Katherine Magbanua took the stand in her own defense, denying involvement in Dan Markel's murder and offering competing explanations for the Adelson paychecks, cash income, and coded communications. Judge Hankinson excluded her recorded employment statements as prior consistent statements. By day's end, all testimony was closed, renewed judgments of acquittal were denied, and the jury-instruction conference was complete.
Full day summary
Katherine Magbanua testified throughout the day in her own defense. On direct examination, she opened with flat denials of involvement in Dan Markel's murder and of recruiting Sigfredo Garcia to kill on Charlie Adelson's behalf. She described her intermittent relationship with Garcia, characterized the Adelson payroll arrangement as a scheme to qualify her children for DCF health insurance — admitting the arrangement constituted fraud — and said she performed irregular personal-assistant and rental-property work for Adelson. She denied that Adelson showed her identifying material at the 2016 Dolce Vita meeting, acknowledged accepting cash from Garcia without asking its source, and said that based on what she had seen she believed Adelson was involved in the murder but had no personal information establishing it. When asked why she had not accused Adelson to obtain her release, she said she wished she could because she would be free with her children, but had not done so because she was telling the truth.
Zangeneh's cross for co-defendant Garcia elicited confirmation of Garcia's hostility toward Adelson and testimony that Rivera was a drug-dealing, gun-carrying Latin Kings member with a community reputation for violence. Cappleman's cross for the State pressed Magbanua on the Tuto and Tato nicknames, a $13,000 August 2014 cash deposit, encoded use of the bump number's last four digits, her admitted lies, and her review of evidence before testifying, concluding with a direct accusation of solicitation that Magbanua denied. Redirect addressed discovery access constraints and elicited Magbanua's denial that statements the State attributed to the Dolce Vita recording were actually present. Jury questions confirmed she did not report promotions tips because doing so would change her reported income and cost her children's state insurance.
Outside the jury's presence, Judge Hankinson excluded all three Adelson-Magbanua call excerpts Kawass sought as prior consistent statements, reversing his own initial ruling on the first clip after concluding that the State's murder-payment theory predated the April 2016 recordings and no intervening event changed Magbanua's motive at the time she made the statements.
On rebuttal, Sergeant Corbitt was recalled to present four blocks of Charlie Adelson iCloud text messages and trace a mechanic referral from Adelson through Magbanua to Garcia on May 13, 2016. Cross-examination established that Corbitt could not show Garcia knew the referral came from Adelson, no co-location analysis was run using the mechanic's number, and Corbitt said he was not aware of anyone at TPD interviewing Sully.
After Cappleman announced no further rebuttal witnesses, Zangeneh and Kawass renewed motions for judgment of acquittal, arguing that Magbanua's testimony altered the evidentiary posture and that Rivera's impeachment left the State's case insufficient. Judge Hankinson denied both motions. He then conducted the charge conference, overruling defense objections and ruling that both principal-instruction definitions and the independent-act instruction would be included, denying a special circumstantial-evidence instruction, and tentatively declining to add promised-immunity language to the credibility instruction for Wendi Adelson. The jury was released for the night with instructions to bring overnight bags for mandatory sequestration if deliberations continued past the following day.
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