"Everyone is telling their truth in this case, some people's truth is they want nothing to do with this case"

Ms. Firpo continued her closing in the Bodhi Tree case this morning. Using visuals, statements and viscerating defense's arguments, Ms. Firpo made a compelling closing potraying Bodhi Tree as a willful, deliberate murderer who like a coward sneaked in the dark and shot Rhett August and days later shot an unsuspecting Christina and Sunshine who were "snuggling." Two innocent people who had no time to defend themselves against Tree's actions.

Ms. Firpo used actual statements and photos and evidence police collected to illustrate her point. She let testimony and the investigation support her closing arguments.

Ms. Firpo started her closing today by stating she wanted to focus on Sean Butler Smith. He is the prosecution witness that ties together the Eureka and Arcata cases, he is the one who testified he was with Tree when Rhett August was shot, he is the one who took Tree to the Eye Street house.

"He is an important witness," said Ms. Firpo. "He is not the most important witness," she continued. Ms. Firpo toild the jury that it weighed heavily on Sean Butler-Smith that he is the one who took Tree to the Eye Street house. He felt that if he had not taken Tree to the Eye Street house that his friends, Christina and Sunshine would not have been killed. "He was given nothing for his testimony."

Ms. Firpo said that Sean might have had some things wrong" such as "whether the radio was on or not " in the Landrover but she went over his testimony and asked him about what he remembered a 100% and that "he got the important facts right."

She described Tree as  "sexually agressive, frustrated, angry and unstable man."

Ms. Firpo pointed out that the Eureka crowd was different from the Arcata crowd, they did not know each other yet they described the same behavior by Tree. "A continuous course of conduct that escalated from one person being shot in Eureka to two people being killed in Arcata."

She used the timeline of when the EPD arrived at the Eureka crime scene to when they followed up on the lead of Melvin Matthews and said the police had done excellent work. She showed how the police followed and investigated the Matthews lead until Detective Peter Cress heard from Sean.

She showed the visual of the people sitting out Matthew's residence, a shooting gallery, saying these people did drugs, they don't say anything more to law enforcement than they absolutely needed to; explaining why the police was able to verify that Matthews was at certain places but not get times from these people.

For those of us who have been at the trial daily, Ms. Firpo's technique was very effective. We heard the testimony, we heard direct and cross, we heard opening arguments and closing, and Ms. Firpo reminded us of what we heard with our own ears.

Ms. Firpo showed a magazine with a Mickey Mouse image that Detective Peter Cress picked up and thumbed through and saw that someone had drawn Mickey Mouse faces. She reminded the jury that she had Sean Butler Smith draw that in the court. Ms. Firpo told the jurors that there would be no way that Detective Cress would know that Sean doodled Mickey Mouse and she specifically referred to the defense's allegation of "shoddy police work." The magazine was one of many items in the Landrover that Crow drove.

Referring to the days and days of testimony of defense expert witnesses that provided no information as to Tree's innocene or any new information but just a lot of information not supported by evidence and using police diagrams to support the evidence prosecution presented, Ms. Firpo said, "You don't need to know where the shoother was standing; you know Rhett was shot." She also added that the bullet strikes and testimony did tell where the shots came from, which direction.

She said 19 people testified that Tree was at the Eye Street house compared to Tree saying that he was drinking so heavily, he could not remember.

"Everyone is telling their truth in this case, some people's truth is they want nothing to do with this case". She then went into credibility of witnesses and that many people corroborated each other's testimony and did not know each other; that some like Shane Goodrich and Ian Henry turned out to be more beneficial to the defense.

Ms. Firpo said that the sole reason the defense wanted the Sean Butler Smith accomplice instruction to the jury was to "discredit Sean Butler Smith."

"If Sean is an accomplice, so is Charlie Crow," said Ms. Firpo. She reminded the jurors that both Sean and Crow testified they had no idea what was going on when they were with Tree to Eureka. Both thought they were getting drugs or money in exchange for giving Tree a ride to Eureka. They did not know Rhett.

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