I was under the impression that the feds go after a case based off of severity, not off of ease.
If, for instance, some foreign terrorist attack killed hundreds of Americans in America, the feds would absolutely be on top of it, even if it were the gnarliest, most complex, tough-to-solve case in the world.
Yes, if the police have you on videotape discussing how you committed the murder (and laughing about it) I imagine the cost of the lawyers is immaterial.
This was using the “Mister Big” sting, something the Canadian courts seem to allow, but is not, as I understand, allowed in the USA. It has the strong risk of someone providing a false confession through fear or the promise of money. Notoriously, there was a famous case in Ontario of the abduction and murder of Tory Stafford. While she was still missing, the police decided the mother was involved (she wasn’t) and tried to run a Mister Big sting on a frantic grieving mother. She blew it by announcing to the press a secret benefactor had promised her he would put up a large reward. I also recall reading of a Mr. Big sting in British Columbia where the target shot the undercover cop; it seems he honestly believed the person was part of a criminal gang and that he was about to be killed for not cooperating in their criminal enterprise.
However, reading through the details, it shows that unlike most Hollywood murder mysteries, there are always questionable pieces and debatable issues in a real life complex case.
From Wikipedia:
On March 2001, less than a month after the ruling, Burns and Rafay were extradited to the United States with assurances from prosecutors handling the case that they would not seek the death penalty. During the trial in 2004 (it was delayed by a number of factors), prosecutors claimed that Burns and Rafay plotted to kill Rafay’s family and share the money from an insurance policy and the sale of the family home. Burns claimed that his confession to undercover RCMP officers that he and Rafay killed Rafay’s family was the result of coercion by the police. Defense lawyers noted that no forensic evidence linked the two men to the crime.
In May 2004, both men were found guilty of three counts of murder and each was subsequently sentenced to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. Burns’s family immediately began to fight to have the case overturned on appeal, alleging numerous problems with the investigation and improper rulings by the judge.
In 2007, Sebastian Burns’s sister produced a documentary about coercion by police. The family is continuing its efforts, and a website has been posted that claims to debunk the entire case.
In July 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled to limit the admissibility of evidence obtained in the sort of RCMP Mr. Big undercover operations that were used to obtain confessions from Burns and Rafay.
This ruling states that the admissibility of such evidence may be limited in cases of very young or vulnerable suspects. Burns and Rafay were among the youngest suspects ever targeted in an RCMP undercover operation. In late 2014, both men filed paperwork to seek an appeal in light of the 2014 Supreme Court of Canada decision.
The murder was the subject of two episodes of the 2017 Netflix documentary-series The Confession Tapes and True Crime Garage podcasts.
I agree with @Procrustus. O.J. had enough money to get lucky to have investigators find the Fuhrman tapes. No way does Orenthal the black bus driver (to steal from Chris Rock) who has a public defender get enough funds to hire an investigator to uncover those tapes. Without those tapes, O.J. is convicted.
So, there is a line from money------------>acquittal, but it is not as you posit, such that you just pay a certain amount for a verdict. You need facts, and as has been said, if O.J. had confessed, hypothetically, after being properly Mirandized, then even Elon Musk money wouldn’t have saved him.
Racist cops beat the confession out of him. That’s not any more incredible than that he was framed by Fuhrman, if you look at the details.
If you have a jury predisposed to believe something, they’ll believe it.
Well, yes. Maybe. O.J. was such an outlier case because he was rich and there was no confession and there were so many moving parts.
If you had that exact murder in Anytown, WV it would have been a plea, or it would have been a 3 day trial with a guilty verdict.
I still don’t fathom these months long trials that California has. If I ask for a week long trial, the judge looks at me like I’m insane.
OJ was an outlier because he was a celebrity, who the jury “knew” before this incident, and had seemed like a good guy and success story. So it was easier to portray him as an innocent victim of racist cops than would be some other guy who was first encountered in the context of murder suspect. That’s about it.
The legal team was sucessful in finding the Fuhrman tapes and in playing up the racial angle generally. But the jury was already very predisposed to bite on that.
I can agree with all of this. I desperately wanted him to be innocent. He was the Juice, man!
I just helped a guy who, although living in Florida, had been subpoenaed to testify in a homicide trial in Fresno, California. It’s scheduled to last 4 weeks.
(That sounds utterly exhausting to me. Trials usually start at 8:30 and go until 5 or 6 pm But then you have to spend the evening getting ready for the next day, so you may end up working to 9 or 10. I can’t imagine doing that for an entire month)
I’ve done a few trials in California. They start late and end early, and the trial time is constantly getting bumped for hearings in other cases, and other miscellaneous delays.
Plus, the culture is a bit different. A deposition that should take an hour or two might go all day (or longer) in Southern California. (The northern part of the state is more “normal.”)
In LA, the judges will get another trial assigned as soon as yours is finished, so they have no incentive to move things along quickly.
Ach, that’s brutal! Ours start at 10 am, 90 minute lunch break, usually end around 4 pm, for exactly the reason you mention - the need to prep for the next day.
Anchorage Superior Courts have a good system. I think it’s 8:30 to 1:00 (or 1:30). No lunch break. The jury has the afternoon off for their jobs, kids, etc… The attorneys get prep time. The courts use the afternoon for other hearings, etc.
You get almost as much in a “half-day” as other courts do with their full days.
Are you guys doing the French work week thing? 
We start at 8am, take a 10 minute mid morning recess, break for lunch for the jury, but the attorneys stay and argue motions, more in the afternoon, 10 minute afternoon break, and the day ends when the jury says it does. Some juries want to break at 4 and others want to go until 8 or 9 if the case can be done that day or before the weekend.
During trials, I get about 3 hours of terrible dream only sleep per night.
I’ve done trials both ways. Both have pros and cons. I don’t like going past 4:30 or 5:00 p.m., though.
No, we’re doing a sensible work week that allows for work to get done and life to be lived. 
That sounds rather sissified. We go through a week of trial, get a verdict, and then drink until we are blind and then pass out face first on the bed, still in shirt, tie and pants and sleep for 17 consecutive hours. You know…like REAL men.
You don’t off take your tabs, waistcoat and robes first? Barbarian!
If the wife is still awake, which is not a good bet to make after the post-verdict drinking, she will make sure my clothing is taken off. But usually the overcoat is hung by the door (in winter), the jacket somehow gets off, and some of the times the shoes are removed. It’s sort of a hit and miss.
Seriously, though, I don’t know how anyone over 50 or 55 can handle a trial. I can understand how a 50 or 55 year old person could run a marathon, but not a judicial trial. The mental exhaustion is horrific.
You have your stages mixed up. During the investigation stage resources are allocated based on severity. When the prosecutor decides whether or not to bring a case to trial, that is based on his or her belief that the state can prevail.
Remember the prosecutor from Dirty Harry? Doesn’t get more severe than that, but (spoiler) because Harry went in without a warrant, the prosecutor had to drop the case and let him walk.
~Max
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Couple of questions (I was a bit confused by this comment):
If the feds have unlimited resources, then wouldn’t they be best suited for tackling the high-hanging fruit that are the tough cases to solve?
Also, every now and then you read about the FBI solving some particularly difficult cold case or whatnot. Why did they choose to go for those if they were not “cases the government thinks they can easily win?”