Is anybody else watching this on CourtTV? I’ve never really watched Court trials on here before, but this is actually pretty fascinating.
For anybody who doesn’t know, Danielle VanDam was a little girl stolen from her room and murdered. A neighbor is on trial right now in San Diego, and CourtTV is covering it.
Fingerprint expert is on the stand right now.
I happened to watch this at my moms the other day because she’s a CourtTV junkie, and I just got into it.
Anybody have any opinions on this at all? The SDPD, in my opinion, have held up really well under cross-examination. I haven’t seen anything the defense has done to really make me think the investigators/experts are not accurate or did not do their job properly.
I missed the beginning when all the character witnesses were talking about the VanDam’s open marriage and pot smoking and all that… so I’m not sure what the relevence of all that is.
Anybody else watching this got any opinions? Thoughts?
You can’t really get away from it here in SD. Apparently lots of the local channels are running some sort of coverage during the day. KUSI has a nightly recap that shows clips and has a legal guy doing commentary.
Every morning on the way to work I hear snippets. “David Westerfield went into the dry cleaners acting snippy and withdrawn…full story coming up.”
I can’t obviously say whether the guy’s guilty or not, but even if he’s found not guilty, his life is f-ed up from now on.
And the Van Dams are probably wishing they never decided to experiment sexually. Who knew it would come out into the open and be headline news?
On my recent trip to the USA, I watched this particular trial.
The open marriage pot smoking thing really doesn’t have much relevence to the trial in my opinion. The defense is trying to establish that the parents had many people of “questionable morals” in and out of their home on the night Danielle was abducted. They are also trying to accuse the Van dams of negligent parenting.
It is a fasinating case. I might just go to law school.
In San Diego, if you’re spinning the tv dial during the day, you get live trial coverage on at least 5 local channels as well as MSNBC, CNN, Fox News and Court TV. On days when the court is in recess the local channels rebroadcast the [ahem] high points. You can’t get away from it. I’m sure a TV movie must be in the works.