Trial begins, defendant’s mother to testify

LIHUE — Attorneys presented opening statements Monday afternoon in the trial of a homeless woman accused of heroin possession. Today, prosecutors will call her mother as their first witness.

Julia Scriven, 31, was arrested last year and charged with promotion of a dangerous drug — a class C felony — after her mother found her sleeping in a motel room near a bag containing heroin and called police.

The case is unusual, not only because the state’s star witness is the defendant’s own mother, but because of the fact that it went to trial in the first place. The vast majority of all cases end in plea bargains, and cases with charges as relatively insignificant as this one are almost always settled in pretrial negotiations.

Attorneys on both sides declined to comment on whether Scriven was offered a plea deal at some point in the 13 months since her arrest and would not offer an explanation as to why exactly this particular case is being resolved by jury trial.

Kauai County Deputy Prosecutor Leon Davenport began trial proceedings Monday afternoon in Fifth Circuit Court with an opening statement addressed to a panel of jurors — eight women and four men selected from among a pool of Kauai residents earlier in the day.

Davenport said Scriven’s mother, Laurie Scriven, came to Kauai after learning her daughter had been “going through a hard time.” After arriving in Lihue, Laurie Scriven met up with her sister, the defendant’s aunt, and the two women checked into a motel.

Davenport said Laurie Scriven invited her daughter to the motel room for a visit and almost immediately became concerned about the young woman’s behavior.

“She knew something wasn’t right,” Davenport said, telling the jurors that Laurie Scriven noticed her daughter acting unusually tired and speaking in a low voice.

After Julia Scriven declined an invitation from her aunt and mother to go out for dinner, preferring instead to stay alone in the hotel room where she could rest, the two older women left the room and went to a nearby restaurant, according to Davenport.

“But something wasn’t sitting right with Laurie,” Davenport said describing a hunch that compelled the two women to return to their room less than an hour later. Laurie Scriven knocked on the door of the motel room, having left the only key behind. Receiving no response, she started knocking louder, eventually yelling her daughter’s name and pounding on the door with her fist, Davenport said.

When there was still no answer, Davenport said Laurie Scriven finally resorted to breaking into her own motel room. Afraid that something terrible had happened to her daughter, Laurie Scriven broke out part of a glass window and was able to reach in and turn the doorknob.

Davenport told jurors that Laurie Scriven entered the room and found her daughter unconscious and unresponsive, her breathing slow and shallow. Near the bed, she found a brown bag containing used needles and a “small, black globule” made of a substance that “smelled like licorice.”

Laurie Scriven called police, and officers arrived to find Julia Scriven still unconscious. Further inspection of the bag on the motel room floor revealed rubber straps, more needles and identification belonging to Julia Scriven. According to police, chemical analysis of the “small, black, licorice-smelling globule” later identified the substance as heroin.

Julia Scriven’s court-appointed defense attorney, Matthew Mannisto, gave an entirely different account of events leading to his client’s arrest.

“Julia went to sleep, and when she woke up, she was surrounded by police,” Mannisto said, telling jurors that Scriven was the victim of a plot concocted by her own mother.

In his version of the story, Mannisto said Laurie Scriven planted the substance purported to be black tar heroin in the motel room after her daughter fell asleep and called police, knowing they would find the bag containing documents with Julia Scriven’s name on them along with an illegal substance.

“She wanted her daughter to be investigated by police,” Mannisto said. “And she did what she could to make that happen.”

Scriven’s trial resumes today. Her mother is scheduled to arrive on Kauai this morning and will be the first witness to take the stand.