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Witness says teen whooped when thrown rock hit woman’s car

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 22:14:58 +0000

Left: Alexa Bartell (Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department). Right: Joseph Koenig (Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department).

The scene inside a Colorado courtroom looked a grim picture of human action on Friday as a young and condemned man testified to his onetime best friend’s alleged glee in violence.

Joseph Edwin Koenig, 20, was a high school senior, but 18 years old, when he and two friends were charged with “extreme indifference” murder over the April 19, 2023, death of Alexa Bartell, 20.

On the day in question, the windshield of the victim’s Chevy Spark was struck and smashed by what authorities termed a “large landscaping rock.” The impact sent the young woman’s car careening “off the roadway” on a remote stretch of road in Jefferson County.

Bartell died a horrible death in the ensuing crash; prosecutors previously testified the victim’s brain was found in her backseat.

“There was biological matter on the roadway,” a deputy sheriff who led the murder probe testified during a hearing in October 2023.

In May 2024, two codefendants in the case, Nicholas “Mitch” James Karol-Chik, and Zachary Kwak, pleaded guilty to lesser crimes, and substantially lesser crimes, respectively. They both agreed to testify against Koenig during his jury trial in Jefferson County District Court.

Each of the codefendants, to varying degrees, played instrumental parts in the rock-throwing that night. But Karol-Chik was admittedly more culpable than Kwak, having also taken part in additional such attacks in February 2023 and even days before in early April 2023.

On Friday, Karol-Chik told jurors Koenig let out an excited whoop as he saw Bartell’s compact car drive off Indiana Street and through a fence in a field near the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, according to a courtroom report by the Denver Post.

“He was excited,” the witness told the jury, referring to the defendant. “He would just look at us with this big smile on his face.”

On that fateful night, several landscaping rocks were thrown at other cars, both in motion and parked. But some claimed details are mixed.

Kwak maintains he did not throw any of the rocks at all that night, according to the Post. Instead, Kwak earlier testified he only collected the rocks from multiple parking lots and then handed them over to the two front-seat passengers, who threw them.

The speedometer in the teenagers’ vehicle was 103 mph just before the 9.3-pound rock was thrown that took Bartell’s life, Kwak also previously testified. Karol-Chik, however, said the car was doing 80 mph. Both men said Koenig sped up before the final, fatal attack.

Karol-Chik went on to say the celebratory whooping and smiles were in line with how the trio had generally acted over the thrown rocks that night; when a rock struck a car, they would express delight; when a rock missed a car, they would express disappointment.

“We only thought of them as cars,” the witness continued. “But we never thought of who may be driving them.”

Each of the defendants was initially charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, assault in the second degree, and attempted second-degree assault. Kwak took a plea deal on three assault charges: one count of first-degree assault on Bartell and two counts of second-degree assault for attacks on three other victims. Karol-Chik pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree murder.

Even with plea deals, Karol-Chik and Kwak face decades behind bars; they are slated to be sentenced on May 1 and May 2, respectively.

Koenig, for his part, has conceded some responsibility. His lawyers insist he should only be convicted of manslaughter because none of the rock-throwers had the intent to kill, or even harm, anyone else.

The defense is also hinging some hopes on long-inconsistent statements from Karol-Chik, who for several months told prosecutors that Kwak was the one who threw the rock that killed Bartell.

Only during a fourth and final proffer interview — an interview in service of a plea deal — did Karol-Chik finally tell investigators Koenig was the person responsible for the woman’s death.

At the time, he and Koenig were best friends and “almost close enough to be brothers,” Karol-Chik reportedly told the jury. The lies came during three out of four proffer interviews, because Koenig and Karol-Chik agreed to pin the crime on Kwak, who they barely knew, during a discussion after seeing emergency vehicles later that night.

“We went over everything that happened and it was at that time that Joe said to me that we wouldn’t have to worry about it, we’ll just say that Zach did it,” Karol-Chik testified on Friday.

On cross-examination, however, Karol-Chik also said he long believed Kwak had actually thrown the rock, according to the Post.

