Attorneys give closing arguments

  Attorneys for the prosecution and defense in the Kevin German murder trial completed closing arguments in the case Tuesday afternoon.
    District Judge Patrick Heng went over a list of 22 instructions for the jury to follow during their deliberations. Once that was complete, he handed the case over to them at 3:04 p.m. Tuesday, officially ending the trial.
    One of the jury’s first duties was to elect a presiding juror from among the 12. They deliberated until 5 p.m. Tuesday and returned to the jury room at 9 a.m. Wednesday.
    The trial spanned more than two weeks. Jury selection began July 18 and was completed July 20. The nine-day trial began the next day.
    German is charged with three Class 1A felonies—1st degree murder and two kidnapping charges.
    German’s charges stem from the November 2019 death of Annika Swanson, 22, of Imperial. German pled not guilty to all three charges.
    Closing arguments for both sides took more than four hours. The prosecution delivered their case first for the jury, followed by the defense. Prosecution then had another 10 minutes of rebuttal of the defense’s arguments.
    The state is represented by Assistant Nebraska Attorneys General Doug Warner and Mike Guinan.
    Clarence Mock, III and Denise Frost of Omaha represent German.
    (The closing arguments that follow are mostly written in the tense of the attorneys speaking directly to the jury and represent a condensed version of those arguments.)
Warner’s closing argument
    The case really started when Keonna Carter and Kevin German met on Tinder and hooked up. The relationship was off and on, going silent in September 2019.
    That’s when Eve Ambrosek of Imperial reached out to German, an old friend. She told him she was getting beaten by her baby’s dad, who lived with her in her mother’s house.
    German came to Imperial and picked up Ambrosek, an admitted meth addict. They took a road trip to California, Louisiana, returning back to Imperial.
    On their trip, German lied to Ambrosek about his relationship with Carter. In mid-October, Ambrosek broke up with German, who then reconnected with Carter.
    Previously, Ambrosek introduced German to her drug dealer, Russ Mann of Enders. German and Mann developed a sales relationship where Mann provided the meth and German the cocaine to sell to each other’s customers.
    In mid-November, Carter and German were in Imperial. Carter was at Mann’s trailer with Mann’s live-in, 22 year-old girlfriend Annika Swanson.
    A man stopped by the trailer, looking for Mann. He insulted the two women and Swanson got a gun from Mann’s bedroom and started waving it around.
    German and Mann returned to the trailer. German was concerned Swanson was texting and telling others about their drug business. He took her phone away as a result.
    That night, Ambrosek’s mother took her child away from her. Ambrosek needed to get ahold of meth and texted Swanson to see if she could arrange something with Mann.
    She thought she was texting Swanson when in reality, it was German who still had Swanson’s phone. She wanted to trade jewelry for meth.
    German arranged to pick up Ambrosek near the Imperial Manor later that night.
    Ambrosek was expecting to meet Swanson. Instead, it was German and Carter who met her. After a brief discussion with German, she got into their car and they headed out into the country.
    Carter berated Ambrosek for being a bad mother and for starting rumors against her on social media.
    They drove to an abandoned farm site on German property, south of Imperial.
    German believed Ambrosek owed him money and Carter was upset about the rumors. They each beat up on Ambrosek.
    German then gave Ambrosek a choice, become a prostitute under him or disappear. Ambrosek chose the prostitute route.
    The trio returned to the Mann trailer and they all hashed out things most of the night.
    Mann left in the morning to go to work and German left to work in their car. He left Carter to keep Ambrosek and Swanson from leaving the trailer.
    After German returned, Abbi Murillo joined them at the trailer. A sheriff’s officer knocked on the door, looking to serve papers on someone he thought might be at Mann’s.
    They hid and never answered the door. The deputy left.     German sent Carter back to Imperial with Murillo.
    In the evening, Carter was unhappy at Murillo and wanted German to pick her up so they could go back to Fort Collins, Colorado.
    When he couldn’t find anyone to pick her up, German told her he would come. Carter warned him against leaving Ambrosek and Swanson unguarded.
