“Are you asking me if he was dead?”<\/p>\n
“Yes.”<\/p>\n
“He was dead, and there was no struggle or anything. The blood was in a perfect pool.”<\/p>\n
As the second murder trial of Christopher Strawn ended its first week, jurors received a graphic visual and eyewitness description of the scene from a paramedic and the first police officer on the scene.<\/p>\n
Strawn, 34, is accused of killing 30-year-old Brandon Cook in 2015. A murder trial earlier this year ended in a mistrial. The state of Alaska is trying again, but this time, Strawn has dismissed his public defender and is representing himself.<\/p>\n
State budget cuts have closed courthouses on Friday afternoons, and jurors were in the courtroom for only two hours.<\/p>\n
Juneau Assistant District Attorney Amy Paige introduced paramedic Paul Kelly and Juneau Police Department Sgt. Jeremy Thomas Weske, who established in graphic detail the scene where Cook died of a shotgun blast to the back of the head.<\/p>\n
Over Strawn’s objections, Paige also displayed crime-scene photographs to jurors.<\/p>\n
Strawn was mostly quiet: He had few questions for Kelly, who under Paige’s questions described the “perfect pool.” Strawn is expected to cross-examine Weske when the trial resumes Monday.<\/p>\n
Strawn was silent when Weske described Cook’s death as a homicide, something the trial is intended to establish.<\/p>\n
That caused Judge Philip Pallenberg to interject.<\/p>\n
“Whether this case involves a homicide or not is ultimately for the jury to decide,” Pallenberg said.<\/p>\n
The abbreviated second day of the trial followed three and a half days of jury selection and the Thursday-afternoon beginning of the trial<\/a>.<\/p>\n Paige offered her opening statements, while Strawn said nothing. The testimony of the first witness, JPD dispatcher Erika Johnson, was accompanied by a recording of the 911 call that brought police and paramedics to the site of Cook’s death.<\/p>\n