“Her words, not my words,” Hebert said, and then he repeated them: “All hell broke loose.”
Janet said they cruised by Sarah’s house to see if Rachel was there before being instructed to go to Javier Laboy’s. Jilica didn’t mention that part.
Hebert asked the jury to look at the logic of the thinking that was going on in that van. If Sarah was truly in fear of Rachel, because of threats made on voice mails months before, if she really feared that Rachel might murder her, why did she get in the car and pass her own home, and “hunt her down”?
Hebert’s voice grew louder. He karate chopped the air with his left hand. The answer was in Jilica’s next statement. She was pretty sure something bad was going to happen. Sarah wanted to fight.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, they … came … to … her. You have to look at this situation. How charged it was, how fluid it was,” Hebert said.
At the defense table, Rachel dabbed at her right eye with the balled-up tissue she’d been clenching in her fist.
“It was bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam,” Hebert said, slapping the top of his lectern. “And it was electric, and it was festering, and it was exploding.”
Jilica had testified that there was “no stopping” Sarah. The minivan was no longer headed to McDonald’s. Getting out was not an option. With Sarah behind the wheel, they raced to get there. Sarah knew where Rachel was.
Hebert summed up: “Sarah was going to get Rachel. Sarah was going there, going there to beat her down … and Janet had her back.” Jilica knew Sarah was in a rage. Janet was mad also. Those few seconds, as they headed for Javier’s—it was one charged car ride. Jilica described the driving. When the minivan stopped in front of Javier’s house, it wasn’t a normal stop.
It was dark. Sarah came around the corner hard, slammed on the brakes to keep from hitting Rachel and her car. Hebert had the jury look a second time at the two crime scene photos, one taken with a flash, the other without. The dark picture was the more accurate rendering. In the direction Rachel Wade was standing, the only light was behind her.
“That light casts a lot of light on this end of the car. The area where the light doesn’t shine is very dark.”
Jilica didn’t see who threw the first blow or how many blows were thrown. Did the jury recall Jilica’s 911 call?
“‘I don’t know how she was stabbed,’” the defense attorney quoted. “‘I … don’t … know … how … she … was … stabbed.’”
Jilica was completely unhelpful when it came to determining if Rachel had acted in self-defense. She simply didn’t know. But there was an interesting twist in Jilica’s testimony: She said she was on the side of the van with Janet and was holding Janet back. All of the other eyewitnesses—Dustin, Janet, Javier—agreed that didn’t happen. If the jury looked at the eyewitness testimony side by side, the only thing that matched up perfectly was when they knew Sarah was hurt, and that had been when Jilica screamed.
Hebert moved on to the next prosecution witness, Janet Camacho. As was true of Joshua, Janet was very vague when asked if Joshua and Sarah were dating. Janet said her children were home. Josh said they were drinking vodka and smoking marijuana, and the children weren’t home.
“If you believe Janet,” Hebert said. “She left her kids with Joshua, I suppose, while she and the rest of them went to McDonald’s.” Janet knew about the drama, the triangle. Janet admitted that she hadn’t been around much when Rachel was with Joshua. She wasn’t a big Rachel fan. The jury had heard about the animosity, the threats by Janet, Rachel’s fear of Janet.
Janet’s mind wasn’t on Rachel that night, not at first.
“Janet was with a boy named Jeremy,” Hebert said. “She didn’t know his last name, and she didn’t have his cell phone number. And she said, ‘I wasn’t smoking pot.’”
Nobody was smoking pot; nobody was drinking; there was no party—although Joshua said they burned copious amounts of weed. Janet also told a part of the story that no one else remembered, even though they were there. She said Rachel parked at the end of the street. Jeremy flashed his lights. Rachel flashed back. Janet walked that car down; but before she got to it, Rachel left.
“None of those statements are corroborated,” Hebert said. They were not consistent with the other evidence; and for Janet, they were “self-serving.” Another inconsistency: Janet didn’t know anything about Ashley showing up at the house to deliver the cell phones. Only Ashley remembered that part.
