Kerry Armstrong just pulled off a dramatic victory in a three-week stalking retrial in Vista, following his previous courtroom triumph three weeks ago where he secured a win in a 30-to-life child molestation case. The Judge, likely inspired by Kerry’s magic touch, immediately dismissed the stalking case under Penal Code 1385—much to the chagrin of the DDA.
Case Summary
The whole mess started back in the fall of 2020 when the client’s wife decided enough was enough, citing his anger issues and serial infidelity as the final straw. Despite this, he agreed to move out of the house she owned before they ever met (which, let’s be real, was probably a good move).
He then proceeded to flood her with hundreds of texts, emails, and voice notes over the following months, all aimed at winning her back (spoiler: it didn’t work). He also ignored her request to leave her alone and showed up at the house several times, allegedly yelling and berating her. There were no direct threats, but the prosecution managed to slip in past instances where the client had been physical with his wife, presenting that as an implied threat.
The real pièce de résistance was the client’s creative approach to a TRO declaration in October 2020. In an attempt to get his wife and her two kids kicked out of her own house, he claimed she had “abused” him a month earlier—except, as it turned out, he hadn’t even seen her on that day.
To top it off, he set up hidden surveillance cameras around the house, capturing footage of her in her underwear. Kerry, ever the diplomat, argued that his client had every right to install the cameras in a house he had equity in (because he helped remodel it). However, the jury, unsurprisingly, was not a fan of the “spy cam” strategy.
Despite the client’s clear lack of credibility—what with his little TRO fib—Kerry didn’t let up. On cross-examination, he chipped away at the wife’s story, exposing her own series of lies to law enforcement in her TRO declaration, during the TRO trial in 2021, at the preliminary hearing, and even at the first trial in October 2023 (which ended in a hung jury with an 8-4 vote for guilty). Kerry reports he cross-examined the wife for a grueling four hours, leaving her looking absolutely deflated by the end. To really drive the point home, he played a video showing her attempting to kick down his office door from a year prior. Her face turned the color of a ghost when it hit the courtroom, and the jury was all ears.
The Results
After seven-and-a-half hours of deliberations filled with numerous jury notes, the jury finally admitted they were hung. With the mistrial declared, the judge dismissed the case. The jury then revealed it was a 10-2 vote for guilty, but—plot twist—some jurors confessed to Kerry that just a few hours earlier they were hung 10-2 for not guilty. Talk about a plot twist.
The DDA tried to convince the Judge to let her re-try the case, but the court shut it down before Kerry even had a chance to throw in his two cents. Classic.
Kerry says, that while he’s thrilled to have the case dismissed, he’s even more thrilled at the thought of not having to endure the nearly four-hour round-trip drive from Bonita to Vista every day for trial.
Kerry L. Armstrong
Rate this Post
Loading...