Word: coronas
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...court-ordered ban on talking to the press. That won him the first of eight contempt citations calling for up to 40 days in jail and $3,700 in fines. "I had to," says Hawk, "to take the pressure off Juan." And his tactics did help to turn Corona from an ogre into something of a hero. When the trial opened, Mexican-American pickets marched with signs saying JUSTICE FOR JUAN CORONA...
Grave Errors. Police had originally been led to Corona when receipts made out to him were found in one grave. Then they found blood on some of Corona's possessions. But the case against him soon proved to be less than ironclad. The prosecution admitted that some bodies had been improperly labeled, and no one could tell which had been found where. Blood samples taken from knives belonging to Corona were too fragmentary to be connected with the victims. Tire tracks at one gravesite were said by police to have come from one of Corona's trucks, until...
...cost of several thousand dollars, the state built a 7-ft. by 10-ft. map of the area, complete with blinking lights marking each gravesite, only to have police witnesses give varying locations for five graves. Another witness could not say when he had seen Corona near a grave, though he had earlier given police an exact date. (Corona himself said he was sick in bed when some of the murders were committed.) As the contradictions piled up, Judge Richard Patton repeatedly summoned the lawyers into his chambers to thrash out problems. Patton has done most of the thrashing, citing...
...Hawk, that seemed enough to get Corona out on bail-after more than 500 days of incarceration (and two heart attacks). Indeed, at the courtroom hearing, with the jury absent, Judge Patton excoriated the prosecution for what "almost approaches dereliction of duty. I just don't understand how [the case] could have been prepared in this manner." Then Prosecutor Williams claimed he no longer had reasonable doubt, partly because he had just found that he really did have tire tracks that matched Corona's truck after all; the correct tire-track specimen had simply been mislaid...
...refused bail, and the trial goes on. Hawk will continue to argue that inexperienced authorities panicked under the glare of publicity. He claims that the murders probably were committed by a homosexual (some of the bodies were found with pants down) and points out that Corona has been found to be "hopelessly heterosexual...