Reporting of new info in West Memphis 3 case- biased or unbelievably stupid?

First, the state has the burden of proof, don’t forget that. The State’s evidence actually has to prove its theory is the only one possible. The defense evidence only has to prove that an alternative scenario is POSSIBLE, not a certainty. The standards are differnt.

In this case, the fiber evidence turned out to be worthless and have no probative value (I don’t know where you got the odd notion that “inconclusive” evidence is of any use to the party with the burden of proof. It is not).

I don’t think the hair had any probative value either but it didn’t HAVE to (different standards, you see). It wasn’t necessary for the defense to prove that somebody else did it, only that somebody else COULD have done it.

By the way, don’t kid yourself that Bricker is “on your side.” he doesn’t think the WM3 is guilty any more than we do. This is purely an exercise for him.

We went over this in the original thread. You simply dismiss any evidence that doesn’t prove your case. This is, as I pointed out, incorrect.

The fiber evidence is not conclusive proof of guilt. It does tend to establish guilt, and, taken in connection with other non-conclusive but indicative evidence, established the guilt of the three beyond a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury. That verdict has been upheld as reasonable on appeal. Your method of dealing with these undoubted facts is to cast aspersions on everyone involved and repeat yourself over and over, give greater weight to TV movies than sworn testimony, etc., etc. As is often said, “when the facts are on your side, argue the facts; when the facts are against you, argue the law; when the facts and the law are against you, pound on the table.” No doubt your fist is getting sore, but you persist.

Circumstantial evidence is inconclusive but certainly not worthless. Sometimes you find a trout in the milk. If I take out a million dollar life insurance policy on my wife, and tomorrow she is dead, that is not conclusive of my guilt. If we are known to be having marital problems, that is also not conclusive of my guilt. If I am under pressure from my mistress to leave my wife, but cannot because I cannot afford to be divorced, that is also not conclusive. If my wife died of poisoning, and I have rat poison in the garage, that is not conclusive.

Taken separately, none of these are conclusive proof that I murdered my wife, if you dismiss each one, because no one piece alone is enough to convict me. However, if you take all of them together, and add to it the testimony of a couple of my friends that I mentioned that I had murdered my wife, then most people would agree that there was a pretty good prima facie case for my guilt. No doubt my defense lawyer, if he were any good, would find some mysterious stranger who showed up in the neighborhood who might have done the deed. And if I were convicted, no doubt if you looked hard enough, you might find somebody who was dead who had committed a murder by forcing rat poison down the throat of a stranger. And if you then allowed yourself to argue, “Well, no one piece of evidence was strong enough to establish guilt all by itself”, then (providing I had been sentenced to death) no doubt there might be a groundswell of support for me as an innocent, railroaded victim.

If the DNA comes back, that will also not be conclusive. If the blood on the necklace is shown to be from the victim, no doubt the defense will argue contamination or deliberate planting by the police. If it is shown to be from someone else, or if it cannot be determined who it came from, then no doubt the defense will argue what I suspect they are arguing now - trying to slip from “this evidence does not show guilt” to “this evidence shows innocence” and hope no one notices.

But I will notice.

As mentioned earlier, one of the defendants has mentioned drinking blood, so it is possible that the DNA tests will come back as being from someone other than the victim. But that does nothing to establish reasonable doubt. I intend to apply a consistent standard. Just so you know.

Regards,
Shodan

The jury may well have been swayed by the fiber- the prosecutor may have dazzled with them how a fiber near the body was similar to one in Echols best friends uncles garage. Of course, they won’t tell you that that fiber is the most popular type in the only carpet store in the city, and the jury may get the wrong impression of the importance of it.

Of course, a good defense lawyer would make it a point to show how useless this is. I can’t recall if they did or didn’t, but yes, I can see how a jury could be swayed by a meaningless fiber if they aren’t told how meaningless it really is.

One fiber was also used as the main case against Wayne Williams, who more than likely killed an adult, but probably no children.

That is completely uncalled for. Fat Chance is making the quite reasonable statement that the legal process did not produce justice. It seems to me that he _ and pretty much everyone else except the hysterical Wee Bairn _ are expressing frustration over this and wanting to know why the system failed.

