The father attacked the child's credibility: The boy had said he saw his father shoot his mother, but he didn't see it, he heard it.
Of course, the father is exercising his constitutional rights, representing himself and confronting the witness against him. This was a choice. He also chose to yell at the jury during his opening statement: "The evidence is going to show that we are under the most vicious, lying, fabricating, fictitious, government you ever seen! By the time it’s all said and done, you will see who is the mass murderers in Tampa Bay!"
The prosecutors called the boy as a witness. I'll start the video at the point when Oneal picks up his notepad and begins his cross-examination:
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Richard writes:
Never seen anything like that, and I’ve tried a lot of cases over the last 40+ years. But it was mesmerizing, watching the killer cross-examine the son he tried to kill. The commentators in the WaPo noted that he seemed composed, almost lawyerly, as he used deposition testimony and interview transcripts to poke some small holes in the son’s testimony. No idea what his background is, but given the stakes, he was better than I would have expected -- although the times when he was getting the son to repeat very damning details of the crime weren’t exactly a master class in how cross is best done.
Even more off the mark was Oneal’s obliviousness to the impact that his detached tone, focusing on relative minutiae, would have on the jury trying to absorb this bizarre spectacle – and all in the context of a trial where the defense appears to be a claim that he was framed by a corrupt prosecution. That his son is a key witness against him hardly fits with that defense, but every lawyer has to work with what he’s got and that may be all this guy has. Hard to put oneself in the jury’s position watching this play out as they are trying to figure out what kind of dude this defendant is. Hard to avoid the conclusion that he’s a very screwed-up psychopath – someone this clinical and composed while cross’ing his son, but during opening statement shrieking about some wild conspiracy, and yet seemingly quite capable of killing his woman, his daughter and almost killing his son with insane brutality. Doesn’t strike me as the sort of impression a defendant wants to convey in a capital murder case, at the end of which the jury will almost certainly have to evaluate him and his propensity for violence during the penalty phase.
Tina writes:
There are many villains in this piece. I followed it closely, being a victim advocate who lived very close to Gibtown (where the family lived, not Riverview) for years and worked on victim protection laws in Florida.
The Florida ACLU fought like hell to prevent 11-year olds and children even much younger, plus the severely mentally disabled from providing testimony in family violence and/or sex assault cases from a remote location, to avoid their being abused or intimidated by the defense attorney -- in this case, the boy's own father, who brutally murdered the child's mother and sister and tried to murder him. And God knows what else before that. These things are never one-offs.
If you donate to the ACLU, you are directly supporting placing this child within arm's reach of the monster who killed his mother and sister and tried to kill him. Sleep on that.
I personally like child-protection attorney and author Andrew Vachss' approach to comfort animals in states where the ACLU have succeeded in making small children directly confront their rapists and abusers and defense bar scum in hostile courtrooms. He has trained an army of terrifying pit bulls who won't let anyone near abused children, as the dogs simultaneously comfort the children through their testimony. Good on him. And his fine, defense-bar hating canines.
Also, Oneal demonstrated clear racial animus, recorded over 911, as he tortured and killed. Why isn't he charged with hate crime murders? Because white people, especially women, are deemed lower-life forms and completely, illicitly excluded from application of these divisive, prejudicially applied laws.
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