Shomrim Trial: Alleged Teen Victim Wants Charges Dropped

In a stunning outburst on the witness stand, 16-year-old Corey Ausby got out of chair and said: “I don’t want to testify. I want all the charges to be dropped.” Ausby– who cried almost the entire time he was on the stand– was expected to be the star witness in this case against brothers 24-year-old Eliyahu and 21-year-old Avi Werdesheim. They’re accused of beating the then 15-year-old Ausby in November 2010 while patrolling for an Orthodox neighborhood watch group.

 

Alleged Teen Victim In Baltimore Neighborhood Watch Beating Now Wants Charges Dropped
By Weijia Jiang • CBS-Baltimore

BALTIMORE – Dramatic twists in the trial of two brothers accused of beating an African-American teenager in Northwest Baltimore. The star witness takes the stand and refuses to testify, even asking for the charges to be dropped.

Weijia Jiang with more on what the teen said and what the judge told him.

This is a huge blow to the prosecutor who put the victim on the stand because he thought the teenager would share a harrowing story about how he was beaten. But the victim brazenly refused.

In a stunning outburst on the witness stand, 16-year-old Corey Ausby got out of chair and said: “I don’t want to testify. I want all the charges to be dropped.”

Ausby– who cried almost the entire time he was on the stand– was expected to be the star witness in this case against brothers 24-year-old Eliyahu and 21-year-old Avi Werdesheim. They’re accused of beating the then 15-year-old Ausby in November 2010 during a call for Shomrim, an orthodox Jewish watch group.

Many believe the alleged attack was racially motivated and have even compared it to what happened to Trayvon Martin in Florida.

“He was singled out because he was a black dude walking in a Jewish community,” one Baltimore resident said.

Documents from the investigation reveal Ausby said the brothers pushed him to the ground, pinned him down and beat him with a walkie-talkie. But on Wednesday, Ausby refused to answer questions from the prosecutor and had his head in his lap.

At one point, Ausby’s grandfather was thrown out of court because he was making signals to Ausby to speak up.

“It is important to preserve the reliability of the testimony that people not give signals to witnesses or communicate with them during the testimony,” Andrew Alperstein , the Werdesheims’ attorney, said.

Ausby maintains he was beaten but doesn’t want to talk about it despite the judge’s order to testify.

The teen explained: “The whole time I didn’t want to go through this stuff. I felt lots of pressure with the whole situation. In my heart, I didn’t want to testify. I shouldn’t have even called police.”

Still, the Werdesheims face multiple charges including assault. It’s unclear at this point what is going to happen to Ausby. The judge stopped short of holding him in contempt but said there would be consequences for his refusal.

Proscutors are expected to call several more witnesses this week. It’s unclear if the Werdesheims will testify.

[Hat Tip: Seymour.]

Comments

[charlie runkel]

Wow, Shmarya must be so pissed that a chareidi might not have hurt someone.

[camisetas baratas]

Conozco a alguien dentro de su mundo entero está esperando por mí, aunque me he creído ni de quién es él. Pero realmente me siento satisfecho casi todas las ma?anas exclusiva en esta materia. zhongchengmaoyi110post

[zibble]

Money talks. No other explanation.

[Andre]

Isn't it obvious? The kid made up most of the incident. He's a male Tawana Brawley.

Free these kids now!

[steveeboy]

he's just following the "stop snitching" ethos.

[MoishieCohen]

I wonder if the kid feels threatened/intimidated by possible/imaginary Jewish retaliation, so doesnt want to testify.

OTOH, it may also be possible that he was indeed carrying a weapon himself, or said/did something to instigate the beating, that he doesn't want to be found out.

I have not been following this case at all but if it is true that they beat him (for no reason) it is a disgrace and I hope they get all the punishment/conviction they deserve.

[Jeff]

Wow, Shmarya must be so pissed that a chareidi might not have hurt someone.

Posted by: charlie runkel | April 26, 2012 at 12:42 AM

Of course, it's inconceivable that he and his family might have been bribed or threatened, because we all know Haredim never engage in that sort of thing.

As Shmarya would say - have you ever noticed that no one but your mother has ever told you you're bright?

[Dovit]

Guaranteed he was threatened. Why else would a teenager CRY on the stand? Hello???

[Lubavitchers are Christians]

On the other hand, there is no way that he could have made up the entire story. I mean, a black teenager would never make up such a story. Never./ We all know that. Ask Tawana Brawley.

[Jeff]

Oh, snap. Well you certainly showed me.

[Suzanne]

The defendent was probably crying on the witness stand because his parents and grandparent have a $500,000 lawsuit against the community watch service the brothers worked for and a HUGELY POed that their son refused to testify. Most likely they put him up to it from the beginning. More shameless race baiting from the Baltimore media. Like I said yesterday, brothers are innocent.

