"I think they've probably said this for as long as I remember," she said.
But some defense lawyers agree that the courtroom gridlock can work in their client's favor.
"What the lawyers really are playing for is the witness won't show up and the judge will say, 'Dismissed. Lack of prosecution,' " said Dennis J. Cogan, a leading member of the defense bar and a former homicide prosecutor.
Another veteran defense lawyer said he and his firm's associates would go a step further and sometimes cook up reasons to delay.
"It's a scummy way to win," the lawyer said, asking not to be named because he did not want to be publicly associated with these tactics. "Does my office engage in that? Yes.
"If all their witnesses are there and there's no way to win except to postpone, we postpone. It's a battle."
Heavy artillery
As a camera rolled, Kareem Johnson reached into the waistband of his baggy jeans to show off his gun: an Intratec AB-10 assault pistol.
"This is how we rock this thing," he said, displaying the weapon. "It can go down at any given time, you know what I mean?"
"Heavy artillery. . . . This is how we ride."
Johnson's bravado was captured in a documentary DVD called Hood2Hood, which promised to take viewers on a "journey into the crimiest hoods in America."
His cameo, filmed in North Philadelphia on his 19th birthday, offered a glimpse of a man fascinated with firearms - and adept, court records show, at shaking off gun-possession charges.
In January 2002 - nearly a year before Johnson killed Walter Smith - police arrested him with a .38-caliber revolver after an anonymous caller dialed 911 to report seeing a man on the street with a gun.
In court, Johnson's lawyer quickly established that the 911 caller had provided only the barest description of the gunman and that the gun hadn't been visible when police approached. A judge tossed out the case.
