WASHINGTON — Prosecutors on Monday opened the trial of the man accused of killing Chandra Levy by conceding police errors that included excessive attention to Levy’s involvement with former California Congressman Gary Condit.
In a 30-minute opening statement, Assistant U.S.
Attorney Amanda Haines told jurors that investigators initially were “distracted” by the romantic entanglement between the 24-year-old Levyand the much older Condit. Haines described the 2001 affair as one of several “secrets” that color the case.
Haines told the jury that “law enforcement really let Miss Levy and her family down. They veered in the wrong direction because of the media and sensationalism.”
She said Condit tried - and is still trying - to keep his affair with Levy a secret, and said that led investigators to assume he was the prime suspect and “allowed Mr. [Ingmar] Guandique to hide in plain sight.”
“This is also a case about the secrets of a man named Gary Condit,” Haines said. “He was having an affair with Chandra Levy ... but it has nothing to do with the murder of Chandra Levy.”
A spokesman for Condit said the former congressman expects to testify.
An attorney for accused killer Ingmar Guandique likewise stressed police errors, in an opening statement that lasted less than 15 minutes.
Defense attorney Maria Hawilo scoffed at the prosecution’s case and said Guandique has been made a scapegoat. She said DNA evidence found on Levy’s jogging tights in Rock Creek Park did not come from Levy, Guandique or Condit. Prosecutors have said that DNA is likely a result of contamination in the evidence-handling process.
“Ingmar Guandique is notguilty, and nothing that happens in this trial will prove that he is,” Hawilo said. “From the beginning, the police failed and fumbled in this investigation.
“They can’t fix their failure. They can’t undo their mistakes. ... They have turned him into an easy scapegoat.”
Hawilo did not mention Condit at all in her opening statement.
Prosecutors say Guandique, who is from El Salvador, killed Levy on May 1, 2001, during an attempted sexual assault in Washington’s Rock Creek Park. At the time, Levy had finished a Bureau of Prisons internship and graduate studies and was reportedly planning on returning to California.
“Picture a beautiful spring day in May 2001,” Haines began. “[There is] a young woman who is going deep into the woods ... she is running into a dream, into a nightmare from which she will never return.”
Haines acknowledged that no DNA evidence or eyewitness links Guandique to Levy’s murder. Instead,the prosecution’s case revolves around circumstantial evidence that includes Guandique’s purported confessions to prison snitches as well as several attacks on other women in Rock Creek Park.
One woman, Halle Shilling, took the stand Monday as the second witness to describe how Guandique jumped her on May 14, 2001.
“I felt as afraid and as alone as I have ever felt in my life,” said Shilling, a former journalist and writing teacher.
Now the mother of three children, Shilling periodically wiped away tears as she recalled how she fought off Guandique. At 5 feet 10 inches tall and about 160 pounds, Shilling is larger than her assailant.
After fighting with Guandique for about a minute on a remote Rock Creek Park trail, Shilling said she was able to drive him away by shoving her fingers into his mouth. He bit her, and then ran away.
Guandique subsequently pleaded guilty to attempted robbery in the attack on Shilling and another woman who also will testify during a trial expected to last up to five weeks.
Prosecutors, though, tried to make the case that the attack on Shilling and the other woman was similar to what they describe as the earlier attack on Levy.
“She saw the face ... of Ingmar Guandique,” Haines said, pointing dramatically to the defendant.
The first witness called Monday, a National Park Service staff member, described the relative proximity of several attacks in Rock Creek Park.
Levy’s mother, Susan Levy, sat in the second row of the courtroom flanked by an attorney and a crime victims’ representative from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Dressed in a gray pantsuit and purple shirt, Susan Levy periodically took notes on a yellow legal pad.
Susan Levy and her husband, Robert, live in Modesto, Calif., where Chandra was raised.
Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Barakat of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 10/26/2010