Hair Clippings Make Another Appearance At Trial

Barbara Marks threw a makeup container in court Friday and displayed a handful of hair clippings as she testified for a second day in a federal intimidation trial.

Marks, called as a prosecution witness against eight members of her family who face criminal charges, angrily denied she used the makeup to feign bruises.

She told a U.S. District Court jury that bruises shown in pictures taken by her daughter happened when she was roughed up in a fight at her house.

The only police photo shows a cut by her eye.

The U.S. attorney’s office is prosecuting Spokane Gypsy activist Jimmy Marks, his brother Bobby Marks, and six other members of their families.

They are accused of intimidating Barbara Marks and her husband, Johnny, who are witnesses for the city in a civil rights lawsuit.

During cross-examination, defense attorney Russell Jones placed a round makeup container on the witness stand, in front of Marks, as he questioned her about the photos.

“You’re trying to tell me I put makeup on my body to make it look like bruises?” she yelled at Jones.

She swept the container onto the floor with a brush of her arm and replaced it with a handful of hair - the same hair she flung into the air a day earlier.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Wilson later asked her about the significance of the hair she pulled from a plastic bag in her purse.

“I pulled this hair from my head” after a July 1994 assault by the defendants, the witness said.

“They were just coming out,” she said of the locks of black hair. “I couldn’t even comb my hair because of the lumps on my head.”

Gypsy leader Jimmy Marks said during a recess that the hair-clipping gesture was a curse.

“It’s a way in Gypsy culture to shut up or choke off the lawyers - to make them have hairballs in their throats,” he said.

During vigorous questioning by defense attorneys, Barbara Marks admitted she had lied under oath and fraudulently applied for state welfare, which she received.

The prosecutor asked Marks if she ever heard of the Gypsy Church of the Northwest, whose members are bringing a $40 million civil rights suit against the city of Spokane.

Marks said she’s never heard of the Gypsy church.

“Do you know where it is?” Wilson asked her.

“No,” she responded.

Wilson then asked her if she saw a difference between lying under oath and providing false information to welfare officials.

“This is the truth here,” she responded. “I mean it from the bottom of my heart, for my family.”

She was followed to the stand by her husband, Johnny Marks.

He said his family was socially involved with Jimmy, Bobby and Grover Marks and their families until February 1993 when the defendants learned Johnny and Barbara Marks were subpoenaed as city witnesses in the civil rights suit.

He is expected to return to the witness stand when the trial resumes Monday.

, DataTimes