Heat City

I’m forced to be away from the courtroom of the Serial Shooter trial today due to some other reporting obligations. But you can still catch the trial live through a streaming video feed provided by KTVK-TV (Channel 3). Click here to watch. Enjoy.

Samuel Dietman

Live from the courtroom: After all the craziness surrounding the testimony of Joetta Gonzales, the jury had a number of questions they wanted answered. In Marciopa County courts, they get to write down their questions on sheets of paper and hand them to the judge to be asked by him.

Chief among their questions today: Did Gonzales and Dieteman ever smoke methamphetamine together?

During his testimony earlier this month, Dieteman already talked in depth about his addiction to meth and alcohol before his arrest. With the jury out of the room, Steinle asked Gonzales about drug use. She admitted to smoking meth with Dieteman but said they had not used the drug together during the period of time she was testifying about.

Judge Roland Steinle decided that the fact wasn’t relevant to her testimony, and so the jury didn’t get a chance to hear the answer to their question.

Defense attorney Ken Everett questions a witness in the opening days of the trial of his client, Serial Shooter suspect Dale Hausner. Everett was fined today by Judge Roland Steinle. Pool photo

Live from the courtroom: Joetta Gonzales, one of the key witnesses in Dale Hausner’s defense, just admitted to discussing her testimony with another witness in the case, a violation of one of the big rules of the trial.

Gonzales testified this morning that her friend, Samuel Dieteman, talked to her about shooting a bicycle rider with somebody besides Hausner. The testimony would support the defense team’s theory that Dieteman, who has confessed to two murders and numerous other shootings, was the Serial Shooter and that Hausner had nothing to do with it.

Samuel Dieteman

Live from the courtroom: A witness who took the stand just before the lunch break dropped a big surprise about Samuel Dieteman, the man who authorities say was Dale Hausner’s accomplice for many of the shootings.

Joetta Gonzales, who described Dieteman as “my best friend,” said that the 33-year-old confided in her that he had shot a man on a bicycle. However, he told her the shooting was not with Hausner, but with a man named Lenny Constable.

“He told me about shooting a man on a bicycle,” Gonzales testified. “He told me he was with Lenny Constable.”

Gonzales did not say what the date of this supposed shooting was, or what the motive might have been. However, she repeatedly described Constable as “a bad man.”

Dale Hausner looks on as a witness testifies in his eight-count murder trial in Phoenix. Pool photo

Live from the courtroom: Dale Hausner’s attorneys began their defense this morning for the 35-year-old Mesa man accused of being Arizona’s infamous Serial Shooter. Things, however, did not start off well.

The first witness to testify in Hausner’s defense was Melissa Lupton, who attended ABC Bartending School in Tempe a couple months after he did in 2005. The defense called her to ask about her experience at the school, which included a run in with her instructor and Hausner’s former friend, John Kane. Lupton said she was sexually harassed by Kane, and authorities have accused Hausner of shooting up a car believed to be hers as revenge for blowing the whistle on Kane.