Dad on trial, charged with telling teen witness to forget
In a city plagued by murders and witness intimidation, is a father's alleged decision to tell his daughter to feign forgetfulness on the witness stand a crime?
In a city plagued by murders and witness intimidation, is a father's alleged decision to tell his daughter to feign forgetfulness on the witness stand a crime?
A Common Pleas jury gets to decide that in a case stemming from a high-profile murder trial of two men convicted of killing 10-year-old Faheem Thomas-Childs during a gang shoot-out in North Philadelphia in February 2004.
Devonzo Lawson Jr., the father of a key prosecution witness, Taniesha Wiggins, allegedly told his daughter to testify, during Kennell Spady and Kareem Johnson's 2006 nonjury murder trial, that she didn't remember anything.
Lawson, 37, of North Philadelphia, who is out on bail, is charged with hindering prosecution, intimidating a witness and obstruction of the administration of law.
Assistant District Attorney Gonen Haklay told the jury in his opening statement yesterday that right after Faheem was shot, police did not have information leading them to the suspects until Wiggins, then 16, called homicide detectives on her own.
In written and videotaped statements, she told police that Spady, Johnson and others were outside T.M. Peirce Elementary School shooting that day, he said.
At the trial, Lawson "told her to lie on the stand. . . . ," Haklay said. "He committed crimes. He influenced or attempted to influence a witness who could have [affected] the outcome of the murder trial."
Defense attorney Jack McMahon told jurors in his opening statement that the only motive Lawson had that day was one of "a father, a father, looking after his child in an age where a father is not around. This father who was around . . . cared about her life."
Wiggins, then 18, phoned her father and asked him to come to the courtroom that morning, McMahon said. When the two spoke, Wiggins told her father that she didn't remember what she had told authorities two years ago and that she didn't want to testify, he said. In response, McMahon contended, Lawson told his daughter, "If you truly don't remember, say that."
Assistant District Attorney Mark Gilson, one of two prosecutors who tried Spady and Johnson, testified yesterday that that wasn't the case. He said that on the morning of March 7, 2006, Wiggins was "ready, willing and able to testify" at the trial.
However, things changed after Wiggins spoke with her father outside the courtroom, he said.
After Wiggins got on the stand, she asked Common Pleas Judge Jane Cutler Greenspan to again speak with her father, Gilson said. After the judge allowed it, Wiggins walked next to the prosecutors' table, as did Lawson, who had been sitting in the gallery.
There, Lawson told his daughter, "Do what I told you to do. Say what I told you to say. Say, 'I don't remember,' " Gilson testified.
Wiggins apparently did that.
According to the transcript of her testimony, read in court yesterday, Wiggins repeatedly said on the stand: "I'm not testifying," "I don't remember about nothing," "You can't force me to say anything," "I told you I don't remember," and the like.
Lawson's trial before Judge Carolyn Engel Temin continues today. *
