1066
1 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN
DISTRICT OF FLORIDA
2 NORTHERN DIVISION
3
4 JUAN ROMAGOZA ARCE, JANE
) Docket No.
DOE, in her personal
capacity ) 99-8364-CIV-HURLEY
5 as Personal Representative of
)
the ESTATE OF BABY DOE, )
6 )
Plaintiffs, )
7 vs.
) West Palm Beach, Florida
) July 8, 2002
8 JOSE GUILLERMO
GARCIA, an )
individual, CARLOS EUGENIO
VIDES)
9 CASANOVA, an individual, and
) VOLUME 7
DOES 1 through 50,
inclusive, )
10 )
Defendants. )
11 _______________________________ x
12
13
14 COURT REPORTER'S TRANSCRIPT OF
TESTIMONY AND
PROCEEDINGS HAD BEFORE
15 JUDGE DANIEL T. K. HURLEY
16
17 APPEARANCES:
18 For the Plaintiffs:
JAMES GREEN, ESQ.
PETER
STERN, ESQ.
19
BETH
VanSCHAACK, ESQ.
20 For Defendant:
KURT KLAUS, ESQ.
21
Court Reporter: Pauline A. Stipes, C.S.R., C.M.
22
23
24 PAULINE A. STIPES
Official
Reporter
25 U. S. District Court
1067
1 THE COURT: All right.
Ladies and gentlemen, we
2 all have our computers coordinated and working. That is
3 fine.
4 In the effort to get started, it occurred to me
5 after the fact that I neglected to administer the oath to
6 Mr. Icaza.
7 Now, we have had the benefit of having three
8 court interpreters throughout the process, two of whom are
9 Federally certified court interpreters.
10 As I understand it, there is a national
11 examination given. The
problem is, it has not been given
12 in many, many years. We
have a real problem in trying to
13 have people be able to be certified under that.
14 We have had the benefit in our trial of
15 Mr. Francis Icaza, who is the director of Advanced
16 Translating Corporation.
I need to administer the oath,
17 and what I would do is administer the oath and make it
18 retroactive, that is, everything translated is retroactive
19 and move forward. Is
that agreeable?
20 MR. KLAUS:
That is agreeable.
21 THE COURT:
Normally The Court does not interpret
22 the oath to others not Federally certified. I did not
23 intend to do that because the other folks have received
24 the oath as part of their certification. Again, is that
25 agreeable to both parties?
1068
1
(Interpreter sworn.)
2 THE COURT:
Thank you very much.
3 Are we all set now and ready to proceed?
4 Mr. Marshal, would you bring in the jury, please?
5
(Thereupon, the jury returned to the courtroom.)
6 THE COURT:
Ladies and gentlemen, please be
7 seated.
8 Good morning, everybody. I hope you all had a
9 nice
weekend. Not too rainy.
10 As you know, when we stopped prior to our last
11 recess, we are still in the Plaintiffs' case in chief, so
12 I am going to turn now, if I might, to Plaintiffs' counsel
13 and allow the Plaintiffs to call their next witness.
14 Mr. Stern?
15 MR. STERN: May
it please The Court. Plaintiff's
16 call professor Terry Karl.
17 THE COURT:
Professor Karl.
18 By the way, the pointer is on the witness stand
19 if you want to remove that so it won't be in the
20 professor's way.
21 Professor, would you please sit down and make
22 yourself comfortable? I
need to tell you the microphone
23 has a short pickup range.
I think if you pull that
24 closer, you will be more comfortable and you will be able
25 to sit back.
1069
1 If you would raise your right hand.
2 TERRY KARL, PLAINTIFFS' WITNESS SWORN.
3 THE COURT:
Professor, would you be good enough
4 starting out introducing yourself to the members of the
5 jury? And would you
tell them your full name and spell
6 your last name for the court reporter?
7 THE WITNESS:
Terry Lynn Karl, K-A-R-L,
8 T-E-R-R-Y.
9 THE COURT:
Thank you so much.
10 Let me turn to Mr. Stern.
11 DIRECT EXAMINATION
12 BY MR. STERN:
13 Q. Good morning. Where are you from?
14 A. I am from Missouri.
15 Q. Where do you teach?
16 A. I teach at Stanford
university.
17 Q. What do you teach?
18 A. Latin America
politics, Central America politics,
19 politics of military rights, how militaries rule,
20 transitions to
democracy.
21 Q. Tell us about your
educational background.
22 A. I got my Ph.D. at
Stanford University in 1982. I
23 subsequently became a professor at Harvard University where
24 I worked during the 1980's, and I returned to my alma mater
25 in 1986 where I am currently professor of political
1070
1 science.
