Defense Lawyer’s Courtroom Tactic Results in Eight Arrests
San Francisco criminal defense lawyer Eric Safire says he had a reason for asking eight men to stand on Tuesday when a witness was asked to identify the person who shot a murder victim outside a nightclub.
“I just wanted [my client] not to be the only black guy with gold teeth in the room,” Safire told the Recorder’s Legal Pad blog. “All the great defense lawyers in the world used to do it.”
The strategy backfired; the eight men were arrested on suspicion of gang-related witness intimidation after the preliminary hearing ended, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
According to the Chronicle account, the men all crossed their arms and stared at the witness, drawing objections from the prosecutor.
Safire’s client, Charles “Cheese” Heard, is accused of killing a man to obtain his bejeweled pendant of Bamm-Bamm from the Flinstones.
Safire says his client has been misidentified as the shooter. The witness described a man with one gold tooth, he said, but “my client has a mouthful of gold. It’s a grill, you know?”
