Freer waived court rules and allowed Assad to keep his hat on.Īssad insisted that his wife was healthy and in fact was caring for him, his daughter and her husband, and Assad’s granddaughter in their Long Beach home. He is hard of hearing, and attorneys had to stand close to him and almost shout their questions. “There is no evidence a robbery occurred,” Bluthenthal wrote, “And if there was no robbery, there is no evidence that Afaf Assad was assaulted hence, no evidence of a murder.”

The purse has never been recovered, Blumenthal said. The video showed Assad’s parents entering the casino hand-in-hand and her mother taking short steps.Īssad said her mother’s purse was about 18 inches wide and 6 inches tall.īlumenthal wrote in a March court filing that unsuccessfully sought to dismiss the case that the video showed Williams and Townsel leaving the casino without bulges under their shirts that would have been created had they attempted to hide such a large purse. Mary Assad, the dead woman’s daughter, testified that her mother had a neck brace removed the previous week and rejected a suggestion from Blumenthal that her mother shuffled her feet. Court records show both have a history of petty thefts that didn’t involve violence. Townsel spent much of Wednesday’s hearing holding her right hand to her chin or taking notes. The other area, whether there was water on the tile floor of the bathroom that might have caused Assad to fall on her own and strike her head.

Their questions to witnesses focused on two areas: One, Assad’s health, particularly her steadiness on her feet, after she suffered neck injuries in a Mother’s Day traffic collision in 2019 and two years before that, a fall down the stairs at home. None of the defense attorneys made opening statements Wednesday, but they began laying the groundwork for a case that will attempt to poke holes in the largely circumstantial prosecution argument. No one is saying who is paying for the high-priced defense, but Ginsberg represented Williams’ brother, Clippers basketball star and Riverside King High graduate Kawhi Leonard, in a copyright infringement lawsuit against Nike. Attorney Peter Ginsberg was originally hired by Williams’ family, and he tabbed Blumenthal’s law office to represent her.

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