Hebert asked the jury to look at the sequence of events regarding the alleged “Mexican boyfriend” phone call—a call Hebert believed never occurred. Janet said it took place before they ever found Ashley—not consistent with any of the other testimony.
She said that once Sarah got the phone call they put it on the speakerphone. And despite that—even if you believed that happened—they still went looking for Rachel. Janet remembered Sarah being on the phone saying, “Where you at? Where you at?” Bottom line: Sarah was looking for Rachel.
“Nobody called the police. Nobody went home. Janet had Sarah’s back,” Hebert said.
Jilica acknowledged that Sarah was angry, in a rage. The car drove up fast. It stopped four or five feet from Rachel’s car. And what did Janet have to say about the prosecution’s burden to prove that Rachel Wade did not act in self-defense?
Just like Jilica before her: nothing. Janet said she saw the knife, but she did not see the tussle. She didn’t know who threw the first punch. She didn’t know who grabbed whose hair. Her view was obstructed. She fought Rachel before she knew Sarah was hurt.
Value to the prosecution: zero.
Jurors were again asked to look at it from Rachel’s POV. Three girls flew out of a car; one girl engaged her. In a continuous event, a second girl engaged her. Jilica did not hold Janet back.
Janet offered a couple of “really poignant quotes” near the end of her testimony. “If I’m there, Rachel’s not going to fight,” she said. Janet said Rachel “didn’t want to deal with me.”
Next topic: Dustin Grimes.
Dustin said Rachel was crying and a little angry. She was looking for a diversion, an escape from the street trouble she was in. He said Ashley’s car flew by and almost ran Rachel over. Admittedly, Dustin’s timeline was a little inconsistent. He said that it was minutes between the time Ashley drove by and when the van pulled up. Dustin heard Rachel say she was going to kill Sarah, but he didn’t take it seriously. He thought she was talking smack.
Dustin was able to contextualize Rachel’s words. They were consistent with the way teenaged girls talked. Dustin testified that Rachel had the knife for protection, and that all three of the girls flew out of the van at the same time. This was not a one-on-one fight. It was three on one. Sarah moved first and moved fast. Sarah had Rachel by the hair and he saw three punches.
Hebert wondered how much time it took for a person under attack to determine whether or not they needed to defend themselves.
“I submit to you that you take the knife out of that situation and those three girls beat the crap out of my client,” Hebert said. “They brought the fight to her.”
Dustin said that when he looked up, he didn’t know that Sarah was stabbed. The fight was continuous—there was no pause between Rachel and Sarah’s fight, and the fight between Janet and Rachel.
“That’s it,” Hebert said, palms upward. “Those are the three witnesses that the state is relying on to convict my client of second-degree murder.” It was the state’s burden of proof, after all. Had the jury heard any evidence that Rachel Wade had not acted in self-defense? Jilica didn’t even know Sarah was stabbed. Dustin said that Sarah was the aggressor—and that’s the government’s case.
The eyewitness the state didn’t call, of course, was Javier Laboy. Javier’s testimony was even less helpful when it came to proving murder. As Dustin had, Javier said Sarah came after Rachel. Rachel stood her ground and defended herself. Rachel had a right to be there. She wasn’t trespassing. She had an abs
olute right to be there.
“They brought the fight to her,” Hebert said, and he moved on to the testimony from law enforcement that the jury had heard.
Officer Benjamin Simpkins “didn’t offer much.” He testified regarding Jilica’s initial statement, the one in which she said nothing about the “Mexican boyfriend” phone call. Back then, Jilica said she saw a text message from Rachel.
Sergeant Tina Trehy testified as to Rachel’s demeanor. She said Rachel was calm. Hebert had asked, “Calm as, say, in shock?” Trehy said yes.
Rachel didn’t know Sarah was dead, Hebert pointed out. She was in shock, stoic.
“You can draw any conclusions you want when an eighteen-year-old is in this type of situation, how they should react,” Hebert said.
