SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

FOR THE COUNTY OF VENTURA

COURTROOM 26 HON. JAMES P. CLONINGER, JUDGE

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF

CALIFORNIA,

Plaintiff,

vs.

CARLO PARLANTI,

Defendant.

____________________________________

)))))))))))

No. 2002026651

REPORTER'S PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2005

APPEARANCES:

For the Plaintiff: GREGORY TOTTEN

District Attorney

BY: GILBERT ROMERO

Deputy District Attorney

800 South Victoria Avenue

Ventura, California 93009

For the Defendant: RON BAMIEH

Attorney at Law

Copies of this transcript are not certified and do not conform with the provisions of Government Code Section 69954(d) For certified Copy please contact :

 Official Reporter 800 South Victoria Avenue Room 313 Ventura, California 93009

Official Reporter

800 South Victoria Avenue

Room 313

Ventura, California 93009

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15. (Proceedings continued and were reported, but not transcribed

16. herein.)

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18. THE BAILIFF: Remain seated. Come to order, please.

19. THE COURT: We're back on the record in the case of

20. People versus Parlanti. We have all jurors, both counsel and

21. the defendant.

22. Before we go on, ladies and gentlemen, there was a

23. part of Mr. Bamieh's closing arguments where he alluded to the

24. evidence and the number of charges of rape, I believe it was,

25. that were filed by the district attorney in this case. You're

26. instructed to -- you're admonished you are not to draw any

27. inferences from the amount of charges filed in this case

28. relative to the evidence in this case. That's not a proper

1. inference for the jurors to draw or something you need to look

2. at in evaluting the evidence in this case.

3. Mr. Romero, you can close.

4. MR. ROMERO: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am

5. going to be as brief as I possibly can.

6. Mr. Bamieh, in his closing argument, alluded to the

7. prosecution in this matter as trying to make lemonade.

8. As I asked some of you in voir dire in the very

9. beginning about a trial, a trial is a search for the truth,

10. make no mistake about it. It's about trying to determine what

11. the facts are, the best way we possibly can with the evidence

12. we have. The defense puts their own spin on the evidence.

13. I'll give you a few examples.

14. Dr. Troy Manchester came in here, and he testified

15. he saw Ms. White on the 22nd, and his opinion was that the

16. fractures to her ribs were between two and six weeks old,

17. which would put it between July 8th to the 17th. Two to six

18. weeks old from the 22nd when he saw her; two weeks, July 8th

19. to the 17th. That's the range and that time period where he

20. believes Ms. White fractured her ribs. He did say that it's

21. possible that she could have fractured her ribs as early as

22. the 16th. And the defense pointed out, well, that's a

23. reasonable inference. So, the circumstantial evidence

24. instruction reads if there's two reasonable inferences, you

25. must adopt the one that points to his innocence. Well, it

26. goes further than that, and it reads: If there's two

27. interpretations of the evidence, and one is reasonable and the

28. other is unreasonable, you must disregard the unreasonable

1. evidence. And it's unreasonable to believe that she fractured

2. her ribs on the 16th because when she came on the 22nd,

3. Dr. Manchester examined her physically, and he saw no injuries

4. whatsoever. No bruising. If she had fractured her ribs as

5. early as the 16th, fractured two ribs ribs, she would have

6. bruising on her ribs. His opinion was it was between two and

7. six weeks from the date that he saw her. The defense puts

8. their own twist on the evidence.

9. Give you another example. Deputy Fullerton got on

10. the stand, testified. He was one of the last officers, who

11. testified; given a transcript of his conversation with

12. Ms. White on the 18th. Mr. Bamieh was asking him, as he's

13. reading through his transcript, "Wasn't it true that she told

14. you that on July 11th, on Thursday, July 11th, she was tied up

15. with the zip ties at night?"

16. Deputy Fullerton said, "Yes, she did."

17. And then I went back on redirect examination. I

18. said, "Deputy Fullerton, look at that transcript. Tell me

19. where in that transcript did she say 'Thursday, the 11th?'"

20. "She didn't. She said 'a Thursday' and I said,

21. 'Thursday, the 11th?'"

22. My point being, that you can look at a particular

23. statement, whether it's in a letter, in an e-mail, or a

24. transcript of taped statements with police officers. You can

25. take a particular statement from all of that and completely

26. take it out of context. It's not very difficult to do, and

27. that was done quite a bit.

