Opening Arguments Begin Ennis Cosby Trial

SANTA MONICA, Calif. - A prosecutor opened her case against Mikail Markhasev today by seeking to prove through his own jailhouse writings that he is the killer of Ennis Cosby, pointing out that the defendant himself wrote it was "a robbery gone bad."

In her opening statement, Deputy District Attorney Anne Ingalls reconstructed for jurors the scene at the side of the road where Cosby was shot to death. And, with friends and family of Bill Cosby in the courtroom, she displayed graphic photos of the younger Cosby lying beside his car in a pool of blood.

The lawyer for the defendant said the case was a tragedy for both the Cosby and Markhasev families but insisted that police have charged the wrong man and that Markhasev is innocent.

By the end of the case, attorney Henry Hall said, "We will know who the killer is, and it's not him."

Ingalls quoted Markhasev as using a racial epithet in allegedly confessing that he committed the killing and saying, "It's all over the news."

Hall said that the racial epithet should not be part of the case.

"This case is not about racially charged issues, ethnicities or countries of origin," he said. ". . . It is about whether my client, Mr. Markhasev, is the person who shot and killed Ennis Cosby . . . This case is about a chance meeting. It's also a case full of mystery."

Bill Cosby, meanwhile, has said he wants dignity and due process in the trial.

Cameras are banned, lawyers aren't talking to the press, and the judge is determined to get a verdict in less than a month.

"I expect this case to go to the jury by July 10," Superior Court Judge David Perez said after selecting a jury at breakneck speed - a day and a half (because the lawyers did none of the questioning of prospective jurors).

Perez, a 22-year veteran of the bench, has also decreed no cameras will be in his courtroom because he does not want the trial to become a "TV episode."

Bill Cosby is not expected at the trial, although a large contingent of his family and friends appeared in the courtroom spectator section Thursday and are likely to be on hand for testimony.

During an appearance last weekend in Los Angeles, Cosby said "the family wants dignity" at the trial. Previously he and his wife, Camille, have said only that they want jurisprudence to take its course.

Cosby's only son, Ennis, a 27-year-old graduate student at Columbia University, was fatally shot Jan. 16, 1997, while changing a flat tire on a dark road in suburban Sepulveda Pass.

Markhasev, 19, a Ukrainian immigrant with a history of gang affiliations and a previous brush with the law, was arrested nearly two months later.

"It could be very interesting," Stan Goldman, Loyola University law professor, said of the case. "It's a high-profile trial with a mystery. If (Bill) Cosby was there every day, it would be a very big trial."

Perez has tried to restrict coverage of the Cosby case in every way possible, enforcing a gag order on lawyers and trying to seal all documents in the case until an appeals court reversed that decision.

Since then, the judge has upheld a number of First Amendment arguments by the press, including one to keep jury questionnaires public.

He had the court public-information officer distribute packets of rules to reporters, trying to control what they can and can't do.