Word: markhasev
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...dramatic details, made available to TIME last week, are exacerbating the problems of a prosecution already struggling with tainted witnesses and a paucity of evidence as it assembles the case against Michael Markhasev, 18, the suspect charged in the January murder of Ennis Cosby, 27. The reconstruction provided to TIME last week is worrisome because the killer would have been so near Cosby that the victim's blood would have spattered from the kick onto the perpetrator's pants, shoes or socks. No such evidence has surfaced. To deal with the kick, the prosecution may play the race card, arguing...
...prosecution will turn to Eli Zakaria and Sara Ann Peters to testify that Markhasev was not only near the scene of the crime but also said he was going to "go do a jack." The government's lawyers will thus argue that whoever killed Cosby had robbery in mind and turned the body onto its back, presumably looking for something to steal, since taking the victim's car was no longer a possibility. "Who's gonna steal a car with a flat tire?" asks a prosecutor close to the case. Indeed, both Zakaria and Peters, who were with Markhasev that...
...fact, the prosecution's chief witness is shaky and inconsistent. The woman who was with Cosby until just before he died provided descriptions that helped police create a composite portrait that comes close to matching Markhasev's appearance. Yet when she viewed a police lineup that included Markhasev, she pointed out another man. She misidentified the suspect even after all those in the lineup repeated the two variants of the threat she heard on the night Cosby was killed: "Open the door, or I'll kill you," and "Open your door, or I'll shoot...
Other testimony will come from Chris So, an acquaintance of Markhasev's who came forward with information partly to reap the $100,000 reward posted by the National Enquirer. So says he and a friend, Michael Chang, accompanied Markhasev to a wooded area, apparently on a search. The trio did not find what Markhasev was looking for. Weeks later, when So led the Los Angeles police department to the spot, the officers located a knit cap and pistol. But no fingerprints have been found...
Such evidentiary weaknesses would be crucial tools in the hands of high-caliber, publicity-savvy defense lawyers. But Markhasev has fired them all. Until May 13, he was represented by Charles Lindner, the Los Angeles lawyer who ghostwrote the portion of Johnnie Cochran's O.J. Simpson trial summation that evoked the Holocaust. Lindner turned out to have bad chemistry with Markhasev and his mother Vickie; minutes before the judge took his seat for the arraignment, Markhasev dramatically turned to Lindner and whispered, "I don't want you." Lindner feels that "no matter what, innocent or not, the kid is going...