Attorney for Gionis Grills Aissa Wayne : Courts: Defense attempts to portray actor’s daughter as incidental victim of random assault rather than the target of a vengeful plot.

During a lengthy cross-examination Thursday, the daughter of John Wayne battled defense efforts to portray her as the incidental victim of a random assault rather than the target of a vengeful plot masterminded by her ex-husband.

Aissa Wayne, 35, and her then-boyfriend, developer Roger Luby, were attacked at gunpoint and beaten by two intruders on Oct. 3, 1988, at Luby’s gated Newport Beach estate. One of the two men is serving an eight-year prison sentence and the other has admitted his role in the attack.

Wayne’s ex-husband, Dr. Thomas Gionis, is on trial for allegedly financing and directing the assault, using his private investigator as the go-between. The motive, prosecutors say, was anger growing out of the couple’s acrimonious divorce and custody battles. In an earlier trial, a jury deadlocked 9-3 for Gionis’ conviction.

Gionis’ defense attorney, famed New York attorney Bruce Cutler, has denied that the Pomona surgeon had any role in the attack, maintaining that Luby was the primary target of the attack, perpetrated by unknown assailants. In the course of presenting his defense, Cutler has in effect put Wayne’s and Luby’s Newport Beach lifestyle on trial as well.

In Thursday’s daylong cross-examination, which will continue when the trial resumes Monday, Cutler bore down on Wayne personally and the prosecution’s case almost incidentally.

Cutler quizzed Wayne about two separate lawsuits she has pending against Gionis, a civil suit for damages she suffered in the attack, and another legal action to regain sole custody of the couple’s 5-year-old daughter.

In what at times seemed like excruciating detail, he also walked Wayne through three vacations she took with Luby the summer before the assault.

In recounting the attack itself, Wayne said she may have told police initially that the main target of the attack appeared to be Luby, which is the defense’s position. She also said that she may have thought the people responsible were among those Luby was suing under a federal racketeering statute.

Wayne admitted that before recounting such things in her testimony Wednesday, she had never before accused her ex-husband of making disparaging remarks about Luby and his tennis-playing ability. Luby had one of his Achilles’ tendons slashed in the attack and the prosecution has suggested that the symbolism of such an act would not be lost on Gionis, a Greek immigrant.

But Wayne often held her own in the face of Cutler’s much-vaunted courtroom skills.

Herself a law student, Wayne deflected Cutler’s effort to show that she had voluntarily given up weekday custody of her daughter. She refused to back away from answers she had given, even when Cutler attempted to undermine them with her previous statements.

“Obviously you know something I don’t, Mr. Cutler,” she said, as he leafed through a highlighted transcript while questioning her.

Cutler knew there was a certain risk is being real aggressive in his questioning of Aissa Wayne, daughter of John Wayne, the closest thing to nobility Orange County has, with a regional airport named in his honor and a larger-than-life statue to greet arriving visitors.

“With a noteworthy figure you don’t want to inflame the jury,” he said during a break in the trial, acknowledging that a misstep on his part could produce a backlash of sympathy for his client’s accuser.

Cutler got Wayne to confirm that the divorce from Gionis was her third. Wayne also acknowledged that in divorce proceedings against her second husband she made similar charges to those she has made against Gionis--that her husband had been abusive and irrational and had threatened to take away her two children from that marriage.

At one point, Cutler referred to Wayne’s recent memoir, “John Wayne, My Father,” calling it a “very fine book” about “your late, great father.”

But when he tried to cite passages in which she writes about being manipulated by men, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeoffrey Robinson objected, on possibly unique legal grounds: “Attempt to slime a witness.”

On another occasion, Robinson objected to what he called Cutler’s “raking her through the mud.”

At one point in the proceedings, Superior Court Judge Theodore E. Millard despaired: “We’ll be here forever with Aissa Wayne.” Wayne’s cross-examination continues Monday.