Alva trial: Day 3

After two days of prosecution testimony, video and audio recordings, the defense in the Naomi Lee Alva murder trail opened it’s case with a witness who didn’t utter a word.

“Could you step over here please,” defense attorney Michael McLeaish said, pointing Johnnie Joe Oranday to a spot a few feet away from the jury box.

For a few seconds, the bald, hulking Oranday, wearing a blue work shirt and jeans, looked over the panel of six men and six women.

“That’s all I have,” McLeaish said.

Oranday also faces murder charges related to the June 18, 2006, shooting death of Adrian Ramirez Garza in West Odessa. But the witnesses McLeaish called who don’t have Fifth Amendment protection from testifying weren’t able to say much more.

McLeaish attempted to get testimony from Nancy Vanley, a counselor at the Career Center, about a spring 2006 incident involving Jesse McGinnis she counseled Alva about.

But objections from Ector County District Attorney Bobby Bland kept much information from coming out. He said they were discussing an “isolated attempt to mislead the jury.”

“Anything that happened between Naomi and Jesse McGinnis in the spring of 2006 is completely irrelevant in this case,” Bland said.

McGinnis was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in July.

McLeaish also brought Vikki Drennan, a crime scene investigator with the sheriff’s office, to discuss three 32-caliber cartridge cases. The cases were sent for testing along with the 9-millimeter shells found at the home in the 300 block of North Essex Street known as the “Play-boy Mansion,” where Garza was shot.

McLeaish was interested in knowing if the 32-caliber cases were related to the Garza shooting, but, Drennan told him they were recovered elsewhere as part of a separate Odessa Police Department investigation.

Testimony in the trial is ex-pected to conclude tomorrow. The trial resumes at 9 a.m. Friday in the 70th District Courtroom at the Ector County Courthouse.

As the last witness before the state rested its case, Jenna Kimberlin Donnelly told of the phone calls Ector County Sheriff’s Office investigators asked her to make to Alva on June 19, 2006.

In the calls, Alva repeatedly tells Donnelly to tell investigators that she went to watch movies with Alva the night of the shooting.

As the calls played, Alva, wearing black pants and a black, hooded sweatshirt, placed her face into her left hand at the defense table.

Donnelly and friend Caleb Dopp also testified to time then spent with Alva and McGinnis in the hours after the shooting.

Alva was her normal, hyper self in telling Donnelly about the shootings, which happened after Donnelly fought former Alva friend Sarah Kiskaden earlier in the night, they testified.

“They got that fat (expletive),” she recalled Alva saying of Garza. “The bullet was meant for Sarah, but he got what he deserved.”

After the state rested, McLeaish made a motion to dismiss the case. McLeaish claimed the evidence in the case was factually and legally insufficient to warrant a murder charge because Alva neither shot Garza nor ordered the shooting.

Judge Denn Whalen thanked McLeaish and dismissed the motion.