Ayres Will Take the Stand on Tuesday July 7

ALERT:
The good doctor will take the stand tomorrow and testify in his best Truman Capote-lispy voice that he never did anything wrong -no sirree. We will be there to give a play- by- play rundown.

This report will be a supplement to Deep Sounding's account of the day's proceedings.

After basically seeing Ayres, Solveig and Robert sitting alone so much of the trial, we have to say we were a bit stunned to see about fifteen Ayres supporters showing up today. We did hear from the prosecutor that those people today sitting with the Ayres were all slated to be character witnesses but now won't be taking the stand. Some of the Ayres supporters in attendance were Dr Etta Bryant, an Ayes sycophant who wrote a letter defending him to the SM County Times in 2006 and Dr. Sam and Thea Leavitt. There was also the guy in the green shirt whom Deep Sounding talked about who was either nodding his head when Weinberg talked like someone at a tent revival meeting or dozing off when the prosecutor was speaking.


It's too bad that none of these 15 or so character witnesses - mostly women - had the balls to attend the trial when the ten victims testified. What was remarkable was how similar they were in appearance and dress style. The women were very sexless and boxy. Their faces were scrubbed and free of makeup. They didn't look as if they believed in covering up their gray hair. They were earnest and crunchy granola types and a bit frumpy. Several were very overweight. They appeared to be very earnest types who didn't have any edge to them.
We can see how Billy Ayres could have taken advantage of their unsophisticated nature.

That said, we noticed that many of the acolytes had a lot of trouble with the readback testimony about Ayres touching boys' penises and scrotums. One of the back-to-nature women in a long hippy skirt actually came down with a severe choking fit when the prosecutor asked Detective Decker to read back some graphic testimony. In fact, she got so choked up she had to leave the courtroom. When the choking woman finally returned, the ever dutiful Robert Ayres fetched a glass of water for her. Then we caught him giving her a big wink. That wink was quite showy and reminded us of something Sammy Davis Jr might do in a nightclub. We have noticed that as the trial has progressed that Robert Ayres has been becoming more and more theatrical in his behavior. Maybe this courtroom is as close as he will get to a bigtime theatrical production in his lifetime and he's milking it for all it's worth. He just seems so damn actorly and self conscious and that every movement is enacted for maximum effect. For example, after getting the glass of water for his choking pal, he plopped down in his seat loudly. It made the seat cushion make a loud whoosh - and as a result we couldn't help fantasizing about placing a whoopee cushion on his chair.

Mid-morning, Thea Leavitt arrived with a woman who turned out to be Dr.Etta Bryant. Thea is the wife of pediatrician Dr. Sam Leavitt, who was told by the father of a victim that he believed that Ayres molested his son. We hear that all Leavitt did was to look uneasy and just change the subject. Way to go, Sam!

When Ayres was first arrested, Thea used to show up with Ayres at the courthouse, arm in arm. She looked more married to the good doctor than Solveig did.

We know that Etta Bryant often drives Thea to Waterworks classes over at the Highland Recreation Center these days . In the courtroom today, Thea ran into the mother of a victim, and as she passed the mother, she made a shrugging "What can I do ? " gesture. It bugged the mother of a victim no end.

In court today, we were happy to see the bailiff admonish Thea and Etta Bryan for jabbering and passing notes to each other. The bailiff- a craggy looking guy who looks a lot like the actor Scott Glenn ( remember him in Urban Cowboy?) has in recent days throwing his weight around more and more. At the beginning of the trial, you could see him trying to catch a little shut eye. Those days are gone. These days, his piercing blue eyes scan the room like a powerful lighthouse for miscreants. He has been known to get up from his seat and talk to people who have been too noisy with their candy wrappers. We like that he's pulling his weight, and we think his name - D. B. Hennessy - has a movie star ring to it.

