Jurors begin penalty phase of Green trial

March 26, 2002

By Glenn Chapman
STAFF WRITER

OAKLAND -- A parade of witnesses strode to the stand Monday as a prosecutor began detailing a litany of combative confrontations that convicted murderer Willie Green has amassed in his life.

Green was dressed in a red Santa Rita jail jump suit and one of his ankles chained to a bolt in the floor beneath the defense table when jurors filed into Judge Philip Sarkisian's courtroom for the start of the penalty phase of his trial.

Earlier this month, the jury found Green guilty of murdering 27-year-old Charles Hass and trying to murder Aaron Merritt during a robbery attempt outside a Peralta Street liquor store on Jan. 27, 2001.

Merritt, 29, was stabbed in the lung by Green, who fatally knifed Hass, according to the case presented by Deputy District Attorney Michael Nieto.

The decision to shackle Green was prompted by a courtroom outburst during which the 45-year-old Oakland man cursed at Sarkisian and threatened Nieto. Green's tirade came during a hearing one day after he was found guilty in the lethal West Oakland attack.

Jurors must now determine whether Green should be executed or sent to prison without any chance at parole.

Sarkisian told the panel not to let Green's garb or shackled limb skew their view of evidence presented by Nieto and Green's attorneys, Daniel Horowitz and James Giller.

"This is a rare opportunity to see what Mr. Green has been up to his entire life," Nieto said in his opening statement. "The only correct and just verdict, the true sentence for Mr. Green, is death."

Green's criminal history includes convictions on charges of manslaughter, robbery, theft and possession of weapons.

Green pleaded guilty to the manslaughter charge after he shot a woman dead while trying to kill a man near her at Brookfield Village in East Oakland in November of 1983. The woman turned out to be the sister of someone wounded in the attack Green was seeking vengeance for, Nieto said.

"It was a very bizarre set of events brought about by Willie Green's desire for vengeance and retaliation," Nieto said.

Green was in a situation of "kill or be killed," Giller said.

"We are going to show you that Willie Green is not evil," Giller said. "He may have had problems with the law, but he is not an evil individual."