OAKLAND — The jury trial against a Berkeley man accused of killing three men more than a decade ago began this week with opening remarks and testimony signaling that it could be a complicated trial filled with reluctant or defiant witnesses.
Given the nature of the case, the court has increased security at the Oakland courtroom, requiring people to show identification and go through a second metal detector to enter the gallery.
Joseph Carroll Jr., 37, is charged with three counts of murder for the deaths of three men in Oakland from 2009 to 2011: Nguyen Ngo, 18, Nehemiah Lewis, 24 and Andrew Henderson Jr., 23.
In her opening remarks, prosecutor Natasha Jontulovich told jurors that some witnesses will be testifying unwillingly and others have been compelled by subpoenas to do so.
Carroll’s attorneys, Todd Bequette and William Welch, assert detectives failed to take routine steps in their investigation, leaving the prosecution to rely on the word of “convicts, murders and fraudsters” interested in selling Carroll out to benefit themselves.
Two women, who were between the ages of 14 and 16 at the time of the 2009 killing of Ngo shooting, testified Monday. The pair had been walking back to one of their homes from a corner store on 45th and Market streets in North Oakland when, both told officers, they saw a tan car pull up and a three-foot-long gun shoot from the driver’s side at Ngo and three others with him. In court, they said they couldn’t recall giving statements to police or seeing the incident, given how long ago it took place. Both also told Jontulovich they did not want to be testifying 15 years later.
Another woman who testified Monday came forward with information nine years after the shooting. She testified that less less than a minute after she heard gunshots as she waited for a relative getting a haircut, she said, she saw a gold car with two Black men inside drive parallel past her before a second dark colored Dodge Charger driven by an old acquaintance, Greg Fite, who she referred to as “George Fife,” crossed in front of her at a stop sign soon after.
The witness would tell detectives that Fite ran in the same circle as Carroll and his brother, and claimed Joe Carroll was crouched in the back seat of the gold car while his brother drove.
On the witness stand, she walked back those statements, claiming her memory could be tainted because she read a transcript of an interview Fite gave detectives that was being shared in Berkeley. She said she could not say either way whether the Carroll brothers were in the gold car or not.
Like the other two female witnesses Monday, she said she did not want to testify, saying she feared retaliation.
“Sometimes you remember things correctly, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you want to help the police, sometimes you don’t,” the woman said.
Also called to testify was the woman’s nephew, a friend of Carroll’s who told detectives in a 2009 police interview played for the jury that Carroll called him the day of Ngo’s death to take credit for the shooting. He also told investigators Ngo initially shot at him and Carroll years before the 2009 shooting from a car while they were stuck in Oakland traffic.
He admitted to knowing Carroll and knowing of Ngo while on the stand Wednesday, but claimed to have no recollection of the interview, claimed detectives tried to coerce answers out of him and called himself a “convict” and a “habitual liar.”
“That was 15 years ago. I snorted cocaine everyday. I don’t remember,” he testified, before saying detectives “made me try to go against Joe.”
A witness to the Henderson killing on E Street in East Oakland in 2011 similarly claimed he couldn’t remember the shooting because he was high on cocaine at the time. Another man who is currently incarcerated at Santa Rita Jail refused to testify Tuesday, pulling a white hood over his head and ignoring questions from the court clerk, attorneys and Judge Jason Chin who’s presiding over the likely months-long trial.
Tuesday’s final witness, an longtime acquaintance of Carroll’s, was arrested after failing to respond to a subpoena requiring him to testify and walked back the story he told detectives about Carroll’s involvement in Lewis and Henderson’s killings. He said he was coerced to lie.
Bradley Baker, who was one of two Oakland police detectives in the interview, said no promises were ever made to the man and that officers did not discuss the investigation with him until at the police department.
Baker and Oakland police Sgt. Michael Valle were surveilling Carroll in 2009 as part of their work for a joint task force. Valle testified Wednesday to having seen Carroll drive up to a Berkeley home in a brown Cadillac with chrome wheels and paper plates. Carroll was also spotted the next day in Hercules driving a silver Chrysler with Florida plates. The same brown Cadillac was parked out front.
The trial, which is expected to last months, is back in session on Monday morning at Rene C. Davidson Courthouse in Oakland.