Case bewilders a seasoned observer

I just reported what the juror said. I didn't see it. I was watching the teenage witnesses, who told of living on Dumaine Street without parents, taking care of a toddler and a 1-year-old baby while accepting visits from young boys they liked. The verdict was the story, along with the glimpse into a lonely 6th Ward life for these girls.

The key witness grinned and retreated in her chair when deBlanc asked her to identify the shooter. "Don't show me his face," the girl said, laughing the way kids do when they are put on the spot.

At trial, the defense team argued that her statement showed she wasn't sure who she saw run alongside Shavers' Malibu and fire twice -- if she even did. The girls were called liars by the defense, like so many witnesses are. That's a part of trial. The jury "rendered a verdict," acquitting Bonds. But what the panel of nine women and three men really did was make a decision. Even a murder verdict comes down to simply making a call.

I left the courthouse in devastation, not over which side I thought was right or whether Bonds is a killer. I don't know. I can't know. I wasn't there.

I stomped down the stairs outside Tulane and Broad and headed toward an abandoned parking lot, where I dropped my work bags and allowed myself a few moments to weep for a city that took me in, on Christmas night 2000.

But reporters can't cry in court. For a million legitimate reasons. My favorite one is because none of this trauma that I absorb has anything to do with me. I am but a messenger, a spectator with only words to use as description.

I didn't know who killed Shavers. And as the days transpired, I didn't know what to say when friends and acquaintances angrily demanded an explanation. "Why'd they let him off?" I was asked. "What happened?"

I don't know. I am charged only to watch and send my dispatches out into the newsprint and computer screens.

"You were there that night?" a friend asked.

Yes, I was there. But I arrived to find only a stranger's corpse and the vacant, lonely Christmas lights that reminded me, in all their unabashed modesty, that I was in a neighborhood of families.

The trial taught me that those families are struggling. That children are so alone. As alone as they were on a witness stand, with so many people counting on them alone to "put away" another killer.

We're fearful for good reason. But even I, with eight years and more murder trials than I can count anymore, can't tell you who killed Shavers.

I got there too late. God help us, we all did.

. . . . . . .

Gwen Filosa is a staff writer. She can be reached at gfilosa@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3304.

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