The witness testified he remembered remarking on the sheer size of the rock, recalling he told Kwak it was too big to throw and being rebuffed. Karol-Chik went on to say he remembered Kwak saying he would throw the rock if Karol-Chik would not.

Then, the state worked to clean things up a bit.

“Was the truth that Joseph Koenig threw the rock that killed Alexa Bartell?” a prosecutor asked on redirect.

Karol-Chik replied in the affirmative.

This coming week, jurors will decide who and what to believe. Closing arguments are scheduled to end by April 21.

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Matt Naham contributed to this report.

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2 Irell & Manella lawyers should be sanctioned after witness ‘was tricked’ with altered document, special master says

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 05 Apr 2025 02:00:37 +0000

Ethics

2 Irell & Manella lawyers should be sanctioned after witness ‘was tricked’ with altered document, special master says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 20, 2025, 3:02 pm CDT

An Irell & Manella associate who decided to alter a date on a schematic drawing to prove a point during a deposition should be sanctioned, along with a partner who missed an email revealing the plan, a special master has recommended. (Image from Shutterstock)

The associate, Benjamin Manzin-Monnin, came up with the idea to show that such dates can be unreliable, according to the March 18 opinion by special master David Folsom. Manzin-Monnin questioned a witness about the document before revealing that it had been altered.

Law360 has the story.

Folsom noted that all lawyers from Irell & Manella attend in-house ethics seminars. Folson said Manzin-Monnin should be required to attend 30 additional hours of ethics courses, along with the partner he notified in an email chain, Jason Sheasby.

Folsom also recommended that Irell & Manella pay fees and costs incurred by the special master and defendant Samsung Electronics in connection with the sanctions motion. And he said Irell & Manella’s client, CogniPower, should lose an hour of trial time in its patent infringement case, filed against Samsung Electronics in federal court for the Eastern District of Texas.

The deposition witness was an executive at a company that, according to Samsung Electronics, had an invention that predates CogniPower’s patents, Law360 explains.

A law firm employee had advised Manzin-Monnin in September 2024 to “get clear directions” from a senior attorney regarding the “mocked up dates on evidence floating around.” Manzin-Monnin replied that he had emailed “Jason,” an apparent reference to Sheasby.

But Sheasby said he “missed” the email from Manzin-Monnin while acknowledging that it was his responsibility to read it.

In a declaration, Sheasby said during the deposition, Manzin-Monnin had shown the expert witness “the correct document, then later the altered version, and then immediately the correct and altered side by side, and then told the witness he altered on[e] of the documents.”

The witness “was tricked” and “obviously confused” by questions about the altered date, Folsom said in the opinion. The fact that Manzin-Monnin did not mark the altered document as an exhibit during the deposition “is immaterial,” Folsom said.

Sheasby said in the declaration Manzin-Monnin has been subject to “professional strictures” as a result of his behavior. In addition, the firm’s general counsel had scheduled a mandatory March 19 ethics seminar for all the firm’s attorneys to address the events and to “ensure that nothing of this nature happens again.”

Neither Manzin-Monnin nor Sheasby immediately responded to the ABA Journal’s email request for comment. Nor did a firm spokesperson immediately reply to a Journal email.

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Trump wants ‘sensitive’ Jan. 6 witness accounts kept hidden

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 19:59:11 +0000

Left: Donald Trump speaks during a commit to caucus rally in Iowa back in December 2023 (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall). Right: Special counsel Jack Smith speaks to the media about the indictment of former President Donald Trump in August 2023 (AP Photo: J. Scott Applewhite).

Remember when Jack Smith clashed with Judge Aileen Cannon in the Mar-a-Lago case over the naming of witnesses? Donald Trump’s lawyers do, and now they’re asking the judge in the Jan. 6 case to order the special counsel to explain his alleged “about-face” in an apparent defense bid to prevent “sensitive witness statements” from spilling out before the election.

Just one week ago, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, over the defense’s protestations, allowed the special counsel to submit an immunity brief under seal that could span 180 pages or more.

Days later, Smith previewed his immunity brief in the wake of Trump v. United States and his redaction rationale.