28. Ms. White, for whatever reason, decided to e-mail or

1. write letters to anybody and everybody. And Mr. Bamieh went

2. into detail about letters she sent to Dr. Farber and to

3. letters she sent to Ron and Chris, who are -- who were, at the

4. time, Mr. Parlanti's attorneys, where she would talk about the

5. hand in the vagina, in one, and the -- or the hand or fingers

6. in the anus in the other. And those letters were written back

7. in 2002. August, September, around that time, 2002.

8. And then Mr. Bamieh, shortly thereafter, says at the

9. preliminary hearing, at the preliminary hearing, August 25,

10. 2005, she made no mention, she made no mention of the hand in

11. the vagina or hand in the anus. She did not. She was never

12. asked those questions. Those letters existed where she had

13. made those statements back in 2002, but she was never asked

14. those questions at the preliminary hearing. So, of course

15. that was not in the record. Does that prove that she's lying?

16. No. She just was not asked those questions.

17. It's easy to take a person's statements, who have

18. talked about an event multiple times, out of context. That's

19. not a difficult thing to do.

20. Mr. Bamieh says that my case rests solely on Rebecca

21. White. That is not true. Let me make it very clear to you.

22. Rebecca White is part of the case. She alleges that the

23. defendant beat, bound, and raped her. Is she the only

24. evidence we have? No. She's not. She has photographs that

25. she took of the bruising. Mr. Bamieh says, "Look at them.

26. That's a younger woman," even intimating that she might have

27. had them back to 1995 from when she was hit or alleged she was

28. hit by her husband. Well, you have the pictures. Take a look

1. at the pictures.

2. We have the fractured ribs. What other explanation

3. could she have for fracturing two ribs? Look at all of the

4. evidence. Look at the neighbors who saw her walking with a

5. limp. And no, they didn't point to a particular date and say,

6. "This is the date I saw Ms. White walking funny." No, they

7. didn't say that. We know that Ms. White left on the 19th.

8. Never came back. The reasonable inference from their

9. testimony would be that it happened some time in the early

10. part of July.

11. You are not going to get witnesses three years later

12. that were interviewed back in 2002 by the detectives in late

13. July or early August. And even then, they couldn't pinpoint

14. the exact time or date. That's not something people will

15. automatically remember, and you can't expect them to remember

16. back three years later.

17. Another example of how the defense twists some of

18. evidence. Mr. Bamieh said that Ms. Anderson, Dana Anderson,

19. the manager at T.G.I. Fridays, that she -- she went to

20. Ms. White's house, and she didn't see any injuries on her

21. face. Well, that's not exactly what Ms. Anderson said.

22. Ms. Anderson said, "You know what? I really don't remember.

23. I remember going, knocking on the door, giving a purse, and I

24. -- I don't remember how long I was there. I just dropped it

25. off, but nothing really stands out in my mind. I really don't

26. remember."

27. "Well, if you had seen somebody black and blue, you

28. would remember that, right?"

1. "Well, I really don't remember. It's not clear."

2. That was her testimony. That is different than saying, "I saw

3. her face and I didn't see any bruising on there." Completely

4. different. That's what the witnesses, who observed Ms. White

5. walking, that's what they said. They didn't say, "I saw her

6. face and she had no bruises." What they said was, "I don't

7. remember. It's vague. I just remember her kind of looking

8. down." Mr. Berger said, "She might have had on glasses. Just

9. remember her walking funny." Not that "I saw her face and she

10. didn't have bruises." That's what the evidence is, and the

11. defense tries to twist that.

12. Another example of the defense twisting the

13. evidence. Ms. White testified when she had her head banged

14. against the wall, wall by the -- wall by the door and the

15. adjacent wall, that she felt like the defendant was doing it

16. with all of his might, full force. That's what she testified

17. to. Now, Mr. Bamieh comes here, comes over, and he argues

18. that if he had pounded his hand into the wall with full force,

19. he would probably break his hand. That's not the testimony.

20. The testimony is not that the defendant hit her as hard as he

21. could. That's different. What Ms. White testified to is when

22. she was being -- when she had her head banging the against the

23. wall, to her, it felt like the defendant was doing it as hard

24. as he can. How hard was he doing it? She doesn't know. See

25. how the defense twists the evidence? They don't give you

26. exactly what is being told.

27. Ms. White is being beaten. Does she know how hard

28. she is being hit by the defendant? No, she doesn't know that.

