I have no problem with Westerfield being convicted. If he's guilty I want him to fry and rot in hell. I just want to be comfortable that he's the perp, not some sicko family friend that nobody's caught on to yet.
I did a little experament the other day. I've been looking into purchasing a new still camera. One of the things I've been checking out has been sample photos from different cameras. As I checked out the camera sample shots, I clicked on a link that took me to a Japanese site. As I looked at the photos, I noticed some rather young looking women. Someone had said that the Japanese dabble in very young girls participating in porn. I decided to see if I could find evidence of it. I spent about one hour clicking links and looking around.
I did find some young looking women. They looked like they could have been as young as fifteen or sixteen. My guess is they were of age but looked a few years younger. I didn't find anything way over the line. But after I was done looking around, I decided to check my system.
I went to the cache directory of my browser and reviewed what I found there. In that 45 minutes to one hour I had picked up between 50 and 75 photos in the cache. Now if I were into this type of thing, it wouldn't take but a few months before I'd have literally thousands of these types of photos in that cache. I'm sure I didn't even focus on about 75% of the small photos and icons I picked up. But if someone were reviewing my hard drive, they'd be convinced that I was drooling over each little photo as I went along. Heh heh heh, lets just state for the record that what the Japanese photographers seemed to think was sensual, wasn't exactly what I think is sensual. When I was done I expunged my cache of any possibly questionable icons or graphics.
The point is, it wouldn't take long at all to have literally thousands of these small photos. If I spent one hour a month over a few years I'd have many many such photos. Someone could make the case that I was fixated on these shots, focusing on the worst ones they could find. And I wouldn't have any defense that anyone would reasonably believe.
Well, this may not mean much to some people. Others will know what I'm trying to say. Appearances can be very decieving. Making a bonified case out of questionable material can be very misleading. I have no way of knowing if Westerfield is as bad as he is portrayed to be. He may be. I'm not convinced.
May the guilty party fry. Westerfield or not.
From the trial evidence, I conclude his interest was more than inadvertent image retention, from web-surfing.
I do not contend that mere possession or pornography, alone, makes one a suspect for rape or murder.
The prosecution contends that DAW's possession of illegal minor-child pornography, suggests his interest in young girls, and obviously, he is being tried for the murder of one.
If DAW is in fact an innocent man, he is the "victim" of a series of highly unlikely circumstances. It is more likely he is guilty. The jury is made up of the only people who's opinions matter.
Apparently the images viewed by the jury showed a young girl being raped. Those images belonged to DAW, according to his son. That cannot help but impact the jury.
Your example, about surfing Japanese camera sites gives you an explanation, for images on your computer, should a girl become missing from your neighborhood.
Feldman did not, IMO, offer the jury a reason for not considering this harmful evidence, against his client.
At this point, I'd say Feldman did fairly well, with what he had to work with (not exceptionally well). Dusek did fairly well, muddying the bug evidence, which was the best defense available.
My thoughts in a similar vein struck a chord with some others on last evenings thread. See my post found on the previous thread at #638 and response comments at #643, #661, #718, and #730. There may more than a just few men who think that this may be a horrible mistake on the part of the police, but we don't know for sure, do we?