Reporter’s Notebook: Behind the scenes in the SFPD beating trial

The first seven days of the landmark use-of-force trial of Officer Terrance Stangel have been subdued, with no grand reveals and instead just a careful elicitation of testimony from more than a dozen witnesses. 

Still, there is the drama of the courtroom, with the prosecution and defense each trying to make their points and establish credibility with the jury. And the trial, generally believed to be the first in the modern era in which an on-duty police officer faces criminal charges for excessive use of force, has already instigated the highly-publicized (and ongoing) fallout between the District Attorney Chesa Boudin and Police Chief William Scott. 

Oddly, however, there seems to be little public interest. Most days, the audience is generally sparse, including some spectators from the families of witnesses, other lawyers, and a couple of concerned, white-haired citizens. Only when the defense brought a use-of-force expert to the stand did the audience grow, as uniformed and plainclothes police officers filled the squeaky wooden seats. 

Those called to testify have all clearly been trained on how to respond to questioning on the stand, and each witness deftly avoids the questions they can’t answer (or don’t want to). Sometimes, attorneys are visibly frustrated after a line of questioning leads up to a climactic question, only to have the witness decline to answer. 

At other times, the attorneys can’t seem to fathom the witnesses’ responses. Defense attorney Nicole Pifari seemed confounded by the on-and-off-again relationship between the victim, Dacari Spiers, and his girlfriend, Breonna Richard. Rebecca Young, longtime public defender and one of three prosecuting attorneys from the District Attorney’s office, appeared bewildered that a witness, Officer Gonee Sepulveda, failed to interview people who witnessed the police use-of-force incident, saying it wasn’t her official duty to do so. 

For his part, Stangel, the defendant, sits next to his attorney, day by day, staring ahead, dressed in a suit and tie. He rarely varies his expression and, in seven days in the courtroom, this reporter only once saw him participate: when San Francisco Superior Court Judge Teresa M. Caffese asked Pifari on Thursday whether she wanted to cross-examine the prosecution’s final witness for the Nth time, Pifari looked to Stangel. The officer moved his shoulders with  a tiny, almost imperceptible shrug. 

No further questions, Pifari told the judge. 

Defensive tactics

Stangel’s lone defender, Pifari, a former police officer from Montana, does the heavy lifting. The graduate of University of California, Hastings, Law School is blunt and tough as she tries to discredit or undermine the prosecution’s witnesses. When Dacari Spiers, the victim of the 2019 beating that left him with two broken bones, took the witness stand, she used simple intimidation. 

You said, “You thought you got away, didn’t you?” Pifari asked Spiers, referring to the conversation she imagined Spiers had with his girlfriend that provoked a 911 call and sent police to the scene.

The fact that Spiers and his girlfriend were neither fighting nor touching one another when the officers arrived mattered little to Pifari. 

She continued to reconstruct the scene: You said, “I got you now, bitch,” she insisted. 

“You said, ‘You ain’t goin’ no motherfuckin’ where,’ didn’t you?”

While antagonistic with many of the witnesses, Pifari proved accommodating and gentle with the police officers who took the witness stand, joking with Stangel’s partner Officer Cuauhtémoc Martínez and running her hand across Stangel’s back as she maneuvered around him. 

Whenever she plays video footage of the 911 call or the encounter that ended with Spiers’ beating, Pifari invites one of the jurors, who has poor eyesight, to come forward to a special chair so that she can see clearly. 

Unlike the prosecution’s attorneys, Pifari has a penchant for drama: She moves around, gestures while she speaks, and changes her tone depending on who she’s quoting. Lines alleged to be said by Spiers land harsh and aggressive, while she injects a fearful intonation into out-loud interpretations of officers’ thoughts and feelings: Stangel, watching his partner “hanging on for dear life,” knew “this guy was too big, too strong,” and so he pulled out his baton. 

Pifari creates imagery for the jury’s benefit. Martínez was “thrown around like a rag doll,” she said on more than one occasion, even though no evidence of this exists. 

The defense attorney interjects often to object to the prosecution’s line of questioning. But she also intervenes when a witness tries to answer her questions, as she did repeatedly Thursday with the prosecution’s use-of-force expert. His answers, she cut in several times to inform him, were too long-winded and indirect. 

The witness was Roger Clark, and she attempted to chip away at his credibility with backhanded commentary woven into her questions. On Thursday, for example, Pifari wondered about Clark’s law enforcement experience from a bygone era, testing his encyclopedic knowledge of police practices. 

So, she asked, the last time you physically arrested someone was about 35 years ago, in the mid-’80s? 

Prosecution 

The three prosecutors have taken a calmer, more collected approach. Rebecca Young, a public defender for more than 18 years before joining the office of the District Attorney, was stern and maternal with Richard, the former girlfriend Spiers was with on the night of the beating. When Richard sobbed, Young consoled her. 

Assistant District Attorney Hans Moore, coiffed and wearing a patterned scarf, brings some vivacity and physicality to the courtroom. He whipped out Stangel’s metal police baton during his opening statement. He got on the floor to demonstrate Spiers’ fetal position as he was being beaten. He called Officer Joshua Cabillo down from the witness stand to simulate the officer’s position of advantage on the floor. 

When Spiers took the stand, Moore asked him down from the stand to demonstrate how he and Richard had hugged and “waddled” together that night. Spiers clasped his hands around Moore’s waist to demonstrate the embrace Spiers and his girlfriend were in when the 911 caller saw them. 

“You can hold on,” Moore said to Spiers over his shoulder. “We’re not done yet.” 

Moore can unintentionally get a laugh, too. At one point he asked Cabillo, another police officer who responded to the scene in 2019, about POST, the Peace Officer Standards and Training that California police officers learn: 

Moore: You’re not familiar with POST? 

Cabillo: Oh, yes. Sorry, I thought you said “toast.”

Assistant District Attorney Lateef Gray, though he does a large part of the questioning, is soft-spoken, sometimes to the point of being inaudible. On the first day of trial, the University of Michigan Law School graduate asked “leading” questions of the witness, to Pifari’s continuous objections. 

With the slightest hint of exasperation, Gray would restate his question, then do the same thing again. 

Judge and jury

Judge Caffese is generally a warm presence overseeing the courtroom, but occasionally appears fed up with the attorneys’ antics. On Thursday, arms outstretched, she asked-ordered, “Why don’t we just all calm down?” 

Earlier in the trial, as the attorneys from both sides bickered over a  point, Caffese asked: “Do you guys want to talk for a while and I’ll come back when you’re done?”

And another day, to more laughter from the jury, Caffese asked: “Does anyone want my ruling?” 

It’s unclear how the jurors are taking in all of this: The styles of the attorneys, the testimony they hear. They sit attentively, heads turning to catch every word. Some take avid notes, others ask questions. As early as this week, the case will be handed over to them.