It’s absurd to think that a criminal defense attorney cannot make a qualified decision on her performance based on the facts of the case, hearing snippets of the trial, knowing how long the jury deliberated, etc. They absolutely do not have to have heard the entire trial. If you can find a single attorney who did read the entire transcript, and who says that she did a good job, I’d be happy to listen.
Nowhere in that quote does he say anything close to “good job”. Nowhere. He basically says she was nice and that he isn’t pissed off.
Of course it is. We’ve literally heard less than a minute of her at trial, and we know nothing of what Adnan told her beyond what is in her notes. And the facts of the case are beyond her control and don’t count against her performance. No fair person would make a judgment based only on that. You are almost literally arguing we should judge a book by it’s cover.
As far as I know, only the lawyers involved in the trial, Rabia, and DE have read the full transcript. Hardly big enough a group to make a definitive statement either way.
SK says the only thing he holds against her is not calling Asia and even that he thinks was a simple oversight. If during a two month trial, there is only one bad decision you think your lawyer made out of the dozens of things they did, I think pretty good is a fair rating.
I’m not even figuratively arguing that. It’s a stupid analogy. I’m saying that it’s very reasonable for a defense attorney to assess the ability for the defense council to get an acquittal, based on the quality of the prosecution’s case. It’s done by all lawyers before they decide to take a case. It’s done by the DA before deciding to prosecute. It’s beyond dumb to say that we can’t judge her performance based on what we now know. It’s like saying I can’t judge the performance of a defense that gave up 450 yards and 48 points in a football game unless I watched the whole thing.
Fact is, you can’t find one single attorney who is saying she did a good job in this case. I’ve just got your word vs all the attorneys who have offered their opinions, including a friend who has defended celebrities in national high-profile cases and who happens to be very good at what he does. I have no idea how much more than the podcast he might have seen or read, but if he’s comfortable making that call, then I’m going with his assessment.
In other words, Adnan hasn’t even come close to saying she did a good job.
True. But personally, i didn’t not listen to the podcast asking myself “did Adnan do this or is some other scenario more likely.”
I asked myself “should Adnan be in jail.”
Personally, it is hard for me to think he should be. I could easily be wrong. You’re right that I did not sit through the trial nor have I seen all of the trial materials. But I’ve also not seen anybody pull out of those materials anything that I think substantively undermines the presentation of the podcast.
I do not think I am better qualified than anybody else. But based on the information available to me, which includes no real expectation that trials are infallible or that judges don’t have a vested interest in believing that all of their trials ended correctly, I feel it seems that the court reached a bad conclusion. Not through maliciousness, just through human fallibility.
More than happy to consider the damning trial evidence that will change my find (cognizant that once having reached a conclusion I’m just as unlikely as anybody else to view contradictory information without bias) and SK refused to present.
I made those comments, backed up by the recollection of someone who was there for the trial. You think Rabia’s a crank. I don’t. Obviously, she’s biased, but her arguments and evidence make sense. Have you read any of her blog posts?
This is begging the question. The evidence for every wrongly-convicted person was enough for the jury to find them guilty. And it’s not like this is a random case. It’s one that Sarah Koenig picked because it was so controversial and questionable.
His lack of guilt ought to hang on reasonable doubt. That some friends said he was controlling and some didn’t isn’t very convincing. That Nisha recounts a call where Jay was at the job he didn’t get until after Hae’s disappearance is not very convincing. I think it is more likely than not that Adnan did it. But that’s a long way from “no reasonable doubt”.
I also think you didn’t really answer my question. You are arguing that Adnan did it, and that Gutierrez didn’t do a bad job. Do you think you’re applying the same level of skepticism to both claims? It seems to me that you’re applying sort of a “preponderance of the evidence” standard for claims about Adnan’s guilt (“which scenario is more likely”), which seems too low, and an extremely high standard for claims about Gutierrez (“Impossible to say without having read the entire transcript.”).
