By David Oscar Markus
CourtTV has some background on this fascinating pro se murder defendant:
Tomasz Kosowski, 47, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of first-degree murder in the death of Steven Cozzi, 41, who disappeared in March 2023. Cozzi was representing a group of people being sued by Kosowski at the time of his disappearance; prosecutors say Kosowski, angry and frustrated over the lawsuit, killed the victim in a bathroom at Cozzi’s law firm. Kosowski, a Dartmouth Medical School graduate, is representing himself at trial and has waived his right to a jury, meaning Judge Joseph Bulone will decide his fate.
I love his cross:
During Tuesday’s cross-examination, Kosowski focused on what prosecutors said he did: kill the victim in the bathroom, then load the body into a Gorilla Cart that he wheeled to his truck. Then, prosecutors said, Kosowski eventually moved the body to a second car, drove it to a dumpster and disposed of it. Despite extensive search efforts, Cozzi’s remains have never been found.
"How did I get that Gorilla Cart onto the truck?” Kosowski asked. “From what I recall, [Cozzi] weighed about 190 pounds,” Bolton said. “It’s a movable amount of weight. It can be lifted. It was in a wagon. But that’s an amount of weight that can be picked up and put in the bed of a truck.”
Kosowski: “Are you physically fit?”
Bolton: “I would think so.”
Kosowski: “Do you exercise?”
Bolton: “I do.”
Kosowski: “Do you lift weights?”
Bolton: “I do.”
Kosowski: “OK, would you be willing to help in a demonstration?”
Bolton: “Yeah, I could. Sure.”
Kosowski pointed at a desk in the room and said it measured 30 inches high—close to his Tundra’s 28 inches. “I would say that’s a pretty good analog, maybe a little bit less, of the height that somebody would have to lift a person to load it onto the Toyota tailgate,” Kosowski said. “Now, we have a Gorilla Cart in evidence right now. What I propose we do is that we take that Gorilla Cart, we ask for a volunteer that’s approximately 190, 195 pounds to get into that Gorilla Cart. And I would like you to lift that Gorilla Cart with that person onto the desk.”
Prosecutors objected to the proposed demonstration; Bulone sustained it, saying that Kosowski had made his point. But the defendant wasn’t done. “He’s telling you,” Kosowski said, pointing at Bolton, “that I committed the murder, and he’s trying to kill me for it,” he added, pointing to the prosecution team. “That is their theory. The least they have to do now is show me that this is plausible. Now, because of my career, I know what it’s like to transfer 195-pound people all the time because I transfer people from … OR tables to gurneys all the time, all right? If your theory is real, you should have no problem lifting that cart up with a 195-pound person onto that desk.”
Bulone again denied Kosowski’s request but said he would consider it.
But why was the objection sustained??
16 comments:
Kosowski is a clear thinker and I think he’s actually in a better position now than if the objection had been overruled. Had it been overruled, there’s a slim chance the witness could have done the lift. But they objected because they knew the witness couldn’t do it and Kosowski will make sure the jurors know that when he closes. As far as why it was sustained, probably for the same reason a prosecution objection to OJ trying on the glove would have been sustained had the defense attempted that. So that’s why Johnnie Cochran got the government to do it.
Bench trial. No jurors. He’s screwed.
Johnny didn't get the government to do it. Chris Darden decided to do it. It was one of a series of blunders that allowed a killer to go free despite the overwhelming evidence do guilt. Before you jump on this, I agree that it is better that 10 guilty people go free than 1 innocent person be sent to prison.
Although the judge didn't expressly say why he sustained to objection, I believe that the prosecutor objected on grounds of relevance, and I'm not sure that whether this witness could lift the cart, with someone more or less 195 pounds in it, onto a desk, is relevant to whether Kosowski did what he did. The judge certainly was in his discretion to sustain the objection based on, among other things, its probative value being substantially outweighed by other factors. Just as, to add to the prior comment, any probative value by OJ's (performatively) not being able to fit on the glove over latex gloves was massively outweighed by a host of factors that would have permitted that demonstration to be excluded, too.
“Do you think we have access to Cellebrite in the jail?”
Any regjb prosecutor from the 70s-80s would tell you pro se defendants were the hardest to convict.
Per the late F. Lee Bailey, he goaded Darden into having OJ try on the glove and the rest is history.... Truly an awful blunder in what was the trial of the century. I think Bailey talked about this in the podcast interview he did with DOM a few years ago.
It was sustained because whether some witness could lift 195 pounds into a cart tells you absolutely nothing as to whether the defendant could.
Judge should have let it in. He created a possible issue for appeal unnecessarily given that he is the trier of fact in this case.
Oh, yeah, sure. The judge should have allowed a witness potentially seriously injure himself trying to lift a 190-pound member of the gallery in a shopping cart, even though doing so would be entirely irrelevant to the case and even though no appellate judge in the nation would conclude that sustaining the objection constituted reversible error. What's the phrase you see in appellate decisions? Our system demands that criminal defendants are given fair trials, not perfect ones.
Why is it irrelevant if the State says he would have had to do that to commit the crime?
Also you see that phrase in appellate decisions to excuse BS affirmances. Judge should rule the right way. I'm sure this case won't be reversed over it, but the trial judge should rule the right way because that's what the justice system is supposed to be. There is no reason defendant should not be able to demonstrate that the State's theorized manner of committing the crime is not possible. Just like if the defense had a BS claim the State would be able to do a demonstration/reenactment to prove that it was BS. That's what the caselaw says, as long as demo is substantially similar to crime which it certainly seems it was here, it is admissible.
Guilty: ‘Killer’ Surgeon: Judge Delivers Shockingly Fast Verdict
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okoqisJWuwQ
@3:04, it is irrelevant because whether the witness could lift the weight is not probative of any fact or element in dispute. The relevant question is whether Kosowski lifted the weight.
@9:18 - bingo. Well said. If you try hard enough, you can argue almost anything is 'relevant' in some weird, tangential way. That doesn't cut it. In any event, the obvious risk of injury to the witness (and the proposed participant from the gallery) is effectively dispositive on this one.
If only the judge had let the weigh-lifting demonstration in, I'm sure he would have come back with a not guilty.
I always thought the glove part of the trial was way overblown. Powerful, yes, but the real moment was when Furman perjured himself and took the 5th.
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