“In the proposed redacted Motion, the Government has redacted the names of individuals (aside from those whose names appear publicly in the superseding indictment, such as the defendant and Vice President Michael R. Pence),” said the special counsel’s motion for leave to file. “In the Motion’s text, the Government has not redacted quotations or summaries of information from Sensitive Materials, but in the footnotes has redacted citations that reveal the non-public sources of such information, including grand jury transcripts, interview reports, or material obtained through sealed search warrants.”

Later on, the special counsel appeared to anticipate that the defense would claim he was being a hypocrite on the issue of witness safety, drawing a distinction between the “posture” of the Mar-a-Lago case and the status of the Jan. 6 case:

The procedural posture and legal standard here are different than in United States v. Trump, 23-cr-80101 (S.D. Fla.), in which the issue of sealing and redactions arose in connection with the defendant’s motion to compel discovery. Under binding circuit precedent in that case, documents filed in connection with discovery claims were appropriately sealed upon a showing of good cause, see Chicago Tribune Co. v. Bridgestone/Firestone Inc., 263 F.3d 1304, 1310-1313 (11th Cir. 2001) (per curiam), a standard that readily encompassed witnesses’ identifying information and the content of their statements, see Gov’t Mot. for Reconsideration, United States v. Trump, 23-cr-80101, ECF No. 294 at 10-16 (S.D. Fla.) (filed Feb. 8, 2024). Here, by contrast, in light of the importance of content of statements to the immunity analysis, “specific reasons” do not support maintaining the content of statements under seal. Johnson, 951 F.2d at 1278. Despite he different posture and legal standard in the Southern District of Florida case, the Court there ultimately decided to redact names and identifying information but not the substance of witness statements. See Trump, 23-cr-80101, ECF No. 438 at 17-20.

Recall that at one point of the Mar-a-Lago prosecution, before Cannon dismissed it, Trump’s defense had pushed for “naming all witnesses.” Cannon initially warmed to the idea of naming Mar-a-Lago witnesses — prompting one to come forward — before the judge reversed herself in the face of an appellate threat.

In that context, Trump’s defense said that it was “baseless” and “absurd” of the special counsel to claim that they didn’t care about witness safety. Now they are attempting to turn the tables by claiming Smith is the one putting witnesses at risk by seeking to publicize their statements ahead of the election in a “politically motivated manifesto[.]” The defense asked Chutkan to order the special counsel to “show cause why their proposed public disclosure of voluminous purportedly sensitive witness statements is consistent with the risks of witness safety, potential juror taint, and the integrity of the proceedings that they have cited previously to this Court and in the Southern District of Florida.”

“While the Presidential immunity filing contains few, if any, new allegations not already covered in other politically motivated and inaccurate lawfare efforts that President Trump’s opponents have improperly funded and disseminated, it is irresponsible for the prosecutors to so quickly abandon the safety and privacy interests that they previously assigned great weight in this case and in the Southern District of Florida,” the defense said Tuesday, “Accordingly, the Court should require the Office to make consistent redactions regarding identity-related information and to show cause why their proposed public disclosure of voluminous purportedly sensitive witness statements will not pose risks to potential witnesses and unfairly prejudice the adjudication of this case.”

The defense further argued that Smith’s proposed “redactions and pseudonyms” do little to “meaningfully mitigate the privacy and safety issues” at play. To that end, Trump attorneys John Lauro, Todd Blanche, Gregory Singer, and Emil Bove directly called back to the Mar-a-Lago dispute, when the special counsel insisted on anonymizing “even ‘Ancillary Names”” to protect the privacy of those individuals. The defense asserted that Smith is taking a “different view” now that the “politically motivated mission” of filing the massive immunity brief can realistically impact the 2024 election and “unfairly prejudice the adjudication of this case.”

“Therefore, to the extent the Court is inclined to grant the identity-related portion of the Motion, the Office should be required to redact all references to the titles and positions held by the witnesses who are not specifically named in the Superseding Indictment,” the defense concluded. “As this issue repeats itself numerous times throughout the Office’s sprawling brief, the burden of applying these redactions in the first instance should revert to the Office.”

