https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/crime/article287556325.html
No such evidence.
Not disputing this tidbit.
Taking it as factual, the guy is a true idiot.
Leaving your phone wifi in promiscuous mode where it tries to connect to every wifi it sees, and therefore having every one of those hotspots log your timestamped presence is really evidence of a true Wile E Coyote Super Genius level of criminal mastermind.
Which raises the idea of a very novel last ditch defense tactic.
Defense counsel in Summation: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. You’ve heard defense evidence that my client is a very high IQ guy. You’ve heard defense evidence he’s a criminology major. My client is obviously wise in the ways of criminals.
You’ve also heard prosecution evidence that the whole crime was a clown car of bad planning that left damning evidence right and left both before and after the killings.
Clearly someone other than my client did it. Some real bumbler of a crook that the bigger bumblers in the police department haven’t bothered to look for once they found my client to frame.
Bottom line: If the brainpower doesn’t fit, you must acquit.
With apologies to Johnny Cochran who I believe delivered the summation in the OJ Simpson murder trial. 
Didn’t he also have his phone in airplane mode for part of the night but then turn that off to get directions back to his house/apartment? If it was either left home all night or left in airplane mode all night that could potentially help him; however, IMO, having a murder committed at 4:xx am & then your phone turns back on to give you directions home 15 or 20 mins later at a point partway between the murder scene & your house is a very damning piece of evidence that he was not only there but it was a premediated thing.
Clown meet car.
Personally, I would disfavor terms like “circumstantial”.
In almost zero percent of cases do you have high quality video footage of a suspect committing just that crime he’s accused of, in some undeniable and conclusive way.
So what is “circumstantial”, other than some mental shortcut to get out of having to consider evidence that is either hard to quantify the weight of or when you have a predilection to villainize or exonerate any suspect you ever come across? Either way, you’re just jettisoning or belittling perfectly good information.
Should you take much meaning that he owned a balaclava? No and, to be sure, someone out there will do so. But refusing to consider the minimal weight, as someone who recognizes that minimal weight, purely to spite the irrational, strawman imbecile of your imagination who would ride that minimal weight detail right to a death sentence is just trading a theoretical grave misdeed, committed by an imaginary character for an actual and unnecessary small misdeed, committed by yourself.
Ah, but all of the evidence that bumbling idiot left pointed to Kohlberg, not himself! The bumbling idiot must have been a true genius of criminology to so successfully frame someone else. So it must actually have been Kohlberg himself!
Which sorta matches what happened in the OJ trail but in a reverse sense.
The common refrain then was
That’s what happens when the cops incompetently try to frame a guilty man: he goes free.
In this case it’s more like
This is what happens when a criminal mastermind is an idiot: he convicts himself.
Over time, I think society has learned about faults in direct evidence (eyewitnesses can be wrong) and the advantages of circumstantisl evidence (trout in the milk)
What about the blood left by an unidentified male at the scene?
In the case of the Idaho murders, blood found on a handrail, connected to “Unknown Male B” was not pursued by police because they had already identified Bryan Kohberger as a suspect, according to CNN.
Police in Idaho are yet to identify blood samples from two unidentified men left at the crime scene of four stabbing victims, which may be key to accused killer Bryan Kohberger’s defense.
I don’t know what’s wrong with the term. All evidence needs to be weighed.
On the second point, I followed the Darrel Brooks trial, the guy who drove his vehicle through the Waukesha parade. The evidence was undeniable and conclusive, including the videos of him in his vehicle driving through the parade.
However, on to your larger point, are there many cases where juries refuse to accept any circumstantial evidence? I’m sure there are people on the internet who do, but I don’t read things written by the crazies.
This is a first time to hear that expression! I like it!
Golly. I hadn’t heard King was at all ambiguous on Dufresne’s guilt. Yet I can buy that he did it in a blackout.
In this case, I suppose reasonable doubt could be raised by a good attorney (he’s not defending himself, right?). How much phone and wi-fi stuff can you write off as circumstancial? Can they find a tech “expert” who can raise enough doubt in at least one juror? I ff there is physical evidence he’s done for, even if he can avoid the death penalty.
