JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

I didn’t make it to the courthouse today, but from the two stories I read — The Star’s and that of KCUR — it appears that the prosecution is off to an excellent start in the David Jungerman trial.

Peggy Lowe of KCUR had the superior story, quoting gripping testimony from victim Thomas Pickert’s widow, Dr. Emily Riegel.

Lowe related a heart-breaking account of a casual, morning conversation, which turned out to be the family’s last interaction before her husband was shot and killed in his front yard.

To quote Lowe’s story…

Her grade-school age sons “were running around, being goofy,” Riegel recalled Tuesday, and she told them, “Love you, bye!”

Then she heard her husband say to the boys: “I didn’t hear anybody tell the world’s greatest mommy goodbye!”

Those were some of the last words Riegel heard Pickert utter before he was gunned down just minutes later on their front sidewalk after returning home from dropping the kids off at school.

That is powerful stuff for a jury to see and hear.

Here are a couple of other key pieces of evidence the jury heard:

:: As I have written before, Kansas City police were able to produce video from a variety of sources that show Jungerman’s distinctive white van on the road between his home in Raytown and the Brookside area, where Pickert was killed with a rifle while talking on his cell phone in his front yard.

That is particularly damning because Jungerman told police the van had not left his property the morning of Oct. 25, 2017. A related, incriminating piece of evidence is that police found the van hidden off a dirt road in a wooded part of Jungerman’s property.

:: Motive was established. The jury heard about Pickert, a lawyer, having won a $5.75 million civil verdict against Pickert as a result of Jungerman having shot a trespasser, when, of course, he should have called the police and let them deal with the trespassers.

The trespasser, Jeffrey Harris, had to have a leg amputated as a result of Jungerman taking the law in his own hands.

:: Then there’s the digital audio recording that police found in Jungerman’s business in northeast Kansas City.

What a fool: Jungerman apparently used the recorder during a court case in which he was charged in southwest Missouri and forgot to turn it off after the hearing.

In the recording, Jungerman tells an employee of his, Leo Wynn: “People know that I murdered that son of a bitch. The police know, too, Leo.”

I don’t think that’s been played for the jury yet; I believe a prosecutor referred to it in his opening statement. When it is played, this jury will hear something that prosecutors rarely have access to in criminal cases — a defendant stating in his own voice, on a recording, “I murdered that son of a bitch.”

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About all that the defense can do is try to pick holes in the prosecution’s case. I doubt if there will be an alibi defense, such as an assertion that Jungerman was home all morning. And his attorneys won’t dare put Jungerman on the stand. If they did, he probably would have to answer for earlier shooting incidents he was involved in, and he would be quizzed about his fixation with guns. He has bragged about having a stockpile of about 180.

Already, on Day One, Jungerman’s principal attorney, Dan Ross, was grasping at straws.

“What they (the prosecution) do have — and it’s the only thing they have — is motive,” he told the jury. “The rest of it is made up, folks.”

I have a friend who is a former public defender. Public defenders are usually stuck with guilty clients, and they have to be extremely resourceful — and sometimes lucky — to come up with exculpatory evidence. As a result, they usually focus on playing down hard evidence the prosecution often has at hand.

My friend says public defenders have a euphemism for a piece of hard evidence; they call it “a bad fact.”

In this case, David Jungerman and his attorneys are confronted with an avalanche of “bad facts.”