By Hannah Grayson
On Friday morning in Department 21, presided by Judge Gerardo Sandoval, the defendant took to the stand. The defense, Deputy Public Defender Will Helvestine asked questions to prove that the defendant did not have the intent to steal when entering the house—an essential element of the crime the prosecution needs to prove.
With the help of a Spanish interpreter, the defendant laid out the night of the crime and his situation at the time. He revealed that he had been convicted of a misdemeanor earlier this year in which he pled guilty and did not have a trial. He had also been homeless and using crystal meth daily for about six months at the time of the incident.
To prove the difficulty of finding a place to sleep, the defendant was asked about homeless shelters. He then told the jury of how homeless shelters quickly run out of beds and that one has to wait in line for hours to get one. He also revealed that once inside the homeless shelter, they are not allowed to leave until morning.
This difficult situation led the defendant to use crystal meth. He was afraid to sleep outside as he had been robbed before in that situation. The meth, he said, kept him awake so that no one could steal from him. It also kept him warm in the cold.
On the night of June 30th and into the early morning of July 1st of this year, the time of the incident, the defendant had been in line to get a bed at the homeless shelter. The effects of the meth he had taken earlier that day was beginning to wear off, making him feel bad, so he headed off to the Civic Center with the hopes of buying more.
Once there, a man offered him drugs and to take him to his house to sleep and take a shower. The defendant then followed the man to apparently look for the man’s father, who they never found. They 
then went to 7/11 in which the defendant bought breakfast for the two of them with the remaining money he had.
They then get to the house which the defendant has been led to believe belongs to the man. The man knocked on the front door and no one answered, leading him to go in through an open window. The defendant then followed him inside.
Once inside, they ate breakfast and used the drugs that the man had. The defendant then explained that once high, the man began to act very differently. He did not let him shower as promised. The man also began rummaging through boxes all over the house and taking things out, including jewelry.
The defendant said he then left the house the same way he came in because he began to be scared and suspicious of the man. Before leaving though, the defendant took some of the jewelry that the man had taken out of boxes.
The defendant intended on giving the jewelry to a woman, but lost the bracelet afterwards when sleeping in a friend’s car.
In the cross examination by Assistant District Attorney Clark, he focused on the receipts from 7/11 and insinuated that the defendant traded sex for drugs or money. He focused on one of the two receipts that showed a purchase of cigarettes paid for with a debit card. The defendant did not recall any of this due to the drugs.
Mr. Clark then focused on whether or not the defendant had thought anyone lived in the house he broke into with the man. When outside of the house, the defendant had thought the house was abandoned by the looks of it and thought that it did not belong to anyone. Once inside, he saw all the boxes and began to believe that it was a house that someone was moving out of. This is when the defendant first became suspicious.
The defendant is asked multiple times by both attorneys why he took the jewelry from the home. He consistently told them that he did not know why he did it. He had consumed a lot of meth by the time he did it. He later told the jury that he often does not remember what happened when he has taken meth.
After the defendant’s testimony was over, the trial was over for the day. This trial is actually ahead of schedule due to Mr. Helvestine’s argument that admits that the defendant did steal the jewelry, making it so witnesses proving this are no longer necessary. The trial will continue on Monday at 9 a.m. in the same department.
