Uvalde Trial: Defense Asks for a Mistrial, Witnesses’ Testimony is Disregarded

As I described here Monday, this week is the trial of the first police officer who arrived at the scene of the Uvalde school shooting. His name is Adrian Gonzales and he arrived more than a full minute before the shooter had even entered the school building. He’s been charged with 29 counts of child abandonment or endangerment in recognition of the fact that, despite getting there quickly, he didn’t do much. When he was told by a coach that the shooter was headed into the building, he radioed for backup and then, according to the coach, “he’s panicking” and just walking back and forth but not heading toward the building’s entrance.

In any case, it was a dramatic and emotional day at the trial on Tuesday (day 2 of the trial) in which a key prosecution witness said some things that resulted in the defense demanding a mistrial.

Stephanie Hale was the fourth witness to testify Tuesday…

She testified she had taken her students outside for extra recess when she heard strange noises — first a crashing sound, like a dumpster being picked up and emptied, then pops that sounded like fireworks. A coach radioed, yelling for everyone to get inside, she said. Realizing something was wrong, she urged the children to go inside…

Hale described harrowing minutes inside the classroom as she army-crawled under tiny desks to reach upset students and calm them with breathing exercises. She and another teacher agreed to use scissors to defend themselves if necessary. Later, she saw many of the children had armed themselves with their own safety scissors, apparently copying their teachers.

The image of small children preparing to defend themselves with safety scissors against a gunman apparently had a lot of people understandably upset in the courtroom. But it was what happened next that led to the call for a mistrial. 

Prosecutors asked Hale where she had seen the shooter walking outside. She indicated she’d seen him near a door at the end of the building. Her testimony is important because it would put the gunman within a few dozen feet of where officer Gonzales was. But her testimony was very different from what she’d told investigators days after the shooting. Back then she hadn’t mentioned seeing the shooter at all.

“It looked like he was at this — there’s an entrance, a door right there, I thought he was more on the sidewalk.”…

Goss, the defense lawyer representing Gonzales, asked Hale about an interview she had with investigators four days after the attack, conducted in the school building next to where she was hiding with students.

“During that interview, you described going into the classroom and you described the scissors, as you described for us today. But during that interview, four days after this happened, you never told Ranger Benson that you had seen anybody matching the description of wearing all black and long hair,” he said.

“I don’t know, I don’t remember,” Hale replied.

Obviously, that’s a big change in her testimony. The judge then sent the jury out of the room and the defense demanded a mistrial on the grounds that the prosecution had never shared this element of Hale’s testimony with them during discovery. They also noted her testimony was very different from what she’d said previously.

“It is 180 degrees different than her prior testimony to the grand jury and her prior statement to the Ranger. And it is of a matter of such importance because it placed the gunman on the south side. It’s the same place where my client was, where he responded to, and where he went to.”

The judge denied the request for a mistrial but he then came back with a solution for the problem created by the prosecution’s failure to share the evidence, which was to ask the jury to disregard Hale’s testimony entirely.

That issue led to tense courtroom moments during the first days of testimony, with defense lawyers asking for a mistrial and the judge overseeing the case, Sid Harle, calling the prosecution’s omission unintentional but “negligent.”

Judge Harle denied the defense’s motion for a mistrial on Wednesday, but on Thursday told the jury to disregard Ms. Hale’s testimony altogether…

During the arguments Tuesday, Judge Harle appeared visibly frustrated.

The families of victims of this shooting have been hoping for years to finally see someone held accountable for the lack of quick action by police. But after witnessing the apparent blunders in the first few days of the trial, some of them are not impressed.

“If there was one word that I could say about their team, it’s incompetent,” said Manuel Rizo, whose 9-year-old niece, Jacklyn Cazares, died in the massacre. “It’s hard to remain positive. It really is.”

“They had three-plus years to get their act together, to work with the witnesses, to get them to where we’re at today. Just learning what we learned yesterday, it caught us again by surprise,” he told reporters outside the courtroom on Wednesday.

So no mistrial yet but it seems prosecutors are not doing a great job with this case and one of their key witnesses has already had her testimony struck from the record.

Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy Hot Air’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.

Join Hot Air VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.