2 Q. You mentioned a
couple areas of specialization
3 already. Would you walk
through them one by one in terms
4 of your areas of expertise?
5 A. Well, I work on
several things. I have been for 12
6 years director for the Center of Latin America Studies in
7 Stanford. In that
capacity we are expected to know about
8 areas in Latin America, particularly areas in the news or
9 that are important where we may have to publicly represent
10 the university.
11 My own, one of my own areas of specialty has been,
12 really since 1979, Central America, and particularly El
13 Salvador, which is the country I have written the most
14 about in Central America.
15 Q. Does your expertise
include politics and political
16 history of El Salvador?
17 A. Yes, it does.
18 Q. Have you had an
opportunity to study military
19 institutions in El Salvador in the past generation?
20 A. Yes, I studied them
extensively in part because of my
21 own interest about how
militaries rule in Latin America,
22 but also because I have been requested to do so by members
23 of the U.S. Congress, and by members of our Defense
24 Department.
25 Q. Would you tell us more about your relation
to the
1071
1 members of Congress and Defense Department in regard to El
2 Salvador, please?
3 A. Well, El Salvador,
as you remember, was a major
4 foreign policy issue in the early 1980's. It was a center
5 of a whole series of debates in the U.S. Congress. I was
6 asked by the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on
7 Hemisphere of Affairs -- this is a subcommittee in Congress
8 that looks at Latin America the most, and responsible for
9 the region of Latin America.
I was asked by the Chairman
10 to advise him on what was happening in El Salvador in
11 particular.
12 There was conflicting information. If I could go to
13 El Salvador and try to find out for myself and begin an
14 analysis what was happening in that country. I started
15 going to El Salvador in the early 1980's and I have
16 continued to go there over the last 20 years.
17 Q. What was the
original reason for you going to El
18 Salvador?
19 A. Well, the original
reason was several fold. Actually.
20 I was working in Venezuela earlier and I met a number of
21
Salvadorans living in exile,
including Jos‚ Napolean Duarte
22 who became president of El Salvador. And their stories
23 began to interest me, and the fact they were returning in
24 1979 made me feel I had some kind of an entre in terms of
25 getting interviews.
1072
1 And I was assistant professor of government at
2 Harvard, and I was getting constant calls from the press,
3 from Congress because of that position, and later on from
4 immigration authorities, from immigration judges, et
5 cetera, because there was really nobody who knew very much
6 about this country in the United States.
7 And I realized because of these calls that I wanted to
8 know more, and so I started to go under the auspices of
9
Harvard, under the auspices of
international affairs in
10 Harvard, which sent me on my first trip.
11 And I did my first interviews. I subsequently went
12 back a number of times through the '80's. I actually don't
13 remember how many times I have been to El Salvador. And I
14 also began to investigate a series of events that happened
15 in El Salvador.
16 I think the first serious investigations I did were
17 along the Salvadoran/Honduran border. El Salvador borders
18 with Honduras. And there
was a series of peasant massacres
19 that happened around 1980, and my first trips were actually
20 to look at the conflicting reports about those massacres.
21 Q. When you went to El
Salvador, did you interview people
22 from Salvadoran society?
23 A. I did.
24
Q. Who in particular, what types of people did you
25 interview?
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1 A. I interviewed
anybody who I could get to talk to me.
2 I interviewed
the leaders of the armed forces, many of the
3 key colonels in the armed forces. I interviewed all
4 presidents in El Salvador from 1982 to the present,
5 actually. I interviewed
the parties, heads of the parties
6 of the right. I
interviewed heads of the parties to the
7 left. I interviewed
church officials, I interviewed
8 officials of the Lutheran Church which were very involved
9 there. I interviewed
Jewish aid agencies.
10 I interviewed peasants.
I interviewed head of labor
11 unions, I interviewed head of peasant associations, head of
12 human rights groups. I
actually interviewed members who
13 were acknowledged participants in death squads. I traveled
14 with all presidential candidates in El Salvador. I am sure
15 I am forgetting somebody.
I did extensive interviewing.
16 Q. Did you find people
were generally willing to talk to
17 you?
18 A. I was, I believe,
the only -- certainly the only
19 American academic there at the time. The only other people
20 who were there were journalists, and journalists were not
21 always welcome in El Salvador.
In fact, more journalists
22 were killed in El Salvador than the entire Vietnam war.
23 They had
difficulty getting information, particularly the
24 beginning. That eased up
later.
25 Q. When you say the
beginning?
1074
1 A. Particularly 1980,
'81, which was the most repressive
2 period of time in El Salvador.