Wendy Howard’s trial concludes Week 2 in Bakersfield, CA

Wendy Howard has made it through two weeks of trial, and closing arguments are expected to take place early next week. Please join us on Monday and Tuesday at Kern County Superior Court in Bakersfield, CA. You can also listen to the audio livestream remotely. 

The prosecution has called many witnesses, mostly police officers, to try to paint a picture of Wendy as a vengeful woman who shot Kelly Pitts in a premeditated act of murder. In an interview with Bayley (Wendy’s daughter) in 2019, a detective asked leading questions about whether Wendy was angry with Pitts, and whether she said she wanted to harm him. Although Bayley said that she didn’t remember any such words, the detective kept asking, waiting for the answer he wanted to hear. 

With no witness testimony to support a murder, the prosecution is relying on highly contested forensic evidence. The District Attorney is arguing that Wendy shot Pitts in the back, and thus that she was not in danger at the moment she fired the gun. This is faulty logic on multiple counts. Witness testimony and evidence show that Pitts was moving erratically after being shot, which would explain bullets entering his body from multiple angles. The coroner who examined his body said that he could not determine the position of the shooter from the bullet holes. A retired detective working as a criminologist used blood spatter pattern analysis, a dubious pseudoscience, to speculate about how and where Pitts was moving after being shot. During cross-examination, he admitted that Pitts could have been moving toward Wendy when he was shot. 

While this nebulous evidence has not made a case for Wendy shooting Pitts from behind, what it has revealed is breathtaking negligence on behalf of the Tehachapi Police Department. It began when Wendy reported Bailey’s sexual abuse and the police sent multiple squad cars to the house— in full view of Pitts, who lived down the street. They did not arrest, detain, or question Pitts, but instead stoked his suspicion and anger, likely leading to the confrontation that ended in Pitts’ death. After Pitts was shot, officers on the scene did not even provide emergency aid because they came without gloves and he was bleeding heavily. The coroner believes that if the police had given Pitts emergency first aid, he would have survived. 

Instead of aiding Pitts, the police were focused on arresting Wendy and her daughter-in-law, Kierra, despite having no reason to believe that Kierra was more than a bystander. They needlessly separated Wendy’s kids and grandkids from their parents, compounding the trauma of that night for the entire family. Finally, the police failed to even secure the crime scene, coming back to take pictures and search for bullet casings days, weeks, and even years later. 

This negligence would be laughable if it didn’t have real, devastating consequences for Wendy and her family. While the trauma that they caused Wendy, Bayley, Kierra, and the entire family cannot be undone, DA Cynthia Zimmer has the power to stop it from escalating further by dropping the charges.  

Do women have the right to self-defense or not?

We call on DA Zimmer to DROP ALL CHARGES!!!

We encourage media outlets to cover this case, which is live audio streamed whenever court is in session, generally from 9-12 and 1:30-4:30