Jury selection started Monday with as many 200 prospective jurors to be reviewed.
Mirkarimi is charged with misdemeanor counts that he grabbed and bruised the arm of his wife, Venezuelan actress Eliana Lopez, in front of their toddler son on New Year’s Eve.
Lopez has become a symbol for anti-domestic violence advocates and the central figure in a case that has already separated her family and threatens her husband’s political career. She has objected to the charges against her husband and stands by him.
A video showing her discussing what happened the day after the bruising has emerged as key evidence.
Judge Garrett Wong ruled last month that the video could be used as evidence. Mirkarimi’s attorneys then sought a mistrial. Next, Lopez’s lawyers argued against admissibility of the video because prosecutors had released photo images from it showing an emotional Lopez with a bruise on her arm. They lost. Lopez’s attorneys appealed. And on Friday a judge put a hold on using the video until he has time to rule on its admissibility.
Rory Little, a former federal prosecutor and a professor at the University of California Hastings School of Law in San Francisco, told The Associated Press, “It’s an unfortunate cycle for some victims in that they may regret calling attention to their partner’s apparent brief loss of control. But then again, we don’t know what happened. That’s what makes these domestic violence cases difficult to prosecute because there are usually no witnesses, except for the victim and the defendant.”
Both Lopez and Mirkarimi have repeatedly denied the allegations against him. She went on Venezuelan radio in January declaring that prosecutors are out to get her husband. Sheriff Mirkarimi is known not to get along with the district attorney, who was elected the same day Mirkarimi’s won the sheriff’s post last November.
Mirkarimi was born in Chiacago to an Iranian father and Russian-American mother.
Lopez stood by Mirkarimi as he was sworn in as sheriff days after the bruising incident—and just days before he was booked at his own jail.
She later tearfully told a judge that she is not some “poor little immigrant,” and “I’m not afraid of my husband at all.”
But the judge imposed an order requiring the sheriff to stay away from Lopez.
Lopez is dejected that the case is going forward, said Paula Canny, one of her lawyers. “She feels disrespected by the government,” Canny said. “She has repeatedly advised them that there was no act of domestic violence, it was an argument. As a family, they’re a wreck. This isn’t supposed to happen in America.”
Canny expressed doubts that she would allow Lopez to testify. “[Prosecutors] are trying to squeeze her to testify,” she said. “I want a blanket grant of immunity that would cover anything and everything in federal court and in immigration proceedings. She’s not testifying [otherwise].” It wasn’t clear what immigration issues she was thinking of.
Prosecutors said that have no intention to charge Lopez.
Lopez, 36, has appeared in TV shows and films in Latin America. She is scheduled to star later this year as Venezuelan Independence War heroine Luisa Caceres de Arismendi in a feature film, “The Colonel’s Wife.”
Lopez met Mirkarimi in 2008 at an environmental conference in Brazil. They married after she gave birth to their son, Theo, in 2009.
The couple kept mostly out of the public eye until Mirkarimi, 50, announced his run for sheriff last spring.
During an argument at their home New Year’s Eve, Mir-karimi grabbed Lopez and bruised her right arm, authorities said.
The next day, Lopez turned to a neighbor, Ivory Madison, who later contacted police. Investigators eventually confiscated a video Madison had taken, along with text messages and emails between the two women.
“I’m going to use this just in case he wants to take Theo away from me,” Lopez said on the video, according to court documents. “Because he did, he said that, that he’s very powerful, and he can, he can do it.”
The video shows Lopez pointing to a bruise on her right bicep where she said Mirkarimi grabbed her, according to a police affidavit.
Mirkarimi’s defense attorneys argue that Lopez’s statements should be inadmissible because they were intended to help her gain custody of their son if the marriage failed. “The videotape itself was the product of a reflective and deliberate decision to create evidence for purposes of a custody proceeding,” wrote Mirkarimi attorney Lidia Stiglich, calling it hearsay.
Mirkarimi pleaded not guilty to charges of domestic violence battery, child endangerment and dissuading a witness. He could face up to a year in jail, if convicted.
After he was sworn in as sheriff, Mirkarimi called it “a private matter, a family matter,” which inflamed anti-domestic violence advocates who commissioned a billboard that reads: “Domestic violence is NEVER a private matter.”