Page 14 - Assistant Da News Today

To fascinate me despite what we heard from the assistant da in that news conference last week or the week before. what does that tell us that its the public corruption unit and not the unit thats typically tasked with investigating crimes like this? >> ill say two things on that. one, it tells us that the manner in which this case came to the southern district of new york means that there was a public corruption aspect to the case. thats why the unit got the case. and that case could have come t...

Please. >> and before we got a chance to talk to him, his defense lawyer ushered him out down the hallway. >> what did you think? did you take it all in? im not sure he took it all in. >> im not sure i took it all in at first. >> that this is over. >> it was super exciting. everyone was so happy. everyone was in tears. >> not quite everyone. assistant d.a. bill gargen was fuming. >> you were willing to get arrested over this. >> i was more than willing to have handcuffs placed on me to argue my ...

>> we wish that hadnt happened but the kid deserves a break. >> the community felt that very strongly. >> so when the trial began less than a year after the shooting, the sworn representative of the people with a murder case to prove found herself in an odd spot. >> the biggest problem was the defendant himself, because he did appear to be, you know, an upstanding, nice young man. >> monroe county district attorney sandra dorley. >> from the very beginning, people were disappointed that an indic...

Saying, "god, i just killed their mother." >> reporter: by-and-by, ariel and eva woke up. todd kept them out of the room where their mom lay dead. then, he said, he cleaned up the house as well as he could. and at 10:26 am, 7 hours after rachel died, he phoned a lawyer friend and asked him to inform the authorities. >> tell me exactly what you heard from your neighbor. >> what im willing to tell you is that im an attorney. i received a call notifying me of the situation. >> reporter: about the s...

>> well, we learned that they had conducted surveillance at ashleas apartment weeks before that. they had a picture of her apartment. her actual door to her apartment, and they had pictures of her vehicle, the white dodge ram pickup. >> reporter: in early december, 2014, carter cervantez and david mallory were arrested and charged with the murder of ashlea harris. cold comfort for ashleas sister. >> its just such a loss and its so pointless. i just dont understand how people could do that. >> re...

We talk to that knows giselle? >> reporter: ritchie consulted an alameda county assistant d.a., a guy named "butch," butch ford. >> some of my colleagues, their response was, "well, who helped her do it," because shes a woman, shes pregnant. in order to do this, she had to have help. >> reporter: prosecutors had a hard time believing esteban was physically capable of killing michelle le all by herself. >> we encouraged them to make sure they eliminated any possible suspects, such as the father o...

>> the prosecutor. yeah, yeah, he called down there. >> the nurse changed her story. >> everything changed. everything changed. >> reporter: this is what? one big conspiracy? >> i hate to make it sound like that. >> it sounds like it. it sounds like it. >> reporter: assistant d.a. david saacks says the rape was properly investigated and seemed to be nothing more than a hoax. which also, for him, finally answered that lingering question of who was stalking whom. >> everything was pointing to her ...

Now three years later two families filed into the durham county courthouse. one family hoping for a conviction, the other an acquittal. reporter john mccann covered the trial for "the durham herald-sun." >> the tone was definitely, you know, somber. shannons family here. you got denitas people on the other side. tense is a good word for it. >> reporter: especially tense for denitas mother, sharon, who for the first time made eye contact with the woman accused of murdering her daughter. >> shanno...

It had been six months since denita smiths murder. and sitting on the desk of assistant d.a. david saacks was a series of phone recordings that shannon crawley and her family insisted were jermeir stroud copping to the crime and trying to cover it up. >> i got away with it once. ill get away with it again. just keep your [ bleep ] mouth shut. >> this is wrong. i didnt do anything. >> you know ill find you. >> reporter: police were not present when shannon recorded the calls, but they were able t...

>> yeah. >> apparently, he can. >> well, he did it. he did it. >> reporter: youre convinced that was jermeir. >> oh, it was jermeir. >> reporter: so whose voice would ultimately ring true? a three-year investigation was now in the hands of 12 people. two families now waited anxiously inside the durham county courthouse. as did assistant d.a. david saacks. >> im never confident when a case goes to the jury. >> reporter: youve been slapped in the face by juries before. >> too many times. thats the...