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Michigan v. Budzyn
Combative Key Witness from First Trial Testifies
(DETROIT, MICHIGAN - Feb. 20) Describing how Detroit police fatally beat Malice Green, former prostitute and crack addict Teresa Pace repeated her testimony from Walter Budzyn's first trial five years ago and claimed that Budzyn fatally beat Malice Green in the head with a flashlight.
Like Ralph Fletcher, who completed his testimony this morning, Pace was present at the time Malice Green was allegedly beaten. Now thirty-five years old, Pace has turned her life around -- drug-free for the last three years, she currently works as a program secretary for homeless people, substance abusers, and domestic violence victims, In addition, she attends college, and recently purchased a home.
On the evening of November 5, 1992, Pace went with her boyfriend, Robert "Joe" Hollins, to Ralph Fletcher's crack house at 3410 West Warren Street. She testified that she smoked one rock of crack cocaine at Fletcher's -- and saw Malice Green, whom she said was present, take one puff. Pace and Hollins left Fletcher's, but returned later to pick up Robert Knox. As the trio was walking toward Hollins' pick-up truck, Pace testified that she saw Green's 1984 Ford Tempo.
"Malice pulled up. Fletcher was in the car with Malice. And Budzyn and Nevers pulled up behind them," she said.
Pace testified that the defendant jumped out of his unmarked police car and ran up to Robert Knox, but returned about the time that Larry Nevers asked Green for his driver's license; in response, Green sat in the automobile's passenger seat and appeared to reach into the glove compartment.
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The flashlight used in the beating |
"When Budzyn got to the passenger side of the car, he shined the flashlight on Malice, and Malice had clenched his hand," she testified. "Budzyn asked what was in it, but he didn't say anything....So he grabbed his hand by the wrist, and started hitting it with his flashlight...but Malice didn't open it, so Budzyn got on top of him in the car, and held him down, and started beating him in the head with a flashlight."
Pace, who testified that she was some ten to twelve feet from Green's car at this time, cried briefly as she recalled the beating she claimed Walter Budzyn administered to Malice Green. But she conceded that -- even though she claims to have seen Budzyn swinging his flashlight down repeatedly on what she insisted could only have been Green's head -- she never actually saw the blows strike the victim.
"The only thing I can't see is Malice's forehead," she told the jury. "I can't see actual contact being made. But if you were standing where I was, there's no place else he could be hitting."
Ordered to leave the scene by Larry Nevers, Pace said that she never saw Budzyn's partner do anything more than tap Green on the knee.
According to Pace, Green never appeared to fight back during the attack.
"Did you see Malice Green fighting, in the sense of punching Walter Budzyn?" asked prosecutor Douglas Baker.
"No," replied Pace.
"Did you see Green kick at him?"
"When Budzyn first went to straddle him, his feet were moving, but I don't think it was in the form of fighting."
"Did you see Green take any sort of offensive action?"
"No."
"Was he moving?"
"Not after Budzyn got on top of him."
Most of defense attorney Carole Stanyar's cross examination of this witness consisted of attempts to impeach her credibility. Time and again Pace was confronted with transcripts of statements she gave authorities within days of Green's death, as well as the record of her testimony at Budzyn's original trial in 1993. At one point, Stanyar even showed Pace a videotape of a portion of her trial testimony, in which the witness demonstrated how the defendant allegedly held his flashlight as he beat Green on the head -- asserting that the motion differed from the demonstration Pace had given earlier in the day.
But Pace's account of the beating has been generally consistent over the years -- and the witness insisted that her memory of the events of November 5, 1992 is unaffected by her history of substance abuse, or by the crack cocaine she had smoked earlier that night.
An often feisty Pace fought back -- at one point, refusing to respond to a question regarding an earlier statement she charged defense attorney Stanyar was taking out of context ("you read the whole statement...or then I'll read it"). That prompted Judge Thomas Jackson to excuse the jurors before he admonished the witness. "Ma'am, you can't sit there and say you refuse to answer...I decide what the rules of evidence are in this case; you don't decide whether or not you're going to answer a question."
Stanyar made much of the fact that Pace may have received special treatment from prosecutors and police prior to her testimony in the first trial -- including favorable disposition of outstanding warrants against her, unique privileges during the month she spent in custody as a material witness, and unusual payments totaling several hundred dollars that may or may not have been "witness fees."
But Pace vehemently denied that she had been aware of any attempt to influence her testimony -- and asserted that she had never received payment for such a purpose. "No amount of money is going to compensate for my friend's life . . . on my oath, I did not receive any cash from anyone to have anything to do with Malice Green or Officer Budzyn and Officer Nevers . . . period."
The day began with redirect testimony from Fletcher, who with Pace was on the scene when Green was assaulted. He denied defense allegations that his statements over the years have been riddled with inconsistencies -- dismissing, for example, the fact that he's variously used the terms "sat on," "jumped on," and "straddled" to describe the way the defendant held down the victim ("to me, 'sit' and 'straddle' are the same thing").
And he reiterated to prosecutor Douglas Baker his charge that he saw Walter Budzyn participate in the beating that ultimately claimed Green's life.
"He [Budzyn] was holding him down, hitting his hand, and Larry Nevers hit him on the head while he was holding him down....That's what I saw," said Fletcher.
"They beat him up right in front of you, didn't they?," asked Baker.
"Yes."
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