1. She can't tell that. She can tell you how she feels, how much

2. it hurts, and what she thinks is going on. She can tell you

3. how many times she believes her head was banged against the

4. wall or how many times she was slapped or how many times she

5. was kicked, but she can't tell you that the defendant was

6. doing it with all his force. Two different things.

7. Another mischaracterization of the evidence.

8. Mr. Bamieh argued that when the defendant told her, after she

9. bought the second two-liter of wine, to get out of the office

10. and she went into the room. Mr. Bamieh argued to you that she

11. then picked up the journal and went into the bedroom. That's

12. not what she said. What she said was: She generally keeps

13. them together. Sometimes not. She recalled that she went

14. into the room, and they were kept under the bed, and she

15. pulled them out from under the bed, and she remembered

16. initially that she wrote on them. That's what she said. Not

17. what Mr. Bamieh just argued to you.

18. And it's true, that when Mr. Bamieh pointed out the

19. two different color inks, she didn't know how there were two

20. different color inks. She said maybe there were two pens.

21. She did that on the second full day of testimony, late in the

22. afternoon, before we broke. And the very next day, she came

23. back, and I asked her on redirect examination, might have been

24. re-redirect examination about the entries in the diary. And

25. she said, "I recall yesterday testifying to the two different

26. colors of ink."

27. So I showed them to her, and I said, "Take a look at

28. them." So she looks at the 29th in her personal diary. It's

1. in black ink. Then she looks at the 29th in the diary she was

2. keeping for Mr. Parlanti, blue ink. And I asked her, "Take a

3. look at that."

4. And she looked. And she said, "I wrote all of

5. these, not on the dates that they say. I wrote them later,

6. when Mr. Parlanti asked me why I was not writing in the diary

7. anymore." And if you look at those three entries, on that

8. day, you will see that they are all the same exact color ink

9. from the exact same pen. Compare that to the next entries

10. next on the diary. Blue ink. All the exact same pen. The

11. ink is a little different than the ink on this side. You can

12. tell by the color, but you can tell it's all consistent, which

13. corroborates that she went back after the 29th, after the

14. beating, after a few days, and the defendant asking her to go

15. back and make entries, and she did. And she did. That was

16. the testimony.

17. Mr. Bamieh said that when Ms. Pincus testified, that

18. she was just pulling statistics out of the air. And

19. specifically, he was talking about the 85 percent of batterers

20. are male, and that Ms. Pincus didn't have an answer. Well,

21. what she responded, that's not completely accurate. What

22. Ms. Pincus responded, was that it was a Congressional study by

23. the Violence Against Women Act, federal legislation, that was

24. conducted by some people in Washington, D.C. That was her

25. answer. But Mr. Bamieh's characterization, she didn't know.

26. She had no idea. She's just pulling these numbers out of the

27. air. A twist on the facts. That's not what the evidence was

28. that came out at trial.

1. Not only that, but Mr. Bamieh wants you to

2. completely disregard what Ms. White says unless it helps him.

3. Give you an example. Ms. White testified that Mr. Parlanti

4. had stopped drinking; that he was going to AA meetings.

5. Mr. Bamieh used those facts in his arguments to show that

6. although Ms. Lavagnino and although Ms. White came in and

7. testified that he gets drunk and beats them, that's an

8. indication that he's cleaned up his act, and now he's with

9. Ms. De Barra in Ireland, and she's not talking about any

10. problems with Mr. Parlanti, and Katia is not talking about any

11. problems with Mr. Parlanti. So, look, he's cleaned up. He

12. has cleaned up his ways. He likes to pick and choose the

13. facts that help him. I'm telling you, look at everything.

14. Take the good and the bad.

15. Ms. White, for whatever reason, decides to write all

16. these letters professing her love before and after the

17. incident. Why? Again, I don't have that answer. Probably

18. because she still loved him. Probably because she was still

19. hurt by what he did to her. Probably because she was angry.

20. Probably all of those reasons all at the same time and at

21. different times. That's who she is. She's not the strongest

22. person. She's didn't do the smartest things at all times, and

23. it's easy to sit back and pick apart what she did or didn't do

24. and make it seem like she's lying. That's not a difficult

25. thing to do.

26. I'd also like to point out this last thing that

27. Mr. Bamieh did. He had before him, as he's asking witnesses

28. questions, all of the police reports. He had the transcripts.

Copies of this transcript are not certified and do not conform with the provisions of Government Code Section 69954(d) For certified Copy please contact :

 Official Reporter 800 South Victoria Avenue Room 313 Ventura, California 93009