Further to my above post, I watched Wendi and Lacasse's testimony yesterday and was riveted.
On direct, Wendi had a peculiar affect: She nodded and made a strange open-mouth pursed-lips face responding to each question. It was almost a caricature of innocent affect, seemed to me like something she was coached to do. Mostly her answers were pretty tame on direct, since Cappleman only had her there to establish some pretty basic facts. But when Cappy asked if it was "Very important" for Wendi to move out of Tallahassee and Wendy said "it wasn't very important" that struck me as totally implausible based on the other evidence, esp Lacasse's testifying that she was obsessed with hating Tally and wanting to leave. I suspect Wendi thought she could answer dishonestly bc it is hard to impeach her on the level of intensity of her preference to leave. In her lawyer's mind she could be saying "Well no it wasn't very important, it was super important" or some such casuistry. I doubt the jury will pick it up but it seemed deeply dishonest to me and caused me to further doubt her veracity.
I was far less impressed by Decoste's aggressive cross than others seem to have been. I am not a criminal defense lawyer and have never been on a jury but the strategy seems to have been to create a narrative of the case by saying "X is true, isn't it," where X is some damaging fact. It does put a narrative out there but Wendy was very cool and effective and simply saying "no" to each assertion and never really getting rattled. Again, not sure how this will play to the jury but it seemed to me like a lot of aggressive show without landing any real damaging blows.
Lacasse's testimony was more interesting to me than most HBO shows. He came off entirely credible, trustworthy, and sympathetic. FIrst off, when he took the stand I did a double take because it looked like Dan's identical twin with stubble and a few more years. See screenshot below. And while his testimony was devastating to Wendi and the theory that the Adelsons were not involved, I'm not sure what blows he landed against the defendant in this case. This makes me wonder about the interesting brewing development at the trial, where both sides want something in common: To inculpate Charlie and the Adelsons. They differ only on whether Magbanua was involved. And while of course evidence here is not admissible in any future trial against Charlie or Donna or Wendi, it's all out there in the public record and it looks terrible.
Wendi in particular suffered horribly from this testimony. Clearly Lacasse has changed massively from the dude in the initial interview who was still love-struck by Wendi's "sensuality." I thought I knew this case well but his revelations about her being manipulative and a liar were candid and convincing. And something was clearly up with her in the weeks before the murder--her inexplicable nerves so bad she needed Pepto and then the revelation about Charlie's discussing a hitman the summer before. Then the strange insistence on needing to be in town on the 18th and grilling Lacasse about when he was leaving town that day. It's all incredibly bad for her, if still short of evidence of liability.
Lacasse was also a terrible witness for Charlie, who came off as a boastful proud of his connection with Miami's significant criminal element. But even so, none of this really landed vs Magbanua--hence Kawass basically softballed him on cross. And I wonder again if there's almost an understanding between the two sides to amp up the evidence of the Adelsons' guilt as a win-win. In fact at this point I suspect the state cares less about Magbanua than Adelson (as someone with a personal stake in this matter, I certainly do for what that's worth). Clearly they want to nail Katie, but this trial has come to seem to me more like stage-setting than the main event.
ETA: Does anyone have a non paywalled link to the article that ran on Tallahassee.com titled "End the Madness"? I'm curious to know the author's take, and in particular what madness he's urging to end.
www.tallahassee.com