Credibility of Witness Assailed in Teens’ Murder Trial

At 17, Mike McLoren is a self-admitted former pot dealer, a boy who so longed to be “cool” that he stole a policeman’s gun when he was 14, and now the key witness in the murder trial of four Conejo Valley teenagers accused of killing his good friend.

The Agoura Hills teenager has spent 2 1/2 days on the witness stand in Malibu Municipal Court, describing how he and 16-year-old Jimmy Farris, the son of a Los Angeles Police Department officer, got into a fight with the four accused teens that left Farris dying and McLoren seriously injured from three stab wounds.

Ostensibly, the fray was over a stash of marijuana McLoren had hidden in his backyard fort, but attorneys on both sides argue that the fistfight had deeper roots in McLoren’s troubled past.

Beginning late Tuesday afternoon and continuing until Wednesday afternoon, prosecutors led McLoren through the events of May 22, eliciting testimony that the four defendants--19-year-old Jason Holland and his 16-year-old brother, Micah Holland, both of Thousand Oaks; 19-year-old Brandon Hein of Oak Park and 19-year-old Tony Miliotti of Westlake Village--attacked him and Farris after McLoren refused to open a locked drawer and give them some of his pot.

On Thursday, defense attorneys tore into McLoren’s credibility, painting a picture of him as a vague, confused drug dealer who lied to police, once came to court to testify after smoking pot and was an aggressor in the fight.

Immediately after the fight, McLoren told police the accused were trying to steal his VCR and stereo equipment, not pot, from the fort, police reports say. He denied he was a dealer, saying he had a stash only for his and his friends’ use, he told police in initial interviews.

But on Thursday, he admitted under oath that he has sold marijuana to as many as 30 other teenagers.

During their reexamination of McLoren, prosecutors gently prodded the teenager to explain the conflicting testimony. McLoren said he was initially scared that he would get in trouble because he was selling pot, but he then realized he had to be honest.

“My lawyer told me I wasn’t going to be able to get these guys unless I told the whole truth,” McLoren said Thursday.

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McLoren was solemn as he answered questions from defense attorneys about his pot usage, describing getting high before school and during lunch breaks.

He testified that he was vague about the events of May 22 before the fight because they “weren’t important at the time,” not because he had been smoking that day.

Under questioning from Jason Holland’s defense attorney, Ira Salzman, he admitted that he had come to court Jan. 4 after smoking pot but said it had not affected his ability to testify. “I didn’t feel high,” he said.

Defense attorney Curtis Leftwich, representing Miliotti, spent Thursday morning questioning McLoren about his initial testimony to police that it was another teenager, Chris Velardo, who was in the fort during the fight, not Miliotti. Three days after the fight, McLoren told police that he remembered seeing Miliotti inside the fort, not Velardo. Velardo, 18, pleaded guilty to charges of voluntary manslaughter last October and is awaiting sentencing.

Leftwich asked McLoren if he told anyone that he enjoyed the rush of the fight. McLoren said no.

“The prosecution is saying this is a submissive, weak young man,” Leftwich said later. “This is a young man who was ready for a fight.”

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The prosecution contends that McLoren was an often-picked-on teenager and that the defendants were bullies taking advantage of his weakness.

The harshest questioning Thursday came from Jim Sussman, who is defending Micah Holland.

McLoren testified that at one point in the fight--before he was stabbed--he was holding Micah down and pounding him in the neck with his elbow.

“Were you trying to break his neck?” Sussman said.

“No, I was trying to hurt him but not to break his neck,” McLoren answered.

“You were trying to break his neck,” Sussman continued. “You were in a rage.”

Sussman brought up an event that Judge Lawrence J. Mira had not yet ruled admissible, a time when McLoren was 14 and stole a gun out of the home of a police officer. McLoren was friends with the officer’s daughter, who offered him the opportunity to take it, McLoren testified.

“You’re a thief and a drug dealer, are you not?” Sussman said.

McLoren seemed to hold up fine during the cross-examination. Wearing a dark suit that hung off his thin frame, McLoren spoke sadly of his friend Jimmy, remembering a bracelet he was wearing at the time of his death because “it’s real pretty and I remember he got it for Christmas from his dad.”

Twice during the day Thursday, McLoren left the courtroom, grasping the shoulder and hand of Jimmy’s father, Jim Farris. Both of Jimmy’s parents, who attend the trial every day, staunchly defended McLoren.

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“They are trying to destroy his credibility,” Jim Farris said, crediting McLoren with doing a “yeoman’s job” of testifying.

“Today, right now, he is telling the truth about everything. The boy is sitting there telling the absolute truth, I know that.”

Judie Farris agreed, and criticized the defense lawyers’ questions.

“They are trying to make marijuana such a horrible thing,” she said, shaking her head. “That is not the point of this trial. The point is that Mike got stabbed three times and they killed Jimmy. That is the point. These are the things that totally frustrate me.”

The murder trial is expected to go on for several more weeks; the prosecution still has a long list of witnesses to call before the defense presents its case.