Something odd happened to me yesterday. There was a commotion in my apartment building. Some guy who was visiting my downstairs neighbors had been drinking too much, and got into a violent altercation with, I think, his girlfriend and some of the people living in the apartment. Someone called the police, who promptly showed up and hauled him away. A window was broken in the common area, near the main entrance to the building (or rather, to be more specific, a glass insert in a door).
So, it was the drunken, violent guy who broke the window, right? Slam dunk, case closed. I even spoke to a witness (I think another visitor, I don’t remember seeing him before) who confirmed it.
Except, no, according to my downstairs neighbor, the one who the drunk was visiting (and also, I think, the same one who called the cops). I talked to him a bit later. He, the neighbor, was the one who had broken the window, he said, not the drunk guy, and it had been by accident. His story was that the two episodes had occurred at almost exactly the same time, within minutes of each other, but were unconnected. The window thing was a freak occurrence. My neighbor had just opened the door as usual, and the glass insert came loose and shattered. The frame must have been weakening over time (it’s an old door), and something finally snapped. He showed me the cuts on his hand from the glass. And unlike the visitor, he was neither intoxicated nor violent. He seemed honest. Trustworthy. He kept apologizing for what had happened.
This doesn’t seem to make sense. What are the chances? The window breaking at exactly the same time as a fight and a visit from the cops, and there’s no connection? With a person, the neighbor, involved in some way in both incidents? Yeah, right. Pull the other one.
So maybe someone is lying here. Me neighbor could be protecting the drunk guy. But why take the fall? Also, he seemed genuinely sincere. He just doesn’t seem like a liar. And what is the utility of the lie? The drunk is in trouble anyway. Why cover for him about the window? Also, the cuts on the hand.
But what about the witness, who claimed that it was the drunk who did it? Now it gets even murkier. A bit later, when confronted with the alternative set of facts, he changed his story, and said that he had simply been speculating. He had just put two and two together, and assumed the obvious. He never actually saw it happen.
So what’s the truth? Someone lying for unclear reasons, a bizarre coincidence, something else? Maybe we’ll never have an answer.
Anyway, it made me think of Serial. Mysteries where neither explanation adds up do, apparently, happen in real life. Maybe “who broke the window” could be the story for season 2.
Yes, but you don’t know the quality of the prosecution’s case as you have seen a small fraction of the evidence and testimony.
You can’t really. Were they playing Tom Brady in his prime or were they playing Marc Sanchez? Did they win by 24 points and thus not need to play defense in the fourth quarter? There are a hundred explanations for the numbers beyond, the defense must suck. Your analogy is like saying if the plane crashed the pilot must suck.
I pretty much only discuss this case with lawyers and EVERY ONE declines to answers since they don’t know all the evidence and haven’t seen enough to say she did such a poor job that it is really relevant. Most of them do this out of professional courtesy and because CG death means she cannot defend herself.
Along those lines, CG supposedly had several people helping her with this case. Why don’t we hear them saying what a bad job she did if it was transparently obvious?
You’re right, I suppose we should all accept the word of your unnamed, famous friend :dubious:. Why would you feel comfortable with this friend making a judgement without seeing the vast majority of the trial transcript?
I said, “pretty good job”, and I stand by the fact that if you think your lawyer made one mistake worth mentioning, it is a fair synopsis.
Okay, but how could you make that judgment 15 years after the fact by listening to a podcast? Answering that question requires us to put ourselves in the place of the jury to some extent, so how can you confidently make the judgement without having even heard the prosecution’s main witness speak on the stand?
There are a handful of people who have “all” the evidence: Rabia, SK, DE, the jury, the lawyers, and the judge. The vast majority think he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt: the jurors (all 12), the judge, and the prosecution. SK seems to be on the fence re: his guilt, but thinks he should have been acquitted. Three people think he is innocent: Rabia (biased and not at the trial), DE (not at the trial and biased), and (presumably) CG. Of the people actually there, most think he is guilty, and they think the prosecution proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt. In fact, Wanda Heard, the judge in the second trial recently said on FB:
She has since deleted the comment. That said, for this woman to feel that strongly about it to this day says a lot in my mind. Note she didn’t lament Adnan’s poor defense or the prosecution overstepping. She didn’t say the evidence was scant and that CG was inept. She said the evidence was OVERWHELMING. Could it be that maybe the podcast didn’t do a great job or conveying what it would was like in the court listening to the actual people involved and hearing them speak?
