On the final day of arguments in the trial of Arlon Watson, defense attorney Tracy Grayson asked a witness about the height of the man she saw running away from a fast food restaurant in Compton on the night of May 24, 2009.

“I know he wasn’t a midget,” Debra Lindsey testified from the witness stand. She couldn’t remember exactly how tall he was–only that he was taller than her own five-foot-two-inch frame.

In the trial of the accused murderer of Dannie Farber, a high school student fatally shot at a Louisiana Fried Chicken on the 1900 block of West Rosecrans Avenue, the prosecution believes the man

Lindsey saw that night to be Watson, a 22-year-old Compton resident and suspected gang member.

The discrepancy over heights reported by witnesses to Farber’s shooting played heavily into the closing arguments of Watson’s defense.

The prosecution argued that it wasn’t necessary to quibble over such details in reports by traumatized witnesses when there was such compelling evidence that pointed to Watson as the shooter.

Summing up the major points presented in the two-week-long trial, Deputy District Attorney Joe Porras brought up several phone calls made by Watson from jail once he was arrested last year in which he expressed a willingness to “strike a deal” about a possible prison term.

Porras also reminded the jury of testimony from people like Ashley Webb, who last week said that Watson had told her directly that he shot Farber. He emphasized the stigma of snitching in the gang community and how hard it was to get witnesses to come forward. Failing to show up in court after being subpoenaed, Webb was arrested at her college basketball practice and brought to testify.

“That message that you hear starting in kindergarten—‘Don’t tattletale’—has taken a bastardized turn in snitching. There’s the feeling of ‘you could be next,’” Porras said. “One would hope that people would be lining up to testify, but that’s not the reality. A college girl playing basketball should not have to be arrested to do the right thing.”

Liars, and felons and thieves, oh my.

Grayson began his final statement to the jury by saying, “Arlon Watson did not shoot Dannie Farber.”

He went on to call the case against Watson a “sloppy, incompetent mess, ” describing the prosecution’s case as one “built on sand that has now crumbled.”

Returning to the discrepancies in the reports of the height of the shooter, Grayson assured the jury that this was not a minor detail, pointing to Watson and saying, “Someone’s life is at stake, he’s looking at life.”

The statement evoked swift admonishment from Judge Eleanor Hunter, who said that Grayson should know better than to bring up potential sentencing of the defendant, since such talk could affect a jury’s decision.

Unshaken, Grayson went back to claiming a lack of evidence and describing the people brought by the prosecution to testify as a “band of liars, felons and thieves, oh my.” He insisted they were all being paid and offered rewards for their witness services.

Farber’s girlfriend was with him when he was shot, and Grayson brought up differences between the defendant and the description of the shooter she gave to detectives. Grayson said Watson had a tattoo on his neck and a goatee, but the girlfriend described a clean-shaven man with no tattoo.

Grayson continued to question the credibility of witnesses, making frequent references to a multi-page checklist he kept at a podium. He also claimed phrases from Watson’s calls from jail were taken out of context by people who didn’t know Compton slang. He also wondered aloud why the prosecution didn’t call more witnesses to corroborate Webb’s story and accused Webb of lying, saying she was “smart enough to keep her story simple.”

When addressing the fact that Watson tried to run away when arrested by police, Grayson said, “Call me crazy, but black men from the hood don’t often trust police.”

At the end of his hour-long final argument, Grayson said to the jury, “Mr. Porras failed miserably in convincing you Watson is guilty.” He raised his voice slightly and concluded, “There is tons of reasonable doubt in this case.”

Verdict expected soon

In the prosecution’s final statement to the jury, Porras responded to Grayson, shaking his head and musing, “Listening to that, I have to wonder, were we watching the same trial?”

Porras said witnesses were not paid off and that Grayson’s lengthy final argument was “just odd” and “delusional.” Again citing the difficulty of finding witnesses for fear of being labeled a snitch, Porras reminded the jury of Randy Wells, who had to be relocated outside of his Compton neighborhood, believing his safety to be at risk after testifying.

The neck tattoo Grayson mentioned is actually behind Watson’s ear, Porras said. He also said the slang phrase from the jail calls Grayson called into question, “off the hook,” did not actually appear in the transcripts of the calls.

He encouraged the jury to rise above excuses and issues of racism. “At some point, people will be accountable for what they do.”

He ended by reminding the court of Watson’s phone calls one more time. “Someone who says, ‘I’ll take a deal for anywhere in the neighborhood of 30 years’—really? That’s someone who didn’t do it?”

The jury will reconvene tomorrow morning to deliberate.

Outside the courtroom at the end of the day, Farber’s aunt, Roxane Winston, said she thought the jury would arrive quickly at a guilty verdict.

“The evidence speaks for itself,” Winston said.

Photo: Arlon Watson, at his arraignment in February 2010. Credit: Al Seib/Los Angeles Times

More stories on the Arlon Watson trial:

Arlon Watson given long sentence for murder of Compton teenager

Arlon Watson trial offers glimpse of gang life in Compton