As for testimony - poor Detective Rick Decker was on the stand this morning for 2 1/2 hours instead of the half hour that Weinberg had predicted. Most of it was the same old, same old. As in, quibbling about the dates about when victim Peter V had a conversation with his therapist wife and her therapist friend Kimberley about Ayres molesting him. Weinberg has a habit of raising his voice as he tries to point out discrepancies in the victims' testimony. We wouldn't mind if we only had to hear it once, but today it seemed as if we have been hearing Weinberg hashing overthe same old details at least four times by now . We do have to say that the prosecutor has a wonderful trick to counteract this. She simply had Detective Decker read from his interviews with the victims about what Ayres did to them - thereby implanting and refreshing the sordid details to the jury of the abuse. We like that trick very much.

[Comment: Deep Sounding, 10PM: I thought Detective Decker was patient, clear, professional. I wanted to thank him, but was feeling a bit unsetteled and didn't: I hope he reads this.]

As the details of the molestation were read back to the court, we noticed that Thea Leavitt blinked a million times a minute, as if she was trying to keep out the reality of what she's wearing. Thea looked really uncomfortable as testimony was being read about Ayres unzipping a boy's pants and sticking his hand down there.

Decker finally finished his testimony at 11:30 pm. Next up was memory expert Elizabeth Loftus. For more details please see Deep Sounding's take today. We will say that she has an impressive resume- working with the FBI and CIA. We didn't care for her her cheery and slightly condescending way of speaking that reminds us of a cooking show host.

We found it very interesting that Loftus has testified 250 times in trials - but only once for the prosecution. Later in the day, when the prosecutor asked Loftus about the one time she'd testified for the prosecution, Loftus couldn't even remember the case. Shame on you, memory expert !! When the prosecutor mentioned that Loftus had written a book called "Witness for the Defense" she followed it up with "You didn't write a book called "Witness for the Prosecution" did you?" We were pleased to see that this question made many members of the jury smirk.

As Loftus was talking about how her studies have shown that traumatic memories don't necessarily mean that they are indelibly printed on the memory, we found ourselves wondering whether Ayres and Solveig share the same barber. From the back, both have haircuts that look bitten off, rather than styled.

During the cross examination of Loftus, the prosecutor wisely talked about the testimony of the victims - hypothetically. We noticed that the talk about the touching of penises and scrotum and groins made Dr. Sam Leavitt seriously uncomfortable. This is what he did during that testimony: he picked at a scab on his hands; he placed his hands and front of him and spread his fingers and examined then: he examined the hair on his arms: he twisted his wedding ring: for many minutes he studied the printing on his cardboard water cup, and at one point during particularly graphic testimony, he couldn't stand it: he got up and walked out.

Too bad he missed the prosecutor scoring major points with Loftus. We liked it that she got Lotfus to agree that the more confident the person is of his memory, the more likely the memory is likely to be accurate . We totally agree with Deep Sounding that the prosecutor basically eviscerated Loftus's flakey testimony.

[Comment: Deep Sounding 10PM: I'm not a big fan of underhanded behavior, but I do love to see a prosecutor play it low key and easy going, as long as they're really a shark. Today McKowan finshed palling around with Weinberg, sneaked up behind him, drove the knife into his back, and twisted it around, then kicked it in deeper. Did anyone see if she drank his blood afterward? heh heh... ]

She also got Loftus to admit that she was not there to testify as to whether the victims were being truthful. ( It was at this point that we noticed that Ayres looked like a lawn gnome)

Photo courtesy Patient Advocate

We were pleased to note that by the end of the day even Ayres' groupie Etta Bryant looked ghastly after all that testimony of the touching of penises. The real test is : will she turn up tomorrow?

Again we have to ask this: where were Bryant and the Leavitts and all of the other so-called character witnesses when the 10 victims were testifying? We think they're just chicken, plain and simple.

Also in afternoon motions , another alternate juror was excused from the trial to attend to a sick relative. We think they just can't stand to hear another day of testimony about the beast groping and cupping boys' genitalia.

We encourage anyone who supports the victims to show up in the courtroom tomorrow. It would mean so very much to the victims.