Are you willing to consider the fact that most murder cases are equally as “flimsy” and that the objections raised in this podcast are largely unreasonable? Most murder cases have no physical evidence, and many murder cases have people who have lied, etc. The fact is that this podcast set an unrealistic standard that we should use trials to get the “truth” but, we don’t get the “truth” the vast majority of the time. All you can do is present a reasonable approximation of what you think happened that is supported by the evidence you have, and includes the people you think did it. Many cases break down when you put undue skepticism on every detail. This is why people believe in JFK conspiracies and 9/11 truther stories.
Rabia was not at the trial.
I think I have read all of them. She is not reliable, rational, or reasonable. Just a portion of the evidence for this is her lying to SK about where Leakin Park is and thinking CG threw the trial to make money on the appeal.
No, you asked me why I had different standards for CG’s competence and Adnan’s guilt. I explained that I don’t and that the evidence against Adnan is strong. Strong evidence doesn’t preclude the possibility of wrongful conviction. It just means my standards are not different. I am open to more evidence swaying my opinion in both cases.
Why? Why is everything damaging to Adnan waved off despite the fact that it is relevant and very telling? Whether it’s him writing I will kill or Hae’s note, everyone just assumes it is insignificant. Why?
Yes, it is circumstantial, but the circumstances here are that the author of that letter ended up dead weeks later and one of the few people we know with means, motive, and opportunity was described as controlling. Why shouldn’t we view those things more skeptically?
It doesn’t really matter that much. Nisha WAS called and someone likely spoke to her or someone at that number. You could argue it was a butt dial but then you have to assume that she was on speed dial (unsubstantiated), that Jay had the phone in his pocket (possible), that nobody picked up the phone at her house for 2+ minutes, and that despite all that, Nisha felt comfortable enough testifying against a guy she seems to have cared about even though the call wasn’t familiar to her. Yes, all those stars could have aligned, but which scenario is more likely?
Furthermore, do you ever see the other side trying to explain away phone calls that don’t support their scenario as butt dials?
No, I am arguing Adnan did it, and we don’t have enough evidence CG did a BAD job- a sufficiently bad job that it rises to a level that requires redress from an appeals court.
I disagree. We have heard almost nothing about the job CG did beyond the not calling Asia, and 15 second of her cross on Jay. Some of the latter just focused on the optics like her voice being grating and this “White lady” (CG isn’t White) yelling at Jay. Sure, we hear Rabia and SK saying they think she did a bad job, and we hear about how she eventually broke down, but that doesn’t speak to her choices in this trial.
On the main points that I think most people would see as weak points in the prosecution’s case (Jay and the time line), she seems to have mounted an argument. She pressed Jay on his inconsistencies, the issues with how he obtained a lawyer, etc. I don’t know what she said regarding the time line, but she seems to have done some of the things most lawyers would do. Maybe if we could see all the evidence without Rabia holding it hostage, we could make a more informed judgement. Until then, I think it’s more fair to reserve judgement on a dead woman who cannot defend herself.
Yes you can. Like I said, the quality of the prosecution’s case is judged by both sides before the trial ever begins.
That kind of performance sucks either way.
Doesn’t matter. The defensive performance still sucked. It doesn’t matter if it didn’t cost them the game.
No there are not. There may be 100 explanations for why the defense sucked, but it still sucked. No question about it. None.
You are really, really bad at analogies. Like, embarrassingly bad. I’m saying that we know something went wrong if the plane went down. You are saying that we can’t know that unless we know exactly what happened the entire flight.
That is side-splittingly hilarious. None of your buddies will discuss a case with you one-on-one out of professional courtesy to a dead lawyer that none of you ever knew? Bullshit.
