Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Molin Trial: Day One

SNOW HILL, Md - "Uncomfortable, unthinkable, unimaginable, inconceivable," those are the words Maryland States Attorney Beau Oglesby used to describe what Steve Molin did to his 85-year-old mother, Emily, in nearby Berlin last August.

As awful as it is to contemplate, Oglesby said in his opening statement to a jury of 8 women and 4 men, "family members steal from other family members. Husbands beat their wives. Fathers molest their daughters" and "sons do murder their mothers."
Molin stands of accused of "intentionally" killing his mother late on the night of Aug. 31, "running her over multiple times" with his work truck.

But what Oglesby called a "willful, deliberate and premedidated," act, defense attorney Burton Anderson called a tragic "accident."

In his opening statement to the jury, Anderson said the prosecution was attempting to "put a square peg into a round hole."
He said his client spent his entire adult life living with and ultimately taking care of his mother.

"Everything he did, included her," Anderson told the jury.

He brought his mother down here that day to visit the town where she grew up and to visit relatives and his father's grave.
He said that on the night in question, somehow the passenger door Emily Molin was sitting next somehow opened and "she fell into the roadway."

He said a distracted Molin, backed the truck up, felt it run over her, and then pulled forward running over her again.
"This was an accident," said Anderson. "I don't care what the pictures show or how they twist the evidence or how they pick and choose their words to fit the story...

"This is a case of the blind leading the blind," Anderson told the jury, "and the question is will you follow."

The prosecution's first witness was Jane Ervin, a Delaware County process server. She testified that when she attempted to serve a emergency court order in Aug 2009, - an order that required Mrs. Molin to be removed from her Darby home and placed in a nursing home - her son became agitated.

"I'd kill her before I'd let you people have her," Ervin quoted Molin as saying.

A little more than a year later, she was killed in what was either an accident or a homicide.
Roberta Wilson an investigator from COSA, testified that after 10 to 15 visits during the summer of 2009, it was determined that Mrs. Molin, who suffered from dementia and Alzheimer's was not being properly cared for at her home and needed institutionalization.

During jury selection, Molin, wearing a white shirt, tie and dark slacks, quietly stood with his hands clasped in front of him looking absurdly innocent, his thatched and unruly hair, going off in all directions.

A handful of people, some who will be character witnesses, drove the three hours down from Delco to lend him support.
Roy Rasnake of Essington and Lou Zigmund of Upper Chichester were there.

Zigmund, a retired music teacher from Darby said Molin was a special education student at his Darby High, when he was there. What he remembered about Steve was that though being special ed student, he built a beautiful grandfather's clock in shop.
He even got his picture in the paper for it.

Both men said Steve, a plumber by trade, has done work for them, good work, at reasonable prices.
"We want to let him know that there are still people who care about him," said Rasnake.

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