Jury deliberations continued this week in the Seth Cravens trial following a dramatic closing argument Monday by his attorney who got within five inches of the prosecutor\u2019s face and yelled an obscenity while pretending to be slain surfer Emery Kauanui Jr. Attorney Mary Ellen Attridge called the prosecutor\u2019s murder case “a runaway train” in which she asked that Cravens, 22, be acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter in the May 28, 2007, death of Kauanui in front of his mother\u2019s home in La Jolla. “Choo, choo!” concluded Attridge. Attridge claimed Kauanui was “not some docile victim” and instead was the aggressor, citing the testimony of Matthew Yanke, 22, who told jurors last week that Kauanui stepped up to Cravens and yelled at him within five inches of Cravens\u2019 face. “How the (expletive), how the (expletive), how the (expletive) did you come over to my house?” Attridge screamed to Deputy District Attorney Sophia Roach. Roach froze and gave no reaction to the outburst. She rose and told jurors in a rebuttal argument that “insulting words are not a defense.” Roach told jurors Yanke lied about the exchange between Cravens and Kauanui and that Cravens was the aggressor, not Kauanui. Yanke didn\u2019t say Kauanui yelled the expletive three times as Attridge had illustrated. Roach urged the nine-man, three-woman jury to compare Yanke\u2019s testimony to that of other witnesses, such as the victim\u2019s neighbors who called police and Kauanui\u2019s girlfriend, Jennifer Grosso. She said Grosso was “a courageous, courageous young woman” who was “the only person to try and stop the attack” at the scene by Cravens and four others around 1:30 a.m. on May 24, 2007. “There is no self-defense here. Seth comes at him at a pace, delivers a punch that knocks Emery out before he hits the ground,” argued Roach. “He hits the ground with a sickening thud.” Both sides agree that Kauanui\u2019s head hitting the pavement caused brain damage that led to his death four days later. Roach said that Kauanui\u2019s “brain was shaken,” causing it to bleed and fracture. She said surgeons cut his skull open to allow for swelling, but that didn\u2019t save him. Roach quoted a witness as saying Cravens had laughed about Kauanui\u2019s injury before he died, saying he “put him to sleep” in the hospital. The jury deliberated 3 1\/2 hours Monday before going home; the jury and court had Tuesday off for Veterans Day. An early verdict wasn\u2019t expected because jurors also must decide nine other charges involving previous assaults to other people, some going back several years. Cravens has remained in county jail in lieu of $1.5 million bail since his arrest in May of 2007.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jury deliberations continued this week in the Seth Cravens trial following a dramatic closing argument Monday by his attorney who got within five inches of the prosecutor\u2019s face and yelled an obscenity while pretending to be slain surfer Emery Kauanui Jr. Attorney Mary Ellen Attridge called the prosecutor\u2019s murder case “a runaway train” in which […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Jurors deliberate in case of surfer\u2019s beating death","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11593,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-296430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-no-images","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}