Here you go....
[h=1]Alleged Werdesheim victim asks to drop charges[/h] [h=2]Teen said he didn't want to testify[/h]
After a morning of reluctant, mumbled testimony, 16-year-old Corey Ausby stood in court Wednesday afternoon and spoke clearly for the first time, announcing that he wanted to drop the criminal charges against Avi and Eliyahu Werdesheim, the college students on trial for allegedly assaulting him while acting on behalf of a Jewish neighborhood watch group.
"I been wanting to drop the charges all the time, I didn't even want to go through [this]. I feel like I was being pressured," said Ausby, who took the stand that morning with tear tracks staining his face. "In my heart, I didn't want to testify."
But Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Pamela White, who's overseeing the nonjury trial, told Ausby he didn't have a say in the matter. "It was not your decision whether to bring charges against the defendants, it's the state's decision," she said.
Ausby's outburst was one of several emotional eruptions in court Wednesday, following opening statements in the high-profile case, which has highlighted tensions between some black and Jewish residents in the Park Heights area of Northwest Baltimore. It has also drawn comparisons nationwide to the recent killing of
Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager who was fatally shot down by a Hispanic resident while walking through the man's gated Florida community. Ausby is black, while the Werdesheims are white.
Two men, one of them Ausby's grandfather, were ejected from the packed courtroom for contemptuous behavior, and the judge sternly admonished onlookers to keep "absolute silence and no more body language by anyone."
Ausby's revelation seemed to shake the state's case. The defendant brothers scrawled notes furiously on legal pads and gave each other purposeful looks while prosecutor Kevin Wiggins tried to salvage testimony from his star witness. He asked the judge to order Ausby's participation and drew two more responses from the teen before all cooperation ceased.
Wiggins asked Ausby if he had lied earlier when he told police two Jewish men threw him to the ground on Nov. 19, 2010, and beat him with a hand-held radio, and Ausby replied, "No." And when asked why he didn't want to testify, the young man said he "shouldn't have called police" in the first place, "I didn't want to."
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bs-md-ci-werdesheim-trial-opens-20120425,0,3834537.story
Looks like the case is falling apart.