[Gevezener Chusid]

Innocent? On this blog and for most of the commentors on various articles, they couldn't possibly innocent because they are Orthodox and being Orthodox means you're guilty of fraud, incest, smelling bad, and beating up your black neighbors even if you don't have any.

[BibleBeltJew]

Gevezener, your comment made me laff out loud. Having recently come back from Israel the only point I am in agreement with is point 3 (smelling badly).

[charlie runkel]

Hey Jeff, maybe they never threatened him. And from what I understand the two Jewish boys come from a wealthy family, and could have easily afforded to settle out of court, if that would be an issue.
The stigma that there is no way a Chareidi could ever do something right, is disgusting, demeaning, and racist. There are good and bad people in every sect in this world. Shmarya, Jeff, and some other colourful people on this blog are of the opinion that Chareidim are only bad.
If Shmarya was an honest person, then let him also write up articles about when a religious person does a good thing.

[Brian]

charlie runkel
If you bothered to read this blog regularly, instead of trolling around, you'd see that Shmarya does post positive articles when there is progression in religious communities, such as appeals to report rapists to the proper authorities instead of the rabbonim.

[rational man]

the problem is if he recants he can be charged with filing a false report etc and then can be sued personally. if he testifies and is lying - perjury. if he testifies and is caught in a lie - again perjury. his parent were also hoping for a big pay day. they were trying to get him to tell the court the story he told them - the only problem is it is mainly a fabricated story. he now realizes that now it is showtime. and in his heart of hearts he knows its a lie - that is why he is crying....

[charlie runkel]

Brian, is that the 1%?

[jared]

The actions of the witness/victim are redolent of bribery or intimidation. But this not a personal suit. The charge is "Maryland against...," or some similar way of stating that society, not the victim, is making the complaint. The state should proceed for it is the aggrieved party.

It appears that the defendants waived a jury trial in favor of one before a judge. If, as has been suspected, they induced the outburst by the victim, then they have scored an own goal because, while a jury might be impressed by the performance, a judge is unlikely to be. Sometimes people are too clever by half.

[rebeljew]

The lawyers comment was very telling. It is important to keep the witness from communicating with others during testimony. The witness is under no threat. The defense lawyers found a way to keep him from getting signals from his coaches on the stand. He is trying to tell a concocted story, and he knows he will get in adult trouble when he says the wrong thing and his whole story falls apart under cross exam. Why is he crying and saying he didn't want to do this in first place? He is facing adult consequences and he is only a kid!

[Al]

First the boys do NOT come from a wealthy home, I know the parents. Two if it were not for the $500,000. Civil case the community would have come up with the $50,000. the Ausby family asked for to make the whole thing go away. And no, no one threatened or did anything to that boy to make him not testify.
To all the angry people posting on this blog. Grow up, stop being such haters. If something horrible happened to you I feel bad, I wish I could do something to help you. But I can't only you can get past it and stop blaming and being angry with everybody else. Stop putting others down because they either seem, look, or are part of the same religion as the one tat hurt you. It's not easy but you will feel much better when you do.

[Yaakov]

I don't understand how people are drawing conclusions from this story. In particular, the idea that a 16-year old boy, in the incredibly stressful situation he finds himself in, is making a calculation about being prosecuted for perjury.

My initial reaction to this story was sympathy for this boy. It has nothing to do with him being innocent in some spiritual sense. Who knows? Perhaps he was in that neighborhood up to no good. I don't know, and none of you know either. What we do know is that he was beaten up by two men and very badly injured by them, and now has to face them in court.

The idea that he is scared of them, and is suffering from the traumatic stress of the beating is a much more reasonable speculation in my mind than that he is calculating perjury charges. He's only 16, Occam's Razor seems to cut away the nonsense and leave simple fear as the explanation.

And, if his parents are scoundrels, and are trying to cash in, that doesn't mean he wasn't beaten illegally and without justification. That's a separate issue.

[Jeff]

Posted by: Al | April 26, 2012 at 06:16 PM

Yes, that's right. The only time anyone criticizes frumkeit is when they've gotten their feelings hurt by a frum person. There's never any other reason.

Thanks for clearing that up for us.

[Jeff]

Posted by: Yaakov | April 27, 2012 at 04:02 AM

Yes, but Yaakov, you know that gentiles - especially African-Americans - are always up to no good.

Your trouble is that you stopped listening to the holy rebbaim!

[Brian]

Brian, is that the 1%?

Posted by: charlie runkel | April 26, 2012 at 03:51 PM

I don't get it... is this some reference to Occupy Wall St?

The fact is that articles are posted here when religious people do "good things", as you put it. And where FailedMessiah could have jumped on an existing anti-charedi bandwagon that was the Deborah Feldman book, it stood in opposition to many of the lies propogated by Feldman about her family and community.

Also- imagine if the coin was flipped, and we had a haredi blog exposing secular people. How many posts do you think would be about seculars doing "good things"? Precisely zip. Because no secular person can do any good. ever.