Summations in the Realtor to the Stars murder trial were thrown into tumult this morning when a defense lawyer’s floor-slapping reenactment of the bludgeoning sent the victim’s daughter running from the courtroom in tears.
“Whoever had her down on the ground stomped her,” the lawyer, Thomas Giovanni, told jurors, beginning his reenactment by stomping his foot onto an imaginary Linda Stein — the A-list broker murdered in her Park Avenue apartment two years ago.
Giovanni was trying to show jurors that the crime was so gory, the “real murderer” would have been covered in blood. Accused killer Natavia Lowery was caught on surveillance tape leaving Stein’s apartment building wearing the same apparently unsplattered beige cargo pants she had on upon entering.
But prosecutors are expected to argue this afternoon that the same tape shows Lowery had turned the cargo pants inside out before leaving — and that the pants were never recovered.
Inside out or outside in, “It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference,” Giovanni told jurors.
Then the lawyer got down on one knee in front of the court stenographer and started pounding the green linoleum, hard, with the flat of his right hand.
“One. Two. Three,” he started, working toward the full complement of two-dozen blows a coroner testified Stein suffered.
But before he got to ten, Stein’s eldest daughter, Samantha, began sobbing audibly in her second row seat. By 12, she was running out of the courtroom.
“That was only 16,” Giovanni said, halting the demonstration.
“I’m extremely sorry that I had to do that in front of Mandy Stein,” he said, naming the younger sister.
“But the reality is, we have to continue this case and no matter their loss, this is a trial.”
Further dramatics were averted when Lowery’s mother and stepfather attempted to take Lowery’s year-old, toddler daughter into the courtroom, but turned back after seeing news photographers in the hallway.
Giovanni told jurors that the case is wholly circumstantial and was bungled by cops who focused on Lowery to the exclusion of any other possible suspect, including roofers who had argued with Stein over noise and had access to Stein’s fire escape and back stairway.
He also argued that Lowery’s confession — in which she sobs “I wasn’t myself” in admitting to the slaying — was coerced by cops and is at any rate so riddled with lies as to be discountable in its entirety.
Lowery faces up to 25 to life if convicted of murder, and up to 25 determinate if convicted of manslaughter.