Read the Trump filing here.

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New witness could doom Fani Willis’ Trump prosecution

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 02:42:47 +0000

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis looks on during a hearing on the Georgia election interference case, on Friday, March 1, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Alex Slitz, Pool)

A senior prosecutor in the Atlanta area has evidence suggesting Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade began their romantic relationship several years before the embattled pair testified it started, a Monday court filing alleges.

The latest salvo in the monthslong effort to disqualify Willis from the racketeering (RICO) and election interference case she brought against Donald Trump comes in an eleventh-hour motion to reopen the evidence. That motion seeks to subpoena a new witness and was filed by co-defendant David Shafer, the onetime Georgia GOP chairman who prosecutors claim was integral to the fake electors plot.

Shafer’s filing, prepared by attorney Craig Gillen, alleges the new witness will substantiate claims made by Terrence Bradley regarding the timeline of the DA’s relationship with the man she put in charge of the most consequential criminal case in Peach State history. At the same time, the motion also says the new witness will refute a key part of Bradley’s testimony about the nature of his prior claims.

After watching Bradley’s testimony, Co-Chief Deputy District Attorney for Cobb County Cindi Lee Yeager spoke with two defense attorneys on the phone and took issue with many statements made by Nathan Wade’s former divorce attorney and law partner, the filing says.

Bradley, in text messages to defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant, said the two “absolutely” began dating before Willis hired Wade. He also said, with an air of certainty, the affair began when Willis was a municipal court judge — giving it a romantic vintage of 2019-2020.

On the stand last week, however, Bradley was little more than evasive. He hedged and blurred his prior statements by saying those claims were based on a lone conversation with Wade but, ultimately, nothing more than speculation. And, he adamantly refused under oath to offer anything close to a date for when the relationship began — saying he could not recall why he previously seemed to be so sure about the timeline.

Yeager says Bradley made several statements on the stand “directly contrary” to what he told her during “numerous” conversations between August 2023 and January 2024, the filing claims.

“Mr. Wade had definitely begun a romantic relationship with Ms. Willis during the time that Ms. Willis was running for District Attorney in 2019 though 2020,” the filing claims Bradley told Yeager. “Mr. Bradley stated that he had personal knowledge of the relationship between Mr. Wade and District Attorney Willis.”

Closing arguments in the disqualification matter have already occurred — but that is not much of a barrier should Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee decide Yeager’s evidence is worth hearing under oath. Trial court judges in Georgia have wide latitude to reopen the evidentiary record — they can do so more or less at will.

In this particular case, both the state and Trump himself have requested, prior to Shafer’s filing, that the evidence be reopened. Last week, McAfee said it would probably take him around two weeks to finally rule on the motion to disqualify Willis and her office.

During their closing, the state repeatedly referenced the testimony of another witness, Robin Yeartie, a former employee of the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office who said she and Willis had long been “best friends.” During the first day of the hearing, Yeartie testified Willis and Wade first became romantic in late 2019.

During the hearings, both the prosecutors and the defense addressed claims that Willis and Wade used a condominium she rented from Yeartie as a romantic meetup location. Cellular phone records legally obtained by the defense suggest Wade visited the condo on numerous occasions and likely spent the night there on two occasions prior to the admitted time when the affair began.

The Shafer filing references this aspect of the case, alleging Bradley told Yeager “details regarding” Willis’ and Wade’s “use of Ms. Robin Yeartie’s apartment and other meetings prior to November 2021.”

The crux of the defense’s argument for removing Willis and Wade is that the district attorney hired her then-boyfriend for the job in November 2021 and reaped something akin to a financial windfall.

The financial aspect of the allegations against the prosecutors are only obliquely referenced in the Shafer filing — if at all.

But, the money-related aspect of the latest defense motion includes a potentially separate pitfall for Willis herself.

In his own testimony, Bradley gave the impression that he rarely, if ever, spoke to Willis. On the stand last month, he testified that he “did not personally know” her and said: “My interaction with Ms. Willis was never where I would pick up the phone and talk to her.”

