Keeping a Straight Face Often a Trial

Even in the serious world of criminal courts, where people’s lives and liberty hang in the balance, comic relief at times will bubble to the surface. Often it comes from the creative minds of defendants working desperately to get out of trouble.

Their defenses are sometimes odd. They can stretch the limits of common sense. They can even be called stupid, at times. But they are never boring.

One that is raised with surprising frequency is the “evil twin” defense. It usually fails.

In one case about a year ago, a teenager accused of violating probation stood up in court and told authorities they arrested the wrong man, Deputy Dist. Atty. Hoon Chun said. He claimed they were looking for his twin brother.

Then the bailiff noticed something.

“Look at his eye,” the sheriff’s deputy told Chun. The defendant had a glass eye. A records search revealed that the teen police wanted had been shot in the eye.

“So we confront him with this and he says, ‘My brother also got shot in the eye,’ ” Hoon said. “Even when confronted with it, he didn’t give it up. We had to get a fingerprint expert to confirm that it was him.” (Yes, even twins can be told apart by their fingerprints.)

Then there are the cases where the accused claim they couldn’t have committed the crime because of a distinct physical attribute the witnesses did not point out.

So it was several years ago, when one particular robbery case reached trial.

The defendant, who represented himself, asked victims repeated questions about the hand that was holding the gun and how good a look they got at it. For good reason: He was missing a finger.

He argued that because nobody noticed the gunman was missing a finger, he couldn’t have been the gunman. The prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Mark Vezzani, retorted that the jurors might not have noticed that Mickey Mouse only has four fingers, but they wouldn’t have had any trouble identifying him.

The defendant was convicted.

If a criminal isn’t arguing that authorities have the wrong person, he is often explaining the reason he did it, believing that will get him off the hook.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Carol Fisch remembers a murder case she tried in Van Nuys about seven years ago. The defendant was accused of killing his wife.

The question wasn’t who shot her; he’d admitted that much to the 911 operator. But he wasn’t guilty of murder, he argued, because he was simply granting his wife’s wish.

“He said he’d gotten into a big fight with his wife. She threw the phone at him and he got his gun,” Fisch said. “He said she told him, ‘Go ahead, shoot me.’ So, he did.” The defendant was convicted of second-degree murder.

Another guy claimed to have a good reason for stealing a wallet and a checkbook in 1995. He said the government was conspiring to kill him.

“His defense was basically necessity,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeffrey Boxer said. “He needed the money so he wouldn’t get killed.”

The defendant, who represented himself at trial, claimed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Los Angeles Police Department were following and trying to kill him. Moments before he’d stolen the checkbook, he said, a familiar black car had tried to run him over. Again.

Because he was homeless, he had nowhere to hide, so he needed the money to get a place to stay where he could hide from his attackers, Boxer recounted.

“He even subpoenaed FBI agents to come to court and bring their files on him,” Boxer said. “They didn’t have any files on him.”

The crime was his third strike. He was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of 25 years to life in prison.