He’s asking you to set aside your purely technical defense of the legal system and help shed light on what happened. If no one did anything demonstrably improper, then why did three people end up being convicted on such dubious evidence? Is the same thing likely to happen to other defendants? Do you think the judge, prosecutors and police did a sloppy, though not necessarily incompetent, job?

I knew as soon as I saw the subject of this thread that Bricker would ride in to argue fiercely about every single legal tree while completely ignoring the forest that everyone else wants to talk about.

So what was the judge’s error, then? He permitted the jury to hear testimony about the alternate suspect.

I hope that no one here is suggesting that the judge should have heard that evidence and said, “Well, that’s it. I declare these boys acquitted!”

Are they?

What, specifically, was the trial error concerning the Bojangles incident?

I think the fibers would mean more to me if they were from primary transfer, but everything found was secondary transfer. I just find it hard to believe that these 3 killers could have picked up a fiber off of a t-shirt in a siblings room, and carry that out into the woods and leave it on a victim while killing them, but at the same time not leave a fiber directly from thier own clothes.

The negroid hair at first appears to throw some reasonable doubt, but then again, it was found on the blanket used to cover a victim, and could have come from anywhere, so is hard to say its directly tied to the crime either.

As a juror, I don’t think either would have much affect on me.

The jury knew of the guy, I can’t find if they knew of the hair as well. If they knew both, then the fault on this specific point is with the jury. They either do not know what reasonable doubt is, or knew it and did not feel this was reasonable doubt. Or didin’t care either way, and wanted the devil guys in jail. IMO, wrong either way, but, no I’m not in their heads and can’t prove purposeful misdeeds, just my opinion.

You’re not asking me these questions are you? Cause I never suggested the judge made an error in regards to the Bojangles man, others did, and in fact part of my post that you cut out was me asking the same question of Diogenes.

I’ve answered the question you raise in part already:

There are two flaws in our system that, in my view, contributed to this potential miscarriage of justice. I mentioned one in the quote above.

The second I alluded to, but did not highlight and explain specifically: the compensation available to public defenders. As a former public defender, it’s a subject near and dear to my heart, and I practiced in a state that is WORSE, as far as pay scales for public defense, than Arkansas is.

In my home state, today, fees for a serious felony trial are capped at slightly over $1,000.00 That’s for the entire effort, start to finish. I don’t know what Mark Geragos bills per hour, but I’m willing to bet that wouldn’t cover four hours of his time. That’s time needed to locate, interview, and prep witnesses, read through all the state’s discovery, interview and prep your client, handle all the pre-trial motion work, select a trial date, voir dire and select a jury, conduct a trial, and protect your record with post-trial motions.

Lawyers can starve on that kind of money. What’s the result? Too-quick investigations, pressure from lawyers for the accused to take pleas, inadequate investigation of alibis (because that money doesn’t include any additional fees for investigators), and poor trial prep in general.

Now, none of these relate to bias, incompetence, or malice. Those are the charges I stepped into the thread to defend. Anyone who is, as you suggest, merely arguing that the legal process does not always produce justice has no argument from me. But frankly, the tone of the thread has NOT been that.

You need to take a 6th Grade civics class because you don’t know what you’re talking about. I repeat: THE STATE HAS THE BURDEN OF PROOF. If there evdience doen’t prove anything, then IT DOESN"T PROVE ANYTHING.

Exactly, so it’s worthless.

No it doesn’t. It doesn’t establish ANYTHING. It’s worthless.

There was no such evidence in this case. There was actually no evdience against these kids at all except for the bogus confession coerced from the retarded kid.

Yes, the jury belived it. The jurors were morons.

It’s been upheld as legally valid. “Reasonability” does not get ruled on by appellate courts. These specious appeals to legal validity being engaged in by both you and Bricker are beside the point. i have never tried to argue that the verdict was not legally valid. I’m only trying to say it was WRONG. Just like the O.J. verdict was both legally valid and wrong.

