Tiandre Howard Kidd faces the charges of burglary with the intent to sexually assault, as well as elder abuse, for his alleged crimes on a 100-year-old San Francisco woman. The trial opened Monday with his public defender, Sujung Kim, arguing that Mr. Kidd mistakenly entered the woman’s apartment last December 31 thinking he was going to his uncle’s.
Mr. Kidd, she argued suffers from schizophrenia and thus had no intention of sexually assaulting the woman. He mistakenly believed in his psychotic stage that she had been coming on to him and wanted to have sex with him
However, it was the testimony of the diminutive 100-year-old victim that stole the show. Taking the stand with a Toisanese interpreter, the victim at first seemed overwhelmed by the stage. After several failures to get her sworn in to testify, Judge Conroy cleared the jury, questioned and instructed the witness and eventually brought them back.
She explained through her interpreter that she had no schooling and thus did not speak English or even Chinese. She was at her home, a small apartment in northeastern San Francisco off Broadway, when she heard a knock at her door.
She testified that she figured someone who would knock could not be a bad person.
Mr. Kidd then entered the apartment and went into the bathroom and washed his hands.
Animated now, the witness is speaking Toisanese a million miles per hour, the judge tells her to please wait for the questions – a request that she frequently disregarded in her determination to 
tell her story. Repeatedly.
She described as Mr. Kidd lay down on her bed, feet on the ground, he pulled down his pants and, as she described, “put his hand on the thing he pees from.”
She described him as erect.
She testified that she tried to grab onto his hand to get him out. She described that he pulled down her pants – pants and underwear at the same time. And pushed “the thing towards her.”
She said that she screamed, “Are (you) crazy?” as he tried to push the thing toward her.
She said she grabbed onto him and “wouldn’t let him put it where I pee.” She said, “I held it very tight.”
She described screaming very loud and eventually her screams frightened him off and he left. She felt frightened and dizzy, and afterwards she called her son.
Under cross-examination, she acknowledged that other than pulling down her pants, he did not touch her nor did he at any point say anything to her.
Officer Jasmine Barranti responded to a call from the complex and noted that it was a secure building requiring a key card in order to gain entry. She testified from the video that the suspect jumped a balcony in order to gain entrance, entered the woman’s apartment where he was inside and out of view from the video for approximately four minutes before he reappeared and exited.
Sujung Kim, his public defender, put on strong defense as Mr. Kidd sat with his back turned to the jury, facing the wall on the other side of the room. She argued that Mr. Kidd did not go there to rape or sexually assault anyone. Instead, he came to the building to see his uncle who lived in the unit next to the victim.
His uncle had lived there for over a decade and Mr. Kidd would frequently show up, unannounced.
She argued that the defendant believed that the victim was attempting to seduce him, to get him to have sex with him.
She argued that this misconception was due to his mental illness and at no time did he believe or intend to sexually assault or rape the woman.
She noted that the surveillance video shows him walking toward the elevator, tearing paper off the walls and placing them in strange places as well as talking to himself.
She argued that a psychiatric expert will testify that Mr. Kidd suffers from an impaired mental state – schizophrenia which impairs his reasoning, judgment and planning.
She said that the psychiatrist will testify that it has significantly affected the way he perceives things, and his behavior inside the victim’s apartment. It led him to believe that she wanted to have sex with him.
He had no intent to sexually assault the woman, she argued.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
