If you watch this clip from the beginning, you'll hear a lot of chit-chat that needs some decoding (provided below) in order to become interesting. But if you jump ahead to about 3:20, you'll hear something that needs no decoding: Isaiah M. Kalebu starting to get upset.
Kalebu, angered by an apparent delay in the start date for his upcoming trial on charges of threatening to kill his mother, can be seen in this video expressing serious unhappiness with his defense attorney and then explaining to the court his theory of the case.
"It's not gonna go to trial," he says. "It's gonna be dismissed. My mother already indicated the fact that she wishes not to testify so you guys are just wasting my time at this point. All we need to do is set the date, we have the date, she decides not to testify, and that's the end of it. So we're just going through the motions right now and I don't really see the point in all this."
Prosecutor Zac Hostetter disagrees. "We're not dismissing this case," he says.
Then Judge Brian Gain sticks with the delayed trial date.
But there's something else going on in this video. It's not just about a delayed trial date and a flash of frustration from Kalebu. It's also about Kalebu's mental state.
Remember that on July 13, ten days before this hearing, Judge Gain set Kalebu free despite concerns from Hostetter about Kalebu's mental stability and his recent run-ins with the law.
When he did this, Judge Gain also ordered that Kalebu reappear in court in about two weeks and present an update from his mental health treatment provider.
According to police and prosecutors, well before those two weeks were up Kalebu murdered Teresa Butz after raping her and her partner in the early morning hours of July 19. But that was unknown at the time of this hearing. All Judge Gain knew was that he'd released Kalebu on certain conditions on July 13. Then, a week later, Kalebu had shown up in Judge Gain's courtroom with his pit bull to talk trial dates. Now, two days after that, here was Kalebu again to discuss trial dates—and his defense attorney was using the occasion to ask for more time to provide the mental health update.
Something caused Judge Gain to hold very firm on the mental health question. He interrupted the defense attorney's request for more time, saying: "I need to see [the mental health update]... I need to be assured that he is in mental health treatment and is taking medication or I can't take the risk of having him out of custody."
In hindsight, of course, it's clear that Judge Gain had already taken the risk. If the charges against Kalebu prove true, it will have been a risk that led to the murder of Teresa Butz.
When the hearing shown in this video was over, Kalebu was left with five more days to present his mental health update to the court. However, by the end of the next day, after a series of quick developments, Kalebu was in custody, charged with raping Butz and her partner at knife-point and then stabbing them both—Butz fatally.
One other thing that's going on in the video. When Kalebu was arrested on rape and murder charges he was wearing a green coat, and on that green coat, according to police, was blood. If it was the same green coat that he's wearing in this video, and if there was indeed blood on it, and if it turns out that the blood was from the murder of Teresa Butz, then this video is showing us something chilling: a man, standing in the court of the judge who freed him, wearing the blood of a woman who he used that freedom to kill.
Tomorrow: An older—and bigger—courtroom outburst from Kalebu.
Video wizardry: Kelly O
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