After Trehy, the state put lead investigator Michael Lynch on the stand. He offered the state’s key pieces of evidence—in their mind, anyway—the audiotapes. The prosecution could not hammer those voice mails into the jurors’ heads repeatedly enough. But, Hebert suggested, jurors were going to have to make a “judgment call” when it came to those recordings. There was such a long period of time between those recordings and the incident in the street. There was no connection at all between the two.
“Do you think that, for one second, that when Rachel Wade was talking big, talking smack, that she thought she was going to have to come to court one day and say, ‘I didn’t mean to murder her’?”
Rachel had remained relatively composed until this point in Hebert’s closing. Her face crumbled and the tears flowed freely.
Sometimes Hebert referred to the prosecution as “the government,” realizing that this term made Wesley Dicus and Lisset Hanewicz seem less trustworthy.
The government’s last witness was the medical examiner. Hebert knew how tough that had been on the jury—the details, the photos. The government wanted the jury to feel emotional, all the better to distract them from the physical evidence.
“Try not to be drawn in by the prosecutor’s passionate plea for this awful, awful event,” he said.
Hebert summarized the defense case. What was interesting about Javier Laboy’s testimony was that the state did not ask him very many questions about the event. They just wanted to hammer him: about marrying Rachel Wade, about dating and having a relationship with Rachel Wade while she’d been locked up, and corresponding and calling, talking about running away together, and what they were going to name their kids.
And that was all irrelevant. All of that happened after Javier made his first statement; all of that happened after Javier called 911. Javier said he didn’t see the knife. Dustin Grimes told him Rachel had the knife as Javier spoke to the operator. The prosecution had tried to make a major issue of it, but the jury heard Javier. He’d explained that beautifully. That 911 call was important, but for a different reason. He told the operator that Rachel had “gotten jumped” and that she was “defending herself.” That was a quote!
“That’s the best evidence we have here in this case,” Hebert said. The state’s attempt to impeach Javier backfired badly for them on that issue. “Well, you get to use your judgment as to whether or not Javier was being truthful.”
Javier said the minivan was like a “street racer” when it pulled up; Sarah was the aggressor, and they met between cars. “Javier said that Sarah struck first,” Hebert said, “that Sarah struck three, four blows to the head, that Sarah grabbed her by the hair. She charged Rachel.”
Yet, the state’s cross-examination focused on things that happened six months later. Hebert shrugged.
The “Javier loves Rachel” angle was overblown. Rachel and Javier might have thought they were in a relationship months after the incident; but if the jury used their common sense, they’d realize it was ridiculous. They were just being silly kids.
“It’s kind of hard to be in a relationship when someone is locked up,” Hebert said.
The next witness, Hebert said with distaste, was Joshua Camacho. He wasn’t on the stand for long, but his testimony was important. Joshua played a “pivotal role” in the case. The state hadn’t wanted to call him. Hebert didn’t know why. It had been up to the defense to get Joshua’s testimony to the jury.
Hebert had little tolerance for Joshua: “I’m not sure what he really had to say. I’m not sure what he really had to offer.”
There was a new expression on Rachel Wade’s face, maybe anger.
“Joshua had a small harem of friends with benefits. He was a playa. He lied. He lied about the gun. He lied about Rachel knowing about the gun. He lied about pointing a gun at Rachel’s head. Joshua Camacho had washed his hands and feet of all of these girls,” Hebert said.
For a blink or two, Rachel looked about to call out in protest; then she returned to her default countenance of groggy resignation.
“You got a flavor of what Joshua Camacho is all about,” Hebert said, as if there were a bad taste in his mouth. “I don’t think I have to tell you any more about him.”
Hebert gestured toward his client with an open palm, as if he were introducing her to the jury for the first time. The last witness the defense called was Rachel. “Members of the jury, it is your job to evaluate the testimony of all of the witnesses. I would submit to you that Rachel Wade testified truthfully.”
She had testified like a twenty-year-old girl—he didn’t say “woman”—who was going through the most horrific experience imaginable.
“Look into her eyes,” he suggested. Rachel had never meant for any of this to happen. She had described the night’s events. She was at her house, heard Sarah pull up in the van, wanted to get out of there, and grabbed a kitchen knife from her drawer and put it in her purse.
