As I mentioned in this thread, I just got off jury duty on a case involving some very stupid criminals. It wasn’t any grand bit of mind numbing stupidity, but dozens of small idiocies throughout.
The defendants were a mother and her adult son. The mother owned a property for which she hadn’t paid the mortgage in ages, and was under foreclosure. The house also had failed city code, and required repairs. No tenants were in it.
If you guessed this was an arson case, you’re far smarter than they are.
So the woman, who had never had insurance on the place, bought a policy for $190,000. She left out some significant facts on the application – like the foreclosure.
Two days before the next payment on the insurance was due, the son found a 14-year-old for whom the prospect of $300, with more when the insurance came through, was enticing. The kid set the fire, then showed up with a brand new tablet the next day (he had to return it and eventually get an iPod. I’m convinced that he didn’t realize he needed wifi for the tablet to be useful. Stupid, but for a 14-year-old, that comes with the territory).
The woman covered her tracks by deleting all messages for that day from her phone.
The police, meanwhile, tracked down the 14-year-old and got the story. They were arrested. The son, who was on probation, was returned to jail.
The trial started. The prosecution made a very strong case (the testimony of the boy was very credible). Then the woman took the stand in her defense. On cross-examination, the DA pointed out that she lied on the insurance application, and also on the claim form.
They showed photos from her phone. One, taken after she said she knew about the fire, showed the son with an expression like he just won the lottery. And how did the police get the phone? She had been dodging them (and also the insurance company, who denied the claim because she wouldn’t talk to them) and was picked up in a traffic stop. When they took her to the station, she asked one of the investigators to driver her car to the station. Her phone was on the front seat in plain sight.
The phone company produced logs for her phone – about 50 double-sided pages for a month. It showed that the boy had called her three times right after the fire had been set. Those calls had been erased and she denied they had been made. There were no texts that day (and that day only). She said she didn’t text very much. The DA waved the 50 pages. He ended with asking her why, after months of having no insurance, she bought it a month before the fire, and the fire occurred just before the next payment was due. “I don’t know” was not a very good answer.
Time for the son. On cross-examination, they produced transcripts of phone calls to the jail and quoted him saying (after hearing his girlfriend had spoken to the DA), “we have a good thing here. Don’t mess it up.” He seemed shocked that they recorded these. They went with another transcript a month later where he clearly implicated his mother. When these were revealed and quoted in court, he giggled nervously.
That was when they broke. When we returned, the defendants were gone, taking a plea bargain.
Their lawyers told us afterward that they had been urging them to take a plea from the start, but they had insisted on going to trial. Evidently, they felt that because they didn’t physically set the match, they would get off. Further, they were Guyanan and probably thought that they’d only be deported, not jailed. And I suppose they had set up an alibi – they were with each other the evening of the fire.