Because that would look bad for them. Have you even thought this through? At all?
I didn’t say we all should. I said that I am taking his word (and I never said he was famous) over yours, and I’ve already outlined the ridiculousness of saying that it’s impossible to judge a lawyer’s performance without hearing every word. You can keep saying it, but you’ll still be wrong.
I guess it’s easy for you to stand by things that you made up out of whole cloth. It’s fantasy.
I think there are 2 separate plots here, possibly intersecting.
Jay, an amateur drug dealer, arranges an illlicit transaction that is very much out of his depth. He enlists Adnan for assistance in effecting the transaction, demanding that Adnan get a new cell phone and surrender his car to as to make tracing more difficult.
The payload of this transaction is referred to as “Stephanie’s Birthday Present”. Adnan is content to pretend this is the case, though he probably knows better.
Adnan needs to get to Best-Buy to make a live-drop of cash or product. He has no intent of involving Hei, but something changes at the last minute.
Adnan goes to Best Buy with Hei. Something goes sour. The 3rd party departs Best Buy with Hei in her car, and Adnan is left wondering what happened. At this point I think he wants to believe that Hei just ditched him, knowing that worse things could have happened.
Jay gets a panicked call from Adnan describing how things went down, and simultaneously a call from the 3rd party explaining that Jay needs to help bury a body and take other actions to make things right.
Having been party to some amateur drug transactions myself, this is my best reckoning of how this may have gone. Hei saw something that an unstable party felt was a threat, and she was taken. Adnan may not have even seen this… he know she’s gone, and that he’s partially responsible, but he didn’t do it. Likewise Jay didn’t observe the murder, but he knows he has some culpability as well.
Bullshit. Things change during a trial. Witnesses change their stories or crack under pressure, etc., etc.
HOW DO YOU KNOW? I cannot believe I debating with someone who thinks judging a trial performance based on about 30 seconds of audio is a fair or good idea.
Yes, you would need to know what happened during the flight. Do you think they just listen to the last few minutes on a black box recording? They listen to the whole tape to figure out what happened.
Do you have some kind of reading comprehension problem? We discuss the podcast regularly. They, to a person, don’t have a strong opinion in whether she was good or bad since we literally have heard almost nothing about what happened in court and why it happened in court.
To piggyback on your football example. Do you ever see commentators say, while I didn’t see the game, Tom Brady had a terrible game based on the stats? Of course not because they are not so invested in having an opinion that they don’t do basic due diligence in terms of research. The fact that your supposed famous lawyer friend doesn’t do that speaks to his lack of integrity, not CG’s bad work.
Bullshit. People admit their mistake all the time. There would be no consequences for doing so, and they might be able to help get an “innocent” man out of jail if they did so.
Not every word, but how about more than 30 seconds of audio? The fact that you think this is some absurdly high bar betrays your basic lack of common sense and fairness. Luckily, I doubt anyone trusts you to judge anything.
Explain why you think that is an unfair characterization?
I think this is a very relevant story. I don’t have a big problem believing it was a coincidence. There are so many ways coincidences can happen, so one or more of them are bound to happen.
To Labrador Deceiver, just wanted to highlight another lawyer basically backing up my account on two points:
Notice how she doesn’t say CG was a shit lawyer? And one more thing:
Weird that someone else came to that same conclusion. I guess maybe this “fantasy world” I live in, where people correctly parse statements people make, has other people.
Notice where he criticized the tactics she used in Adnan’s trial? That’s a point in my favor, not yours. Or, perhaps you’d like to point out where I ever said she was a shit lawyer. I’ll be waiting for that cite. In the meantime, thanks for helping me make my point.
So, someone else is making up shit. Not surprising, really.
Doesn’t matter. We know what the prosecution was dealing with, and so did CG.
Because that kind of defensive performance on a football field is always bad.
You keep saying that, but it isnt true. We are judging the trial based on much more than 30 seconds of audio.
