Again T Omorrow by Elizabeth Walraven
Los Angeles (CNN)The sensational murder trial of millionaire Robert Durst was abruptly adjourned on Th, as Judge Marking Windham sent jurors home for a "long weekend."
Courtroom is set to resume Monday at 11 a.m. PT, with continued cantankerous-examination of memory expert, Dr. Elizabeth Loftus. Durst himself could take the stand up to prove on his ain behalf every bit early as Monday afternoon.
Windham told jurors he did not expect the trial, which has been in session since May, would go on much longer as he admonished them to avoid any media coverage and refrain from discussing the proceedings.
Durst, the multimillionaire subject area of the HBO crime documentary "The Jinx," had been expected to testify in his defense force Thursday, his legal team had told CNN. But the court adjourned for the twenty-four hour period around 12 p.m. PT (3 p.1000. ET) after a lengthy cantankerous-examination of Loftus.
Durst is charged with the first-caste murder of his shut friend and confidante, Susan Berman, in 2000, at her Beverly Hills home, hours before she was set to talk to investigators almost the mysterious disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen McCormack Durst, who was last seen in 1982.
Durst has long denied killing Berman, and his lawyer has said that he panicked and ran later on finding her body. He has pleaded not guilty.
The trial began early final year simply was suspended in March 2020 after just a few days due to the coronavirus pandemic. It finally resumed this May, and prosecutors rested their case on Tuesday later on several months of testimony.
Durst's expected testimony is just the latest saga in an unusual life that reached mass audiences through "The Jinx" miniseries in 2015.
He was arrested in New Orleans the night before the final episode of the bear witness, making the finale must-see TV. And in its final moments, Durst went into the bathroom, patently non realizing his microphone was notwithstanding on, and made a serial of comments that became infamous.
"There it is. You're caught," he said in a serial of seemingly unrelated sentences. "He was right. I was wrong."
"What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course."
The comments came beyond to audiences every bit a stunning confession. Yet, transcripts of the sound recording in courtroom revealed that the quotes were spliced and edited to be in a different order and context, The New York Times has reported.
Durst's health has deteriorated since then, and he looks and sounds delicate in courtroom. At 78, he is thin, bent-over and in a wheelchair and speaks in a whispery vox.
Earlier this calendar week, Los Angeles County Superior Court Estimate Mark Windham rejected Durst'due south lawyers' latest bid to delay or end the trial because of his health problems. Durst has float cancer and has undergone multiple surgeries, including the insertion of a shunt in his caput to relieve force per unit area on his brain.
"I'1000 worried about his wellness," his longtime chaser Dick DeGuerin said. "I'thousand worried about his ability to survive and his power to understand complex questions, both straight and cross-examination."
What to expect from his testimony
Testifying in 1's own defense is uncommon for murder defendants, only the tactic worked for Durst in a previous murder trial.
In 2003, an animated Durst testified he had fatally shot a neighbor, Morris Black, in self-defense force and admitted he cut upward his body with surgical precision and dumped information technology in Galveston Bay. He said he did so in a panic, while prosecutors said he wanted to steal the man'southward identity and escape the investigation of his married woman'southward disappearance.
The Texas murder trial revealed more than about Durst'due south often eccentric behavior, including how he posed as a mute adult female every bit he hid out in Galveston.
The jury in Texas accepted Durst's self-defense exclamation, acquitting him of murder.
Durst's testimony is expected to final several days, and legal analysts caution that he needs to exist careful with his words.
His "testimony could open up the door to all types of prior bad bear that he could be questioned well-nigh," said CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson. "If the jury thinks he's lying, being evasive or if he's unsympathetic, a conviction is assured."
The medical issues could too come into play.
"There is a still a slight chance of raising the sympathy of someone on the jury," said Loyola Law School Professor Stan Goldman.
Just Jackson believes Durst needs to be careful about how jurors perceive his medical problems. "If he testifies and feigns sickness or incapacity, the jury volition run into right through it," Jackson quipped.
Besides, Judge Windham could still delay the trial due to Durst's poor health, Goldman said.
"That's if the guess changes his mind and determines Durst's condition makes him unfit to testify at this time or in the foreseeable future," Goldman said.
How we got here
Prosecutors criminate that Durst shot Berman in the head from behind to cease her from incriminating him in the disappearance of this kickoff wife, Kathleen, in 1982. They say Durst confided to Berman that he had killed Kathleen, and that she helped him comprehend his tracks.
Durst will probable exist cross-examined by Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney John Lewin, who has relentlessly pursued Durst for Berman'southward murder.
Lewin and Durst squared off in a New Orleans jail jail cell in 2015 after Durst agreed to an interview that would last three hours, without his lawyers present, making potentially damaging claims and lamenting his many physical ailments.
"My life expectancy is near five years," the eccentric millionaire said in the 2015 interview.
At that place is little physical evidence in Berman's nearly twenty-twelvemonth-old unsolved death. There are no eyewitnesses and no murder weapon.
I key slice of bear witness is the so-called "cadaver" note, a cryptic letter sent to police with Berman'south address and the word "cadaver" in caps that led detectives to her body.
In the HBO documentary "The Jinx," Durst said the letter of the alphabet could have been sent merely by Berman's killer. Defense lawyers previously denied Durst wrote the note, and they tried to exclude from trial handwriting testify most it.
But in a court filing late last year, lawyers for the real manor mogul reversed course and best-selling that Durst penned the anonymous note. "This does not change the fact that Bob Durst did not kill Susan Berman," DeGuerin said at the fourth dimension.
Besides in the documentary, filmmakers confronted Durst with some other letter he once mailed Berman, with nearly identical handwriting to the "cadaver" note. In both, Beverly Hills was misspelled as "BEVERLEY."
Lewin, in the interview with Durst, asked him, "Why would you call up the killer would have left a notation?"
"I'grand gonna stay away from that," Durst replied.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/04/us/robert-durst-testimony/index.html
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