    Later, Mann picked up Carter and they returned to his trailer. Mann, German and Ambrosek then talked about what’s going to happen to her. They decide she could  stay with Mann, and he could prostitute her out to pay back German.
    Meanwhile, in another room, Swanson was telling Carter about the relationship German had with Ambrosek, which made her mad.
    After leaving to go back to Colorado, Carter confronted German about the relationship with Ambrosek. German became enraged that Swanson told her.
    He returned to Mann’s, grabbed Swanson and put her in the car. German later stopped the car on the road, pulled Swanson out and Carter and German began beating on her.
    Carter testified she stomped on Swanson’s neck.
    He put Swanson in the trunk and began driving to several locations in the country before going to an earthen dam on German property. The dam was equipped with an overflow tube and German forced her into the tube.
    Swanson was also forced to drink windshield wiper fluid.
    They left her there and returned to Mann’s. German made an offer to Mann to give him a new identity and he can then go down south. He refused. German thought that if Mann accepted and took off, Mann would be the suspect in Swanson’s disappearance.
    Mann believed German was  threatening him and Ambrosek, when he said he could take them to where Annika is.
    Carter and German then returned to Fort Collins and left Nov. 19 for a trip to Orlando.
    Swanson’s dad, Monti, filed a missing persons report with the sheriff on Nov. 21, 2019 and an investigation was launched.
    Sheriff’s deputies went to Mann’s to question Mann and Ambrosek. Later they returned and brought them in for interviews. While Mann was less than truthful, Ambrosek spilled about everything that went on.
    Two days later, Carter and German were arrested in Fort Collins on a warrant from Chase County.
    The search for Swanson continued for a couple more days.  Carter eventually gave law enforcement a possible location where Swanson’s body was later recovered.
    However, German continued to tell law enforcement he knew nothing about the situation.
Mock lays out his argument
    Defense attorney Mock told jurors they must follow evidence and the rule of law, adding that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
    That guilt must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. During the closing, Mock sought to plant that seed of doubt.
    Mock said there is no shred of forensic evidence tying German to the death of Swanson.
    The state relied on the testimony of Ambrosek, Carter and Mann.
    “What did we learn about those three people?” he asked the jury.
    He impeached Ambrosek, saying her life was so chaotic and her mind so scrambled from meth that her account of events can’t be trusted.
    He tells the jury she had physical altercations with her mom and dad the day this all started and her mother took her child from her.
    Abbi Murillo was Ambrosek’s best friend and the aunt to Ambrosek’s child. Even Murillo said Ambrosek likes to lie and is a storyteller.
    He explained Ambrosek was a scorned lover and that Carter had beaten her up.
    That provided Ambrosek the motive to lie, seek revenge and spin facts to hurt German, the only man she said she’d ever loved.
    With a motive like that, she can’t be trusted to tell the truth.
    Mock said Carter and Mann had their own motives in testifying.
    Carter’s cashing in on a very sweetheart of a plea deal in exchange for her testimony. The state gave her a deal of 1st degree assault instead of 1st degree murder, as she was originally charged.
    He explains she’s no stranger to violence herself and had been in court before and knows how to work the system.
    She had a protection order on her for beating up a former boyfriend. She had also been shot and tried to make that story more than it really was.
    One thing she was consistent about was that she hates guns and said German never owned a gun. The only gun in the case was the one at Russ Mann’s.
    What she likes to lie about is her responsibility in criminal activity, shoving the blame off on someone else.
    She wasn’t testifying because it was the right thing to do or to help German. She was testifying to fulfill the plea agreement and plea down to a lesser offense.
    Mock says she has her own motives, so how can her testimony be trusted?
    Then there’s Russ Mann, the hub of little league drug dealing in Imperial.  
    Mann’s interested in personal amounts of drugs and wants to be something bigger and better than he is.
    He preys on young women, supplying them with methamphetamines in his trailer.
    He’s testifying to improve himself as a convicted drug dealer before going to another court to be sentenced for those crimes.
    Is he here to help himself or to help Kevin German? If he says something that helps German and sounds truthful, he really doesn’t want to do that because it’s not helpful to him.