He certainly is not going to Zihuatanejo.
Are the forensic investigators able to tell when the dried blood from unknown males was left on the scene. If they could narrow it down to months/years before the murders happened, that would help the prosecution.
I’d like to hear experienced opinions about using school work in a trial.
I expect it will come out in trial that Kohberger had studied Criminal Justice and Criminology. He has extensive knowledge of police procedures and evidence collection.
I can’t understand trying to hang the guy for school work. He was legitimately pursuing a post doctoral degree. There’s nothing sinster about writing papers in school. I think it’s a well written paper from a student with a promising future in law enforcement. Criminology is a great career field.
Perhaps Bryan used that knowledge to commit this horrible crime without leaving much evidence. That’s something the jury will consider.
It’s been said already, but it bears repeating: just because the evidence is circumstantial doesn’t mean it can just be written off. In fact, I do believe all the evidence in this case is circumstantial, even the DNA evidence!
In my part of the world yes.
- Standard issue for Rhodesian Army (I used to have my dad’s one)
- Common disguise in real South Africa, common disguise in UK and Irish thriller TV
- At school we learnt about the Battle of Balaclava from whence comes the name of the garment.
That’s pretty weak. I recall OJ, mainly to make some money, wrote “If I had did it” about his murders and while I myself came nowhere near the book, I recall his theories came rather close to the prosecution case (it wasn’t on his onus to find the real killer(s) or prove innocence) case in his “theory” yet I reckon at that point he could have written “Here’s what happened” and incriminated himself and double jeopardy would have protected him unless he somehow implicated himself in something else.
That’s unfortunate. Mountains of circumstantial evidence can find quite a few unconvinced jurors (and they won’t be looking to find educated law students as much as fans of Law & Order or Hee Haw). Good luck (not really) if his defense is the cops are after me because a waitress thought I was a creep, and bought a balaclava and ka-bar knife and drove around this neighborhood a lot, even close enough for my phone to be picked up by their router, besides that I am a brilliant law student (graduate?)
The cops are unfair, silly, racist don’t think he can quite play that card and as soon as you exonerate me I’ll find the real killers!
What’s unfortunate? The reality that the term “circumstantial evidence” has been misused and abused by popular media to be taken as short hand for “weak and unconvincing evidence”?
DNA evidence—literally all DNA evidence in ever single criminal case, even DNA evidence showing the victim’s blood on the killer’s hand and the knife the killer is brandishing as he shouts “I’d kill 'em twice if god would let me!”—is “circumstantial evidence.” That’s an example of how absurd it is to think that “circumstantial evidence” can just be hand-waved away.
Arguably, and has been previously noted in this thread, it is direct evidence (“I saw him do it with my own eyes [while tired, late at night, and with blurry vision, not to mention I hate the guy because he broke my sister’s heart in high school]!”) is the evidence that we ought to be primed to disregard absent significant corroboration.
Exactly.
Circumstantial evidence can be misused*, but so can direct evidence (for the reasons you allude to), but some circumstantial evidence can very convincing.
*Example of misuse of circumstantial evidence: “This nurse was the only one on duty during every one of these suspicious deaths, so she’s got to be guilty.” “What made those deaths suspicious?” “That killer nurse was on duty then - obviously the deaths were suspicious” - in other words, when dealing with circumstantial evidence, be careful that you’re not engaging in circular reasoning.
I’ve been thinking about how a student studying for phd would commit these crimes.
Wouldn’t he be more clever?
It seems obvious he would copy police procedures for entering a homicide scene. Modern detectives dress in white bunny suits and wear booties over their shoes. (Thanks The First 48 for showing me detectives working crime scenes.)
Witness statements already describe the suspect as wearing dark clothing.
I’m not suggesting it clears Bryan. But the popular theories often speculate the four students murders were carefully planned by someone knowledgeable in crime forensics.
Carefully planned by some dumbass who left evidence everywhere?