While defense attorneys made claims about a government conspiracy, the prosecution had to battle its star witness for information Monday as the trial against Sen. Adlah "Foncie" Donastorg — accused of assaulting his 19-year-old girlfriend with a gun — began in V.I. Superior Court.
In his opening statements to the jury, government attorney Claude Walker made clear that the alleged victim, Keturah Ernest, 19, was "reluctant" to testify because she is essentially intimidated by the senator and the power he wields.
Even so, Walker added, the facts are still that Ernest was allegedly threatened and later strangled by a gun-toting Donastorg after she showed up unannounced at his house one evening in late January.
Walker said Ernest told her story the next day to her former driving school instructor LaVelle Campbell, who told jurors while on the stand that he phoned a friend and told her about Ernest’s situation in the hopes that she might be able to put them in touch with a women’s violence advocate.
Campbell said Monday that he subsequently drove Ernest around to meet the advocate and to file a report, then met her again at the airport when she returned from St. Croix after meeting with the Police commissioner.
Ernest later recanted her original police statement and gave a different account to her attorney Judith Bourne, but Walker argued in court Monday that there are still many similarities between the two versions.
Ernest, for her part, fired back at Walker every step of the way, asking why "it was an issue" that she and Donastorg had a sexual relationship and whether she really had to read the jury parts of the original police statement that she described as "inaccurate."
She also said that Donastorg did not have a gun on him that night, nor had she ever confronted him — as contained in the original police statement — about being pregnant with, and then subsequently aborting, his child. Ernest said she had not been pregnant at all and described her relationship with Donastorg as "loving."
The original eight-page police statement, Walker pointed out, was signed and dated by Ernest on each page.
Further, the second statement given to Bourne corroborated several details, namely that: Ernest showed up at Donastorg’s house unannounced on the evening of Jan. 28, 2010 after being dropped there by a friend; Ernest admitted Donastorag had a gun on him at some point during the discussion; Donastorg subsequently dropped Ernest back to her mother’s house; and that he allegedly pulled her out of the car through the driver’s side door when she refused to move.
In response, Ernest acknowledged that there were some similarities between the statements, but that "similar does not mean the same."
Interestingly, Ernest said later that she had "refused" police requests to have her statements videotaped and was coerced by one detective — whose aunt she said lives next to Donastorg — into visiting the crime scene.
Donastorg defense attorney Gordon Rhea did not get the chance to cross-examine Ernest before presiding Judge Adam Christian broke for the evening. But he did make his case during opening arguments, where he said that Donastorg’s version of the events is the same as Ernest’s — meaning that there was no assault or battery, just a simple quarrel that was eventually resolved.
Rhea said Donastorg had known Ernest for years, acted as a mentor to her and counseled her about problems she was having with her mother. But at some point, the teenager became infatuated with and harbored some "childlike fantasies" about the senator.
"She’s very aggressive," Rhea said. He added later that the relationship between the two eventually became sexual, but that’s not a crime — unlike assault and battery, which are criminal offenses he said that, in this case, never happened.
However, according to Rhea, the story got mired in controversy after Ernest confided in Campbell, a former classmate from Charlotte Amalie High School, who also happened to be a deJongh supporter.
Rhea said Campbell’s "ears pricked up" when he heard who Ernest’s boyfriend was, and he involved his longtime friend Leslie Comissiong in "exploiting her vulnerability" by saying someone might be interested in paying her $150,000 "to bring Adlah down," Rhea said.
The government whisked Ernest away to St. Croix, where they put her up in a hotel and fabricated a statement that they forced her to sign, Rhea said, adding that Campbell and some other "politicos" met Ernest at the airport when she returned, leaving her without the opportunity to fully review and edit the statement, he added.
Meanwhile, Ernest eventually found solace with Bourne, with whom she was able to make a truthful statement "without the pressure" of politics surrounding her. Rhea asked jurors to keep an open mind until they’ve heard all the "clues" in the case and figured out why "they’re so inconsistent" going forward.
"A case is like a coin," Rhea said. "It really has two sides."
The trial picks up again at 9 a.m. Tuesday.
