This trial started November 24, 2003 and is ongoing.

February 04, 2004
by
Erin

I arrived in the courtroom at quarter-till-ten on February 4, completely unaware of the way a courtroom trial would go down. I meekly entered the room after removing my beanie at the request of a sign on the door addressed to observers. The first thing that occurred to me was that there were more jurors then any other people in the room. They’re all normal looking people, and just slightly bored-looking. Some had notepads, and some were just watching and listening. Most of them had their coats on because it was chilly in the courtroom.  

The lawyer who was talking (Roger Davidheiser) when I entered was talking about what sounds like pet hairs in the shower. I don’t know if it is my hearing adjusting, or his becoming aware that there are people paying attention in the pews that clears it up for me that he’s saying “head hairs” and not “pet hairs” or “bed hairs” were found in the shower. He keeps asking the witness about whether the hairs are similar or dissimilar, which over the course of the next 45 minutes or so I figure out that he is talking about whether or not the hairs were microscopically like the Rafay family’s hairs. He asks the same questions about 15 hairs (maybe more or less by one or two) and it gets pretty boring. Little evidence bags with the orange labels on them are handed to the witness and she nods at them.  I guess they are somehow redundant, and there are questions like “Is this a plastic shower drain cover?” that she kind of giggles at.

Judge Mertel is a little funny guy with a bow-tie and a borderline bowl cut. In front of him are a bailiff , a court clerk who switches pens a few times in a goofy way, and a court reporter. All four of them are facing me and all have varying levels of attentiveness on their faces. The judge is taking notes and nodding.

Roger Davidheiser is using a paper flip chart like something from high school math class to write his hair notes large for the jury. I personally would want something more high-tech and impressive than this equipment in a snazzy teen-Nietzsche murder mystery, but hey, I’m not in charge here.

After Davidheiser stops talking, it is decided that the morning recess should happen. Judge Mertel offers to buy the court clerk, Bob, some coffee.  Bob refuses and the judge says it might make Bob’s morning better. Bob gets kind of spanky at Davidheiser about something with the flipchart, which I find kind of satisfying. Bob and the judge also chat about note organizing, and Judge Mertel holds his notes up and they’re covered in post-it notes. His notepad kind of looks like an advent calendar. The judge is pretty into post-it notes, it sounds like.

The 3 police officers bring the boys back in and there is some tie and belt adjustment.  The pants on Sebastian are pretty dorkily high at the waist. The two of them are so very Canadian. They look quite polite. But you know, maybe not so polite if they did indeed smash people’s heads in with baseball bats. I actually somehow forgot to ask the gals in charge of Trial Diary how the murders were committed when I signed on to report on the trial, and eew. Aluminum bats. The witness, who seems to be the authority on quite a lot, is now talking about test hits she made on walls with bats to see if metal flaked off of them.    

Hat lady and I have been joined by several other observers at this point.  A dad and his two early-teen girls are watching the trial. They hang out for about 15 minutes. Another two dads bring in their kids in during the time I’m in here. Both of the other two are dads with their pre-teen boys. None stay for very long. No one seems to care about the sign requesting observers to stay in the room for an hour or more. Also, hat lady, as her name implies, is wearing a hat. Am I the only one who cares about the sign? Ok, anyway. Song Richardson has had the floor since recess ended. She is talking about “blood spatter events” which she has referred to in quotation (but not, thank God, in air-quotes).  She asks the witness about the blood found from the garage to the bedrooms and den and how they could have been deposited, like by boots vs. bags and stuff.

There is a mention of the Locard Principle, about “my hair getting on your coat which ends up on his couch,” or something, with trace evidence transfers. The point is slowly heading to the fact that out of  hundreds of hairs examined by this witness, only one does not belong to one of the Rafays’. There is one renegade pube on  Basma’s bed (oh crap, or was it the Dad’s bed?  Is it the same bed?), though apparently Caucasoid by microscopic examination, it’s not Sebastian’s by DNA testing. So the point is, whose is it?

Veronica Freitas is up now. She’s dragged out that damned paper flip chart again. There are apparently three racial types as far as microscopic hair evidence goes.  The hairs are all either Caucasoid or mongoloid. I’m guessing the third is probably “negroid” or something equally archaic sounding. There are Caucasoid hairs and mongoloid hairs in the house.  And then somehow this leads back to the rogue pube and a weird roundabout conversation between the judge and Freitas and the witness about evidence transfer and how a rogue pube gets into a bed.  Everyone giggles when the testimony dances around shorts without undies and doin’ it and whatnot. Then the witness can go. It sounds like she’s had to sit up there for a long time. The judge thanks her for her patience and cooperation.

It’s James Konat, I believe, who asks that if in the next 20 minutes he can bring a new witness up just for a couple of questions. The judge says ‘ok, but really, only like 20 minutes’. (That’s translated into “me” language: he doesn’t really talk like that).  So this neighbor lady of the Rafays’ is sworn in and asked some pretty boring questions about what she heard on the night of the murders. She heard and saw nothing. Some guy from the jury stands up after about 20 minutes and he and the judge have what looks like a pretty intense staring session, and the judge says “You have pushed the jury as far as they can go now and we need to break.” And we did, and I left.