If my daughter were murdered, it is screamingly obvious that I would be the primary suspect right from the outset. I believe that the police would consider it suspicious if I lawyered up. Whether that is right or wrong for them to do so, I would expect them to react that way.
Because, as a general rule, if I were guilty, I would lawyer up, and if I were innocent, I would blab my fool head off and damn the consequences. I doubt the police are going to investigate me any less, or waste any less time on me, if I lawyer up than if I immediately answer every question and offer every cooperation.
Besides, if I am innocent, I want more than almost anything else, to have them catch whoever did it. If I am guilty, or if my family member is guilty, I don’t want that.
I don’t think a jury should be allowed to draw conclusions from whether or not I blab, or lawyer up. But I do think the police can come to their own conclusions.
My guess, based on no more than a superficial knowledge of the case, is that the father did it, sort of accidentally while beating and/or sexually abusing her, the wife assisted with the cover up, and the police botched the investigation badly.
I would expect the police to consider you one of the primary suspects whether or not you lawyer up. I agree you would look more guilty if you do so, but doing so might prevent you from saying something in a panic or on the spur of the moment that makes you look even more guilty. The whole idea of getting a lawyer involved is to have someone who is not emotionally distraught, who knows the law, has your best interests in mind, and can protect you from police trick questioning.
I think police are used to both innocent and guilty people blabbing their heads off, and both can say stupid things that make them look guilty, whether they are or not. I’d like to see what any detectives have to say about your last sentence. I think the police will give all of the people who were in the house the same attention whether they lawyer up or not.
And FWIW from my completely nonprofessional viewpoint, I don’t see how lawyering up will waste any time, delay the investigation or change the course of the investigation. I think the detectives will do what they do pretty much the same way no matter what.
I also realize most people don’t “have a lawyer” that they can call on the spur of the moment, particularly in the wee hours. That is limited mostly to the very wealthy, like the Ramseys in this thread.
In all honesty, I don’t know what I would do, but that doesn’t change what I know I should do: don’t talk to the cops without a lawyer.
What’s incriminating? What the cops or the prosecutor regard as incriminating might not bear any resemblance to what you would, and “incriminating” just means “make APPEAR guilty,” not “provide evidence of guilt.” You don’t have an ironclad alibi for where you were and what you were doing at 4:30 this morning? In the right circumstances, that’s incriminating, even if the reason you don’t have such an alibi is that you live alone and would normally be in bed at that hour.
And I would expect anybody who is or could be considered a suspect in a major crime to lawyer up, regardless of guilty knowledge. Anybody who forgoes a lawyer in those circumstances is either poor, naive, or attempting to appear more honest than they are.
No idea who killed the child, but I suspect the family was complicit.
Lawyer up? If you are going to assist the police, why the hell would you want your answers to questions vetted or disallowed by some guy who may have little competence in the field when your information may enable the police to find the real guilty party- that is assuming you are innocent.
I’ve never thought lawyering up was good evidence of their guilt. The physical evidence is what I focus on, and the strange ransom note certainly suggests a Patsy cover-up. But the unknown male DNA found in her underwear bothers me, and I don’t know enough about DNA to speculate how it got there.
For years I wanted to believe it was an intruder, but now I’m leaning the other way.
You’re starting from the assumption that the primary goal of the police is to find the real guilty party. A lot of people now assume that the primary goal of the police is to close the case with the announcement that they have arrested somebody. That’s a subtle but important distinction.
Personally, I think most police and prosecutors are like most of the rest of us: just trying to do the best job they can. However, police departments have their share of lazy people, grandstanders, egomaniacs, ambitious fools, and flat-out incompetents. If one of those is in charge of the case, and the goal is to close the case, then anybody who can be made to look plausibly guilty is “good enough” to arrest and mark the case closed, regardless of whether they are in fact the real guilty party.
Announcing you’ve closed a high-profile case in 24 or 48 hours is a major career boost. If the case falls apart later, well, there’s usually some way to blame that on somebody else. The defendant in a well-publicized and notorious case might not even live to trial, given conditions in many of the nation’s jails, and it is practically impossible to exonerate a dead man.
One of the family members were probably guilty imo. Something that did stick in my mind when reading the case was Patsy wearing the same clothes that morning as she had the night before. Once she flung herself around the dead child the next morning any fibre evidence against her was ruined.
It’s bizarre that no one in this latest exhumation of the Jon-Benet affair has mentioned the supposedly exculpatory DNA evidence found on the body (although the police chief overseeing the investigation indicated (in a recent online Q&A) that the amount of DNA was tiny and likely came from saliva or sweat).
Speaking of tiny, that applies to the odds of ever tracing a viable suspect with that DNA profile.
A tiny spot like that could come from anywhere. She could have picked up anyone’s DNA on her fingers and transferred it to herself, as could anyone in her family. It could have been on the clothes she wore. Since it’s unidentified it means nothing in this case.
While I also have my doubts, the DNA of “an unknown male” found on the body was meaningful to the District Attorney’s office, which considered it exculpatory as far as the Ramsey family was concerned.
Well, for that, I’m wearing the same clothes right now that I wore yesterday, undergarments excepted. If I have a casual day at home, I’m likely to grab the clothes closest at hand. I feel that I should also mention that I have neither murdered anyone today nor covered up any murders committed by others.
But are you a former beauty queen for whom appearance was a significant facet (if not the most significant facet) of your life? To me the story about putting the same clothes on from the night before has always been one of the most damning pieces of evidence against Patsy Ramsey. Nouveau riche women like Patsy Ramsey don’t do that.
I really have no business making any comment on the case at all, as I didn’t follow it at the time and my only familiarity with any of the details comes through cultural osmosis. But this detail of the mother wearing the same clothes as the day before just never struck me as damning. Was she awakened in a hurry? Did she just throw on the clothes that were closest and easiest to get into when they called the police, so that she wouldn’t be in her nightclothes? Did she have a habit of putting on lightly-worn clothes in the morning, then changing into a fresh outfit after showering and putting on her makeup? It just seems to me that this particular detail was made much of, enough that I remember it as an element of a case I was barely aware of, and I’ve never understood what the sinister implications were.
To begin with it’s highly unusual for a woman like Patsy Ramsey, upper, class former beauty queen who paid a lot of attention to her appearance and looking stylish to do something like that. At least one investigator has suggested that quite possibly she had never taken the clothes off at all and had been up most of the night faking the crime scene. Also if she committed the crime in those clothes, wearing them the next day and coming in contact with the dead body before witnesses (which she did do) mitigates a lot of crime scene evidence against her.
Oh wait… it was Patsy wearing the same clothes. Sorry, I don’t believe former beauty queens roll out of bed into an evening gown and tiara. She might have thrown on those clothes as soon as she heard Jon Benet was missing, or she might have slept in them, passed out from drink or drugs. Depending on the circumstances that might implicate her or clear her.