You’re moving goalposts. If a plane goes down, you don’t need a black box to know that something went wrong with the flight.
No reading issue here. Your characterization that every attorney you talk to absolutely refuses to speculate on a dead lawyer’s performance in a private and personal conversation out of professional courtesy is the funniest thing I’ve read all week.
Yes, all the time. If a QB throws 4 INTs with 80 yds passing, he sucked.
SHE. She’s a woman. One demerit for your reading comprehension. Second, those were hardly critiques. On balance, she is saying don’t be so quick to judge CG, which is exactly what I said.
I love this game: Please point out where I said you said she was a shit lawyer?
Classic deflection. I guess you get extra points for your commitment to intellectual dishonest.
No we don’t either. We have no idea what arguments thy were going to make, how they made them, the strength of their witnesses, etc. You clearly have no idea of how a trial or the law works.
I am not moving the goalposts. My point this whole time is that plane crash ≠ bad pilot just as losing a case ≠ bad lawyer.
Then you lead a pretty boring life I guess. I am not sure why it’s hard to believe people of a given profession are reticent to roundly condemn the job another did with almost no information.
Maybe, maybe not. Were those deflection of their own WRs? The point, again, despite your complete miscomprehension of both sports and the law, is that numbers, first impressions, and incomplete information are a shitty basis from which to draw a conclusive opinion. Maybe CG did a bad job, but that opinion is very hard to justify given what we know now.
Do you understand what the work characterization means? If he said those words it would not be a characterization; it would be what he said. Maybe we can just chalk up it up to English being another thing you have trouble with.
No, she said that she probably made a mistake. Point for me. And your shouldn’t be taking about anyone’s reading comprehension abilities if you think that I’ve ever called CG a shit lawyer.
Here:
If we aren’t talking about CG being a shit lawyer, then this is a total non-sequitur.
Dismissing a lame argument that amounts to “someone agrees with me”, is not deflection. It’s giving your argument all the consideration it deserves.
Yes we do. The trial is over. We know exactly what kind of limp-wristed case the prosecution put forward. We know what evidence they had.
And i’m saying, once again, that your analogy is awful. I put forth a better analogy, which you don’t seem to understand.
Not really. What makes you say that?
No it isn’t.
Are personal attacks all you have left? Because really, that seems to be all you have left. So far, I’ve lost count of the various ways you’ve engaged in ad hominem attacks in this thread.
First, she says it MAY have been a mistake. Second, she doesn’t say she did a bad job at all, which has been my point. CG isn’t beyond being critiques for a choice we know she made. Everyone makes mistakes. The point is we don’t know enough to say those mistakes were impactful enough to warrant saying she did a bad job.
Reading comprehension problems arise again. Please point out where I said you said she was a shit lawyer? If you drew an incorrect inference, that is on you.
No, it’s deflection given many people think the characterization is fair given what Adnan said. I linked to one other lawyer who says that while you just whine that Adnan didn’t say those exact words. If Adnan thought she did a bad job, he would have said that. It doesn’t seem he did. Discussing this point more really makes no sense if you cannot parse a basic statement.
Great, so please link to the trial transcripts, the list of witnesses and their statements, the evidence presented in total, and any other relevant information that outlines the entire case the prosecution put forth?
Excuse me, you started with the personal attacks. Don’t bitch and moan now that you painted yourself into a corner as far as the argument is concerned.
Yes we do know enough. The prosecution had a shit case that she was unable to overcome.
Your statement makes no sense any other way than an implication that I thought CG was a shit lawyer. Pease stop back pedaling and admit your mistake.
One person is not many. I dismissed. I didn’t deflect.
Look, another personal attack. I guess whining is better than inventing things.
He absolutely would not. He doesn’t even have very much bad to say about the guy who accused him of murder.
Why? Are you suggesting that there is more evidence of significance that we don’t know about? Cite, please. Otherwise, I think we know what evidence the prosecution had on Adnan.
No I didnt. I certainly didn’t carpet bomb my posts with them like you did after you ran out of argument.
