Assault trial of Marcus and Markieff Morris set to begin Monday

[MattyIce]

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/20697840/jury-selection-concludes-morris-brothers-assault-trial

[Beat LA]

Sushi in a car?  Oh boy!

[Roy H.]

A 10 day trial? That's what you get with multi-millionaire defendants. Here in Maine, they'd try to squeeze this into a day, haha.

It's interesting that Arizona has eight person juries in felony cases. It makes it much easier to reach a guilty verdict.

[hodgy03038]

A 10 day trial? That's what you get with multi-millionaire defendants. Here in Maine, they'd try to squeeze this into a day, haha.

It's interesting that Arizona has eight person juries in felony cases. It makes it much easier to reach a guilty verdict.

I was a juror on a high profile murder case and it didn't take 10 days.

[tarheelsxxiii]

  I hope a Lifetime movie is made from this trial someday.

[Vermont Green]

So there were 5 total involved in the alleged assault, 2 pleaded guilty, 2 (the Morris's) are on trial, what about the 5th one?  Is it normal to have 2 on trial together like this?  Does anyone understand what their defense is going to be?

I am not condoning this sort of vigilante justice but this seems like a really dumb thing to be in criminal court.  You know all the guy Hood wants is some money.  Why isn't this a civil case?  Why would the DA bother with this case.  There have to be more meaningful cases they could be putting their resources towards.

[saltlover]

A 10 day trial? That's what you get with multi-millionaire defendants. Here in Maine, they'd try to squeeze this into a day, haha.

It's interesting that Arizona has eight person juries in felony cases. It makes it much easier to reach a guilty verdict.

I was a juror on a high profile murder case and it didn't take 10 days.

Everything about this timeline is absurd.  The alleged incident occurred in January 2005.  It took three months to get an indictment in April 2015.  And nearly two and a half years later it's finally heading to trial.  It's an assault case where the accuser knew his attackers and could produce an eye-witness.  I get there were potentially other witnesses they had to track down, but supposedly they did that in the three months between the incident and indictment.  I don't know what they've been doing the last 29 months, other than playing chicken with each other about going to trial.

[Tr1boy]

Worst case ....

Danny messed up this trade

[saltlover]

So there were 5 total involved in the alleged assault, 2 pleaded guilty, 2 (the Morris's) are on trial, what about the 5th one?  Is it normal to have 2 on trial together like this?  Does anyone understand what their defense is going to be?

I am not condoning this sort of vigilante justice but this seems like a really dumb thing to be in criminal court.  You know all the guy Hood wants is some money.  Why isn't this a civil case?  Why would the DA bother with this case.  There have to be more meaningful cases they could be putting their resources towards.

My gut says the defense will say this is about money.  I bet the Morrises hooked him up as part of their posse until they had a falling out, and I would be shocked if he didn't ask for money at some point in the last 2+ years to make this go away.  They will probably argue he initiated the fight that day as well.

We'll see beginning next week, I suppose.

[Roy H.]

So there were 5 total involved in the alleged assault, 2 pleaded guilty, 2 (the Morris's) are on trial, what about the 5th one?  Is it normal to have 2 on trial together like this?  Does anyone understand what their defense is going to be?

I am not condoning this sort of vigilante justice but this seems like a really dumb thing to be in criminal court.  You know all the guy Hood wants is some money.  Why isn't this a civil case?  Why would the DA bother with this case.  There have to be more meaningful cases they could be putting their resources towards.

The defense will probably be similar to what they raised in a prior motion:

"None of the allegations raised by the Defendants amount to clearly exculpatory evidence omitted by the prosecution's presentation to the grand jury," Sinclair wrote in her ruling. "The precise geographic location of part of the assault, what some witnesses saw while others did not, and differing versions of the assault from the victim and other witnesses, are not clearly exculpatory evidence that would affect the grand jury's probable cause determination. The grand jury was told that a number of witnesses observed little to nothing of any portion of the assault, as requested by the Defendants. The grand jury was told that the victim indicated that he could not say for sure if Markieff Morris was hitting or kicking him. The fact that specific photographs or line by line statements of each witness interview were not presented to the grand jury does not mean that the presentation itself was prejudicially misleading."

According to the Republic, the twins’ attorneys contend a witness told police he saw the Morris brothers in a parking lot “at least 100 yards away from the fracas,” and the testimony wasn’t shared with the grand jury. The motion also said prosecutors failed to mention Hood changed his version of the incident.

So, they'll try to create reasonable doubt based upon witnesses not agreeing on what happened, etc.

How they're going to bleed 70 - 80 hours of court time out of this, I have no idea.

[rollie mass]

Isn't it in best interest of defendants to stretch case and become model citizens and do charitable work,witnesses can become tainted as well as accuser-allows judge to be lenient .Defense lawyers make more money-

[Big333223]

A 10 day trial? That's what you get with multi-millionaire defendants. Here in Maine, they'd try to squeeze this into a day, haha.