Of the two of us, I’m the only one who has ever read the court transcripts. You’ve never bothered to familiarize yourself with the facts at all. I can remember a past thread where you didn’t even know who the victims were and who the defendants were. You triumphantly trumpeted blood evidence on a knife as belonging to one of the defendants when the DNA showed that the blood belonged to one of the victims and that victim’s abusive and mentally ill stepfather.

Even circumstancial evidence has to show a likelihood of something. The fiber evidence showed absolutely nothing.

It will be yet another zero for the prosecution. The fact remains that you can’t point to a single shred of evidence against the WM3.

What does one thing have to do with the other?

You’ll be consistent, alright. You will consistently maintain your standard of guilty until proven innocent.

They were instructed on the meaning of reasonable doubt.

The fair conclusion is that they knew what reasonable doubt is, but did not feel that this came to the level of reasonable doubt.

By the way, as far as the process goes, three of the jurors did admit to misconduct (considering information external to the trial), but it was ruled that the misconduct was discovered too long after the trial to overturn it.

How about the testimony from Christy VanVickle? She testified that she heard Echols say he “killed the three boys.”

How about Jackie Medford’s testimony? She testified that she heard Echols say, “I killed the three little boys and before I turn myself in, I’m going to kill two more, and I already have one of them picked out.”

Why is that not evidence?

I don’t think the Bojangles thing was very significant, but the fact that jury convicted does not persuade me that they understood the reasonable doubt standard. The prosecution simply did not prove its case. I honestly believe that the verdict was a result of cultural and religious prejudice. Again, I’m not saying it wasn’t legally valid, I’m saying that it was WRONG. The jury was not able to be objective.

Because a.) it’s hearsay and b.) they were full of shit. The problems with those witnesses have already been expounded on in this thread. Yes, it’s “evidence,” in the technical sense that it was presented to a jury, but it wasn’t credible evidence.

I disagree only slightly.

On the record, the prosecution did prove their case.

The problem was the defense failed to prove THEIR case.

Yes, yes – it’s the prosecution’s burden. But when the prosecution presents enough evidence, it then falls to the defense to rebut the prosecution’s case. That’s what failed to happen here. A good defense would have made a better case for change of venue, protected their record on some of the in limine stuff that went against them, and done a better pre-trial investigation.

Not their fault: they were hamstrung by lack of funds. But that’s where the break occurred.

You’re used, I think, to seeing juries behave after getting a full dose from both sides. Here, the jury got only a half-dose strength from the defense, and they reacted predictably.

Yes, it’s hearsay – but it’s admissible, a long-recognized and perfectly valid exception to the hearsay rule called “admission against interest.”

And as for the “full of shit” – isn’t that for the 12 people who actually heard them testify, saw their faces, heard their tone of voice, observed their demeanor to judge? How are you, who are only reading their words on paper, a better judge of their credibility than the 12 people that actually saw them and heard them testify?

An inmate with Baldwin testified Baldwin told him in jail he killed the three as well. This was allowed, but none of the negatives on the inmate were. Guys are jail, pleading innocent, but telling strangers they did it? Highly dubious.

Bricker, you are ignoring the fact that 90% of the case against them was based on them being satanists who were going to kill the whole city if released. If you are a devout southern Christian, you are saying there is no chance this scare tactic worked on any jurors, and none of them let that cloud their decision?

Of course, I have no ironclad proof, and how dare I smear the name of a juror. Of course they did everything by the book, why, becasue they are jurors, and thats what a jury is instucted to do, and of course that’s what happened.

And also note the satan expert received his degree from a mail order university and took no classes to receive it. He admitted this on the stand. Yet police departments across the country to this day pay him to give lectures or to consult on the dangers of satanic killings in the US. I ask, how may verifiable satanic ritual killings have there been in the US, ever? My guess is zero.

And the judge would not allow testimony from confession experts with real degrees from real schools that it was “one of the worst confession I’ve ever heard”. No chance of bias there, huh? Of course not, he’s a judge, he is not allowed to be biased.

Wee Bairn, are you ever going to produce evidence to support your assertions? Or are you taking the Diogenes the Cynic route of simply asserting that evidence that he doesn’t like doesn’t exist?

This, for instance -

You refer to this as a fact. Please show where this has been established.

Regards,
Shodan