Jury starts to receive testimony

The testimony by a crime victim’s mother led-off the Oconee General Sessions trial – South Carolina vs. Tony Avella Sanders.  The defendant is charged with burglary third degree, petty larceny at a Walhalla-Westminster Highway property that the owner intended to renovate a house for living purposes.  In an opening statement to the jury, the prosecutor blamed Sanders and a second individual with breaking into an outer shed and stealing items that Benny Paul Blackwell had accumulated during his lifetime with the intent of moving those belongings into the house which he planned to renovate.  Sanders’ defense attorney, however, said her client acted only as a good Samaritan and had offered to help the second man help load an ATV ramp in exchange for the second man attending to Sanders’ dead battery.  According to his lawyer, the defendant sat in jail 230 days awaiting trial.  But when the lawyer said that to the jury, the prosecution immediately objected, and the judge sustained the objection.  Judge McIntosh instructed the jury to disregard anything about how long Sanders had been jailed, explaining that a reference to that does not belong during the trial stage.  The defense lawyer told the judge she thought that she could properly make such a statement during opening arguments in a trial.