So I’ve been following the horrible, but also very weird, Danish “Submarine Murder” case. Mainly via the dramatized version on HBO. The basic facts are a local inventor and wanna be astronaut, decided, apparently for purely sadistic (and premeditated) reasons, to brutally murder and assault a female journalist he convinced to come for a ride in his homemade submarine (which he then deliberately scuttled).
After the murder he claimed (when the authorities told him they were raising the sub, having previous said he dropped her off safely before the submarine sank) she hit her head on a hatch and he then dumped her body, even after authorities discovered her torso (with severed head and extremities, and punctured and weighted down to ensure it sank).
Apparently, and this I don’t get, the authorities were not confident they could get a conviction for murder, even after they discovered the torso, because of having no definitive evidence to dispute his claim she dies by accident and he just disposed of the court (they only had this when, after much analysis and searching at sea they discovered her head, which had no sign of trauma).
Would that also be the case in the US? I get the fact its hard to get a conviction without a body, but I assumed that was cases where the murderer was like “Oh she just disappeared and I never saw her again”. Not when they make some cock and bull story about the victim being killed by accident, and then being buried at sea
In the US, you need to prove beyond a shadow of doubt all elements of the crime. A dead body is evidence, but it’s not necessarily enough to prove murder. You need a cause of death, a method of death, and evidence that the accused committed the act. A body by itself (or in this case, pieces of the body) doesn’t prove much of anything.
First, it’s “reasonable doubt” not “shadow of a doubt.”
Second, you’ve kind of missed the point. While it is true that merely having a body (and nothing else) doesn’t necessarily prove murder, it’s also true that the absence of a body doesn’t preclude a conviction of murder. For example:
Not necessarily. These aren’t elements of the crime of homicide.
I’m just going off the news reports I read years ago, but there’s plenty of evidence to put before a jury that he did it.
You don’t just have a dead body. You have all the physical evidence that the body gives you. You have evidence that he invited her onto the craft, that it was his craft, and you have the dismemberment, you probably have some evidence regarding timing, and you have his weird statements to the cops. This is actually a really good amount of evidence in my view. I’d be very surprised that this doesn’t result in some serious indictments. And if it were to go to trial, the prosecution has a lot to work with.
Caveat: I’m a lawyer but I’m not a criminal lawyer nor a trial lawyer.
You need to show that a homicide occurred. A dead body by itself isn’t evidence of that. With the body found in the Danish case can you show how she died wasn’t an accident? It’s true that you don’t need a body to prove murder, but you need other evidence of murder. Did the Danish case have other evidence to support a murder rather than accidental death?
IANAL, but the OP is arguing about in theory vs in practice.
In theory, a jury must be persuaded beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant committed a murder.
In practice, juries have convicted people of murder on far flimsier evidence than the mountain of guilty data this Danish submarine guy has left.
I have zero doubt that an American jury would find the guy guilty if he were charged in U.S. court. It wouldn’t be a long jury deliberation session either.
As I stated above, they don’t just have the existence of a dead body. They have all the physical evidence that the body itself provides. She was stabbed repeatedly in the groin. The body was cut to pieces, weighted down, and dumped in the sea. There was also no evidence of blunt trauma to the head. That is very ample evidence of intentional killing. I just read the Wikipedia article. Just the information in the first part of that article is very comfortably sufficient evidence of homicide.
They also had plenty of evidence of Madison’s murder sex fetish on his computer.
Indeed as stated above even if the body parts had deteriorated to the point of offering no useful evidence just the other evidence of Madsen and Wall’s movements and communications would have been enough to charge him. You could have convicted him even without a body at all.
I should also note that in the El Paso case I linked to, the article has a pretty significant error: they could not say that they had even found the victim’s blood in the back of the Jeep. There was no DNA at all associated with the luminol-esque chemical they used (so it was a false positive, as apparently can happen), but they did find some DNA (but couldn’t say it was blood) essentially in a corner of a floor mat in the back of the jeep.
The real damning evidence wasn’t so much the DNA evidence (which the defense handily undermined, going through how DNA a transfer or a lab error might well have accounted for it) but the general sequence of (1) phone tower/wifi evidence showing their movements (the accused and the victim—I’m sorry “complaining witness,” who wasn’t really a witness so much as missing and presumed dead), (2) the fact that both phones stopped pinging towers/wifi with location data at about 2AM in the suspect’s home, (3) the victim’s phone was never active again, (4) the suspects phone stopped sharing location data, (5) as mentioned in the article, there was a narrow window the next day when the suspect borrowed a shovel from one sibling and a jeep from another, but (6) the official story he gave to the sibling with the jeep was that he was taking a girl off-roading (but not the woman he was accused of murdering: his story was, as noted in the article, that she’d left from his home, saying she was going to get an Uber or something, and he never did share the name of the woman he was supposedly off-roading with and… what was the shovel for again?), (7) the weight of all the other evidence that made it…. “unreasonable” to conclude she had merely run off and abandoned her child/pet/extended family/plans she had to meet someone the next day/etc.
