Mr Lengyel-Leahu. the lead counsel for the elected vestry, does appear to have scored two tactical victories over Messrs Lancaster and Anastasia. In the first, he called Mrs Bush as a witness. Mr Lancaster strenuously objected to this, saying that Mrs Bush was a witness for his side, and he hadn't decided whether to call her himself. The judge ruled that Mrs Bush was on the joint witness list, and either side could call her; Mr Lengyel-Leahu could treat her as an adverse witness.
Mrs Bush's testimony resulted in at least one additional tactical win: Mr Lengyel-Leahu began to elicit testimony from her on how the dissidents, at her direction, had changed the locks on the parish, prevented the elected vestry from receiving mail at the parish, and otherwise denied the elected vestry use or control of the facilities. Mr Lancaster objected that this testimony was irrelevant. Mr Lengyel-Leahu responded that part of the case the appeals court had remanded for retrial was the issue of forcible detainer, and Mrs Bush, by her testimony, was establishing her intent to deny the legitimate owners the use and control of the property.
Judge Strobel then proposed to Mr Lancaster that if he would stipulate that Mr Lengyel-Leahu had proved the elements of forcible detainer, Mrs Bush's further testimony on this issue was unnecessary. Thus Mr Lancaster had a bad choice: either allow continued testimony on how Mrs Bush was preventing the elected vestry from accessing the parish, or stipulate that Mrs Bush and the ACA had in fact met the criteria for forcible detainer. Mr Lancaster elected to stipulate. Should Judge Strobel's opinion eventually go against him, her job would be simplified in resolving the case.
The trial then reverted to the prior day's pattern of plodding, repetitious questioning of each elected vestry member. Mr Anastasia did most of this today. Each member was subjected to 30 to 45 minutes of questioning on whether their signature on a particular document was their own, whether they understood they were signing under penalty of perjury, and so forth, over and over for perhaps half a dozen documents for each witness.
My wife, a retired attorney, was with me today, and we're both true crime and trial buffs. Neither of us could understand where this line of repetitious questioning was supposed to lead. Neither, apparently, could Judge Strobel: her facial expressions during these periods seemed to range from boredom to impatience to barely concealed rage. My wife thinks it may have been Mr Lancaster's goal to expose minor inadvertencies in preparation of this or that set of meeting minutes or agendas that could be exploited to show that one or another action by the elected vestry was invalid. Another object may have been to frighten witnesses into uncertainty over their testimony in prior declarations to make them recant or disagree with other witnesses. This did not happen.
However, the effect of repeated questioning of elected vestry witnesses seemed, as far as my wife and I could see, to draw a picture of sincere and generally capable individuals who were doing the best they could under difficult circumstances created, by and large, by Mrs Bush and the ACA. The body language of Mr Lengyel-Leahu and Mmes Greer and Rineer suggested they are confident in their case.
Mr Anastasia will finish up his session with a final elected vestry member tomorrow morning, and final arguments are scheduled for 2:00 PM.