It's interesting that Arizona has eight person juries in felony cases. It makes it much easier to reach a guilty verdict.

I was a juror on a high profile murder case and it didn't take 10 days.

I got called in for jury duty here in New York a couple years ago. After two weeks of jury selection, without finishing, the judge declared the jury pool had been tainted (I never got the reason why) and so everyone was dismissed so they could start over. 2 weeks with nothing to show for it.

During selection, we weren't told what the crime was, exactly, but it seemed like it was a group of guys stole a car and there was a gun involved. They told jurors that they would need to be able to plan to participate for about a month.

[Roy H.]

Isn't it in best interest of defendants to stretch case and become model citizens and do charitable work,witnesses can become tainted as well as accuser-allows judge to be lenient .Defense lawyers make more money-

In this case, perhaps.  An ideal outcome is a quick plea deal that allows a dismissal or filing at some point, but that wasn't going to happen here.

In a lot of cases, no, because you can't trust your client to stay out of trouble and abide by bail conditions.

[Vermont Green]

So there were 5 total involved in the alleged assault, 2 pleaded guilty, 2 (the Morris's) are on trial, what about the 5th one?  Is it normal to have 2 on trial together like this?  Does anyone understand what their defense is going to be?

I am not condoning this sort of vigilante justice but this seems like a really dumb thing to be in criminal court.  You know all the guy Hood wants is some money.  Why isn't this a civil case?  Why would the DA bother with this case.  There have to be more meaningful cases they could be putting their resources towards.

The defense will probably be similar to what they raised in a prior motion:

"None of the allegations raised by the Defendants amount to clearly exculpatory evidence omitted by the prosecution's presentation to the grand jury," Sinclair wrote in her ruling. "The precise geographic location of part of the assault, what some witnesses saw while others did not, and differing versions of the assault from the victim and other witnesses, are not clearly exculpatory evidence that would affect the grand jury's probable cause determination. The grand jury was told that a number of witnesses observed little to nothing of any portion of the assault, as requested by the Defendants. The grand jury was told that the victim indicated that he could not say for sure if Markieff Morris was hitting or kicking him. The fact that specific photographs or line by line statements of each witness interview were not presented to the grand jury does not mean that the presentation itself was prejudicially misleading."

According to the Republic, the twins’ attorneys contend a witness told police he saw the Morris brothers in a parking lot “at least 100 yards away from the fracas,” and the testimony wasn’t shared with the grand jury. The motion also said prosecutors failed to mention Hood changed his version of the incident.

So, they'll try to create reasonable doubt based upon witnesses not agreeing on what happened, etc.

How they're going to bleed 70 - 80 hours of court time out of this, I have no idea.

Yeah, it seems this is a very thin "he-said-she-said" case at best.  It also seems that the two guys who pleaded guilty already would be able to testify and since they have already been sentenced (I assume) their testimony would be pretty credible.  Still hard to believe a DA is pushing this case to trial.  Are they just afraid to drop the charges because the defendants are high profile?

[Evantime34]

So there were 5 total involved in the alleged assault, 2 pleaded guilty, 2 (the Morris's) are on trial, what about the 5th one?  Is it normal to have 2 on trial together like this?  Does anyone understand what their defense is going to be?

I am not condoning this sort of vigilante justice but this seems like a really dumb thing to be in criminal court.  You know all the guy Hood wants is some money.  Why isn't this a civil case?  Why would the DA bother with this case.  There have to be more meaningful cases they could be putting their resources towards.

The defense will probably be similar to what they raised in a prior motion:

"None of the allegations raised by the Defendants amount to clearly exculpatory evidence omitted by the prosecution's presentation to the grand jury," Sinclair wrote in her ruling. "The precise geographic location of part of the assault, what some witnesses saw while others did not, and differing versions of the assault from the victim and other witnesses, are not clearly exculpatory evidence that would affect the grand jury's probable cause determination. The grand jury was told that a number of witnesses observed little to nothing of any portion of the assault, as requested by the Defendants. The grand jury was told that the victim indicated that he could not say for sure if Markieff Morris was hitting or kicking him. The fact that specific photographs or line by line statements of each witness interview were not presented to the grand jury does not mean that the presentation itself was prejudicially misleading."

According to the Republic, the twins’ attorneys contend a witness told police he saw the Morris brothers in a parking lot “at least 100 yards away from the fracas,” and the testimony wasn’t shared with the grand jury. The motion also said prosecutors failed to mention Hood changed his version of the incident.

So, they'll try to create reasonable doubt based upon witnesses not agreeing on what happened, etc.

How they're going to bleed 70 - 80 hours of court time out of this, I have no idea.

Based on your expert legal opinion, what do you think the chances are that this trial results in a verdict that gets Morris suspended.

It feels bad to say but in order to still watch the NFL (and to a lesser extent the NBA), I've needed to divorce who players are on the field/court with what they do off the court. If I only supported teams without any history of doing anything wrong, I wouldn't have any teams to support.