Will the case stand up on appeal? Shrug. Probably. It’s Texas, after all.
Anyway. No body. No cause of death. Not even so much blood that the victim could not possibly have survived. In fact there was no blood at all and barely any DNA evidence. But the evidence pretty well cut out a circle around the word “murder” and excluded every other suspect but the one on trial.
This is exactly kind of case I was thinking of. IANAL but that seems like a fraction the evidence available in the Submarine case but he was still successfully prosecuted in the US.
If that guy I had changed his story when he heard the cops were searching the desert, and gone “oh yeah she slipped and broke her neck, then I buried her in the desert, I don’t remember where”. Would the DA have said “well we can’t prove him wrong, let’s plead down to mishandling a corpse”?
That’s what the Danish equivalent to a DA was going to do apparently. Until the other body parts were found
One wonders if the real issue in the Danish case—and what might well be the same in the US—was not a dearth of evidence, but an abundance of wealth (for the suspect). Class differences and privilege and whatnot. Framed that way, I think we have plenty of examples of prosecutors in the US being reluctant to go after wealthy murderers without (or even with!) an airtight case, when it’s evident that a mere commoner would have been waiting in jail with no bond already, pending trial or a plea deal.
Though the murderer wasn’t particularly rich. This wasn’t an Elon Musk case, all his submarine and rocket construction was done by donations and a coterie of eager young volunteers (one of whom he’d clearly lined up to be his victim before arranging with the journalist to take a submarine ride with him)
Also another difference in the legal system is early on in the case, when there was basically no evidence (other than the fact he deliberately sank the submarine and Kim Wall was missing) he was charged with murder and remanded in jail. Which would not I think have happened in the US. It was only later, when his case was coming up in Court, they needed to make the call on whether to actually prosecute for murder.
Yeah but my understanding was, when they only had part of this (as torso had been recovered but not the other body parts or murder weapon) the Danish equivalent of an American DA did not think he had enough evidence to prosecute for murder (as the wounds on the torso were thought at that point to be post-mortem and part of the process of disposing of the body)
IMO (again IANAL in Denmark or the US) that a American DA would have considered that (even without a murder weapon or the other body parts) a slam dunk case. If so are there actual written legal differences that account for this?
In an American court pre-trial it only has to clear the probable cause bar. In most cases first a grand jury has to determine if there is probable cause for an indictment. Then after the inevitable motion to dismiss the judge has to rule that there is probable cause for a trial to occur. Only a jury can then determine if it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt. A cursory glance at the case makes me believe probable cause was easily reached by American court standards. The rest is up to a jury. Probable cause is not close to being as strict a standard as beyond a reasonable doubt.
In practice prosecutors will not bring anything to trial they don’t believe they will win even if there is probable cause. The profile of the case may affect that decision.
It’s worth considering whether the Danish prosecutor felt they couldn’t prove murder, or just that they understood their case would be stronger if they had more of the body recovered and could either (a) establish a cause of death or (b) at least show the accused was lying.
Given that the rest of the victim’s body was actually found, and it was a matter of months not years, I’m not sure how confident we can be that whatever “concerns” the prosecutor might have had were insurmountable doubts as a matter of law, Danish or otherwise. So I don’t know that it’s fair to draw any particular conclusions about differences, or even assume there are differences any on this point, between Danish law versus the various US jurisdictions.
Prosecutors wanting as much evidence as reasonably obtainable has got to be a pretty common trait throughout—though I am sure there are outliers.
Are they afraid of being fired if they lose cases in court? I’ve heard fed prosecutors are in greater job jeopardy for poor win-loss records but state prosecutors get to play things looser.
I am not an American lawyer, but I was (very briefly) a prosecutor. I also have (or had) experience acting for the Accused.
The evidence seems overwhelming. No conviction is certain, but I find it strange that the prosecutors were unsure, unless there was some exculpatory evidence that the article doesn’t share.
Maybe current Magistrate and former Prosecutor @Elendil_s_Heir might be able to answer more accurately.
Regardless of the theory, Madsen was charged with murder, indecent handling of a corpse, and sexual assault. He was convicted and lost his subsequent appeal against a life sentence.
In Denmark, a “life” sentence can be as little as 12 years but the average is 17. In rare cases, the sentence can be much longer. Of course, Denmark has no capital punishment, however heinous the crime.
It’s a very different matter for a defendant to be able to present evidence that someone else committed a murder than just having a dead body and the defendant saying “I didn’t do it”. Convincing a jury that a mysterious stranger with no known motive committed a murder is a very difficult task. Especially on a submarine with only the defendant and the deceased on board.
Isn’t “I didn’t kill him/her. It was an accident and then I just chopped up and dumped the body” basically the same excuse that Robert Durst used (and it worked)?
I believe her body has never been found. He was accused of murdering someone else who’s body was found but Durst was acquitted under some complicated circumstances. Possibly as a result of the prosecutor overcharging Durst and going for only a 1st degree murder conviction at trial.