According to the filing, Yeager will directly contradict Bradley’s in-court estimation of his relationship with Willis.

From the motion, at length (emphasis in original):

In or around September of 2023, Mr. Bradley was visiting Ms. Yeager in her office when Mr. Bradley received a telephone call. Ms. Yeager could hear that the caller was District Attorney Willis. District Attorney Willis was calling Mr. Bradley in response to an article that was published about how much money Mr. Wade and his law partners had been paid in this case. Ms. Yeager heard District Attorney Willis tell Mr. Bradley: “They are coming after us. You don’t need to talk to them about anything about us.”

Defense attorneys have tried to make hay out of claims that Wade has been overpaid for his work and is otherwise not sufficiently qualified for the job his then-girlfriend allegedly hired him to do. Those arguments have not made much traction in McAfee’s courtroom.

The bigger issue with Yeager’s alleged claim about the phone call, rather, is if Bradley misrepresented his relationship with the district attorney — and the district attorney’s office did not correct the record for the court. If the judge finds Yeager, a neighboring prosecutor, a credible witness, that could spell big trouble for the prosecution.

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Convicted murderer learns fate in killing of witness

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 14 Jan 2024 05:52:46 +0000

Steven Daniel Young (Denver District Attorney’s Office)

A Colorado man serving a life sentence for murder got another life term this week for shooting the only witness six days later and leaving her body in an alley for a bicyclist to find and call 911.

Steven Daniel Young, 48, was sentenced on Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole in the 2020 death of Charly Lewis, 32. He was convicted of first-degree murder in September, prosecutors said in a news release.

Lewis’ body was found on June 7, 2020. Young killed Lewis because she saw him kill John Cyprian six days earlier in Aurora, a murder he was convicted of in April 2021, authorities said.

He was charged with murder in the first degree and possession of a weapon by a previous offender.

An affidavit released by the Denver District Attorney’s Office spelling out the case said the Denver Combined Communications Center received a 911 phone call at 5:07 a.m. about a body located in the alley behind 1065 N. Federal Blvd.

The caller reported he was riding his bicycle north through the alley and saw the body lying face down next to a fence and blood, so he flagged down an employee of a restaurant before calling 911 and waiting for police to arrive.

Police found the victim lying on her back, slumped against the fence, with a hooded sweatshirt pulled up tight to her chin and around her head. Blood ran down from under the head and neck area. A spent .40 caliber shell casing lay on the ground next to her left foot, and an intact bullet was found lying on the ground under the victim’s head.

Police collected video surveillance from the area and learned through a gunshot detection report that a single gunshot had been heard where the victim was found at 4:23 a.m., 44 minutes before the 911 call.

Authorities quickly learned that the victim had been a witness to a murder and that Young had an outstanding warrant for murder in the first degree out of Adams County that was issued on June 4, 2020.

Aurora police had put out an attempt to locate alert for Lewis because they were in fear for her safety.

Video surveillance from a restaurant showed the victim walking with a Black male who appeared to be the same height and weight as Young into the alley at 2:30 that morning.

In other footage, the man was seen wearing a mask over his face and appeared to be wearing blue latex gloves. He was also wearing a gray baseball hat, a maroon shirt with what appears to be a blue T-shirt draped over his left shoulder, sweatpants with reflective material on the pockets, and black tennis shoes with white soles.

At 4:25 a.m., about 2 minutes after the victim was shot, the man can be seen exiting the alley without the victim, the affidavit said.

Young killed Cyprian, 41, who he saw walking with Lewis in Aurora, prosecutors said.

He pulled up in a large gray SUV, got out of the vehicle and charged at Cyprian, authorities said. Young, who had a 45-caliber handgun, fired the weapon at Cyprian. The bullet struck him in the small intestine and damaged a major artery, officials said. He crawled to a nearby field, where he died while Young returned to the SUV with Lewis and drove off.

Aurora police arrested Young on June 8, 2020, for that homicide. He was convicted of first-degree murder on April 2, 2021, and was ultimately sentenced in that case before he was tried in Denver for Lewis’ murder.

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