    Mock said the state put nothing more out there than a tangled jungle of contradictions, half truths, distortions and outright lies as their proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
    Looking at the charge of kidnapping, Ambrosek was the one reaching out to German, asking for his help.
    Ambrosek found out about Keonna Carter, who had already fibbed to German about being pregnant with his triplets.
    German helped her get some internet revenge porn of her taken down and helped her take care of her child.
    Not only that, German was the only man she’d ever loved. So after they break up, there’s no reason for her to be fearful of German.
    The allegation that German kidnapped Ambrosek was the strangest—no ties, no ropes, no tape, no handcuffs. There’s no keeping her in a back room to keep her from getting away—that’s what real kidnappers do.
    In fact, there’s no evidence that Swanson was kidnapped either.  
    There’s no evidence of German and Carter saying they planned to kidnap Ambrosek so she can engage in sex trafficking.
    The sex trafficking thing is just a diversion by the prosecution, Mock said.
    And when they went out into the country, it was Carter who attacked Ambrosek first. Ambrosek said German slammed her up against the car so hard that it dented the car. Guess what? No dent, because it didn’t happen.
    That’s another embellishment proving she can’t be trusted. Plus, she willingly got back into the car because she wanted drugs at Mann’s trailer.
    After they got to the trailer, Ambrosek and Swanson got into a fight. Ambrosek punched Swanson in the face and head.
    In fact, the state conceded that it could have been the injuries from that fight that showed up on Annika’s autopsy.
    After that, Mann, Swanson, Ambrosek and German engaged in a meth fest.
    Early that morning, Ambrosek’s baby father was going to send police to the trailer. Ambrosek made a 911 call saying she’s been abused by the father, all in an effort to distract the police and to keep the police from coming out.
    She doesn’t want them out there because of all the drugs, not that she was being kidnapped.
    The next day when the sheriff officer stops, Ambrosek made no attempt to let him know that she was being kidnapped, because she wasn’t.
    She had numerous opportunities to ask for help or leave, but she didn’t. She was at Mann’s because she wanted the drugs.
    “So I think the verdict on that case, on that count,  should be not guilty,” Mock told the jury.
    Mock then addressed count one and count two.
    “There is a reasonable doubt, a real reasonable doubt about whether Annika Swanson was abducted,” he said.
    He said Mann first told officers that Swanson wasn’t taken by German but left of her own free will. Nor did German throw her into the car but  instead she got in of her own accord.
    If Swanson is Mann’s best friend and lover, wouldn’t he do something to protect her if she was being taken by force?
    During their interviews, both Mann and Ambrosek use the same phrases about German’s demeanor that night. Could that have been because they stayed together, did meth and had sex and got their stories together after Swanson’s disappearance?
    Mock said Carter has to be considered as the murder. After they leave the trailer with Swanson, it’s Carter who stomped on Swanson’s head area.
    The pathologist said the bruising on Swanson’s temporal areas and neck muscles are consistent with someone being stomped on.
    Evidence shows it was Carter who stomped on Swanson’s head, not German.
    Mock said Carter knew she could blame German for all her actions because she’s sophisticated enough and streetwise.
    The real reason German put her in the tube was because he knew she could get out after he left.
    It was all Carter’s story about the scene. She says she couldn’t get out of the car because German took her clothes.
    That proved to be a lie because she did get out, grabbed the wiper fluid and had Swanson drink it. German’s DNA was not on the cup, Carter and Swanson’s were.
    In his interview at Fort Collins, the reason German lied was to protect the mother of his children from her misconduct.
    In closing, Mock urged the jury to look closely at the evidence, noting there was no intent to kill and there was no abduction.
Warner’s final rebuttal
    Warner told the jury if a person works in concert with someone committing a crime, they are just as guilty. There’s no question whether German and Carter were working together.
    He acknowledged the plea agreement but noted it was Carter’s information given to police in Fort Collins that was truthful and proved key in finding Swanson’s body.
    Even with the agreement, he said she’s still facing significant time.
    He also countered a number of the points made by Mock in his closing.
    “He came into this community as a drug dealer. And then when he left this community, he left as a murderer,” Warner said.