Rewatching Tabatha's testimony in the penalty phase:
http://www.pnj.com/article/20101029/GRAPHICS/101025004/Live-video-Gonzalez-trial
Did anyone catch what the wife, Tabatha, started saying when the defense attorney was trying to ask her about a back injury Jr. suffered at the hands of police. She said he was driving a car for Cab Tice and it had a bad tag on it ... one that was associated with a stolen car associated with a violent crime. The attorney stopped her short from describing it more but apparently she was told that he was roughed up by the police and a foot was shoved in his back, etc. (who knows if that is true??)
She said Jr couldn't move the next day and had to go to the hospital.
The defense attorney's purpose was to gain sympathy, I think, because this was supposedly the cause of his continued addiction to drugs (besides the various hernia surgeries where he also got hooked on Lortab.) But it also is curious given the speculation a while back that Cab Tice may have been involved in changing tags on cars and shipping them over seas, possibly the cars in the floor plan that were financed by Bud Billings.
Besides, wouldn't he have had to have been resisting the officers to have been "manhandled" by the police.
There were a few other curious things that came up. They showed wife #2 a wedding pic and it was of Jr. and wife #1!!! Embarrassing mistake! They didn't get into all the alleged craziness surrounding his dealings with his ex and her family... and the myspace or facebook nonsense if I am remembering right. Also, there was a brief discussion of him getting involved with his bio father, Sr., much to his mom's and wife's disapproval and an inheritance involved.
There is so much more to this story that I think will never make it to the trial (probably good for many involved) but it would definitely make a very interesting book.
It was very sad when they asked Jr.'s mom if Patrick was a good son and she hesitated ...she couldn't say that he was ... you just could tell that she didn't want to lie. She kind of released the jury in the end to do what they thought was the right thing ...not trying to guilt them into anything. This must be so hard for the family. Perps don't think of what they drag their families through. Jr's wife lost a baby at 5 1/2 months after he was arrested.
I thought all the things that were brought up as mitigating factors in favor of Junior were pretty strange. I realize the attempt to 'humanize' him but it almost seemed trivial and insulting that we are discussing childhood trophies when two people had been terrorized and killed in front of their children.
I had never seen all the phases of a trial like this so it was interesting to watch.
Of course, the Billings family suffered the unthinkable hearing all the details of this case. All just senseless!!