The defendant again dabbed tears with her crumpled tissue. A box of facial tissues sat on the defense table in front of her, but she didn’t get a new one. She was content with worrying the one she had.
Hebert told the jury how Rachel made one phone call at that point, but it wasn’t to anyone pertinent to the trouble she was in. It was to someone she hadn’t had contact with in months.
She didn’t tell anybody where she was. She was crying and upset. And she was tired of the drama, too. The fight hadn’t occurred at McDonald’s or Subway or Taco Bell or Sarah’s house or Janet’s house.
“The fight was brought to her.”
The state, in its closing argument, asserted that the jury shouldn’t believe Rachel because she lied about her relationship with Javier. Hebert suggested that they give that nonsense the weight it was worth, which was not much, and focus on the relevant.
The state was reaching for straws. “Let’s keep our eye on the ball,” Hebert urged. The first car swerved, almost hitting her. The van pulled up. Three girls piled out. Sarah, bigger, heavier, came at her, the aggressor. She threw the first punch, and grabbed Rachel’s hair.
At what point did a citizen have to figure out what is in the mind of an assailant? When? They didn’t know what those three girls were capable of.
Jilica said she was just along for the ride that night. Maybe so, but did Rachel know that? Did Rachel know Jilica wasn’t part of the posse? Absolutely not!
If Rachel didn’t have that knife, the posse would’ve beaten the crap out of her, beaten her down. Would they have killed her? They could all speculate. Would they have seriously injured her? More speculation.
Hebert held up a forefinger. “It only takes one blow. How many times have we heard about cases where a person gets knocked down to the ground, where a purse snatcher knocks an older person to the ground, she hits her head on the curb and she dies? How many times have we heard of one-punch fights where someone gets hit in the wrong place and they die? Or they have serious bodily injury. Or they have brain injury. Rachel doesn’t have to figure out what. She only has to figure out if she has the right to defend herself.”
Hebert introduced a “sensitive subject” to the jury: the juvenile mind. What was it like to be a teenager? Everyone went through it. Some lessons w
ere learned the hard way, and with experience came wisdom. But teenagers universally lacked wisdom. They operated on emotions. They said and did things without thinking. The jury could sit there and say, “Oh God, if only Sarah had gone home.” What were those girls thinking? Simple. They weren’t thinking.
Another difficulty in understanding the kids’ actions was generational. Young people today lived in a world of satellite technology and instant feedback. When they texted each other, they wanted an immediate response. Cross that immediacy with the emotion of the teenaged mind, you get “dangerous impulsiveness.”
Rachel had reason to believe she was in danger of death or great bodily harm; therefore she had a right to arm and defend herself. She was not guilty.
At that moment, an alarm went off in the courthouse.
“Is that the fire alarm, Your Honor?” Hebert asked.
“No, that happens every Friday at noon,” Judge Bulone replied.
Many spectators laughed. Rachel Wade’s face remained frozen.
Hebert continued. He told the jury about reasonable doubt. There was no precise definition. He couldn’t explain what it was. You had to feel it.
“I would challenge the state to point out how they disproved our self-defense case. Their eyewitnesses did not address this issue,” Hebert said.
He couldn’t tell the jury what reasonable doubt was, but he could certainly tell them what it wasn’t. Suddenly speaking in a rapid-fire cadence, Hebert said that reasonable doubt was not a speculative doubt. It wasn’t imaginary or forced. If they felt such a doubt, they “must find the defendant not guilty.”
Contrary to the defense attorney playbook, Hebert sometimes referred to Rachel as “the defendant” or “my client.” A lot of defenders only refer to their clients by their first name, to maximize perception of their humanity.
Hebert stopped his oration for a moment and went into action. He placed three white cardboard cutouts about four or five feet in front of the jury box. The cutouts were life-sized, measured to precisely represent the three girls who confronted Rachel. The perfectly round heads were without features, maximizing the dehumanization of the victim and prosecution witnesses.
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