VIDEO UPDATE, 9:15AM
Even less spectators in the gallery. At no point today were there more than 23 people watching the proceedings.
Testifying today…
Police chief Nathan Harper will finish his testimony first thing when court starts at 9:30am. Also scheduled to testify today, Monica Wooding, the neighbor who the three police claimed reported Jordan for prowling. Wooding already denied that, and said she and her son knew Jordan very well, back in the original case against Jordan Miles, in which the cops falsely accused him of assault. Also to testify RaShell Brackney, a police commander who has worked with the three cops and has testified that they are untruthful.
Due to the time it took to get through the other witnesses, Brackney was pushed until—we are guessing—tomorrow.
1:30pm update. Best line in court, to date, happened when the judge rephrased a line of questioning by Jordan’s lawyer about why Jordan would reach for what the cops claimed they thought was a gun and then later claimed was a Mountain Dew bottle.
Judge Gary Lancaster asked Chief Nate Harper:
In your 35 years of service have you ever seen someone who was being assaulted who thought, ‘I sure could use a cold drink right now’?
The court dissolved in laughter.
KDKA (CBS Pittburgh) picked up the quote:
Possibly the best line in court ever.
Jim Wymard threw a fit during his cross-examination of Chief Harper when Miles lawyers Lewis and O’Brien were quietly talking. Defendant Richard Ewing looked bored, tired, and like he had better places to be during Harper’s testimony.
Jordan Miles claims he was hit in the head with a “very hard” object during his altercation with police. A fact that was not public before is that David Sisak lost his flashlight during the night in question. It was never recovered. Quel coincidence! Presumably, it’s now DNA-free at the bottom of a river somewhere.
[more court notes will be added]
Monica Wooding testimony
As Monica Wooding was sworn in, Ewing lawyer Robert Leight looks at the three officers and says “We have this…”. Ewing nods in approval.
Unfortunately for the officers’ lawyers, they did not have anything. Monica Wooding is a neighbor of Jordan Miles outside whose house the incident happened. She didn’t see any of the incident, just the cops milling in the aftermath after Jordan was in the police van.
This is a highly problematic testimony for the police because they had constructed a whole narrative, enshrined in official police reports, that claims Monica Wooding was outside while they shone a flashlight in Jordan’s face and asked her if she knew him.
The cops’ official report claims Monica looked and said that she did not know him. In what Miles lawyer J. Kerrington Lewis calls the police’s “fairy tale”, the three cops wrote it up to say that Monica had complained about Jordan ‘prowling’.
The problems start when you know the following facts about Monica Wooding’s involvement.
1. Monica and her son have known Jordan Miles for years. Both her son and Jordan used to play with other neighborhood kids in a neighbor’s yard together. Monica is a close friend of Jordan’s cousin, and knows all of the family well.
2. Monica never came outside. So she certainly wasn’t part of any flashlight identification of Jordan. That’s pretty much the whole Monica Wooding story. She didn’t even know it was Jordan who was arrested in her yard until a few days later, when Jordan’s cousin rang and told her.
3. Monica has told the same, simple story since the beginning.
[more court notes will be added]
R. Paul McCauley, expert witness in police proceedure
[more court notes will be added]
