Funny, the article doesn't mention DNA evidence. All they mention is that he confessed after six hours of questioning, with the possibility that the police used questionable tactics.
Maybe his wife defended him because he's innocent? I don't know the guy, and maybe he's guilty as sin. But when children are involved, emotions run high, and miscarriages of justice have come about. Maybe a prosecutor found out about the suicide, thought something about the father seemed a little sleazy, and told the police to find out what needed to be found out.
This article has a lot of emotions and grief but is short on evidence of guilt. If I was on that jury, I would have voted to acquit if all they had was a confession that was:
1. Acquired by means of lying to the guy that they were going to take his whole family away.
2. Acquired after six hours of questioning, which would make a lot of us start saying things we didn't want to say.
3. Immediately recanted.
Maybe they had more, and the article doesn't say.
ping to my post above.
The article doesn't say it, but I imagine there WAS a lot more evidence. Not trying to be crude here, but an adult male would probably cause some tearing in a child that small upon penetration, especially if sodomy was involved. My mother is a retired nurse who was the communicable disease nurse for our county. She had a prisoner in a minimum security prison suspected to have AIDS that she had to visit. He was emotionally screwed up & she had a doctor examine him, whereupon the report stated his rectum was 3 times larger than it should have been. In other words, he had SOMETHING up there that wasn't supposed to be there. My point is that if a grown man shows signs of sodomy that obvious, imagine what something like that would do to a small child. On second thought, it's probably best NOT to try to imagine that!
Anyway, there may not have been DNA evidence because he may have "pulled out" prior to ejaculation and, being in a shower, other evidence of contact could have been washed away. There are a number of things that could have affected the evidence. Besides, the reality isn't anything like CSI where they all but wave a magic wand and evidence appears. It is much harder than you might think, especially when a sick bastard really wants to cover it up. When you factor in the lawyer, who will try to get all kinds of evidence dismissed (look at Kobe Bryant's team and what they are doing) and there may have been some DNA evidence that the jury didn't get to see. The judge would have seen it and his reaction tells me he knows this prick did it.
I will agree with you, though, in that if this is all they had on the guy, it would have been difficult for me to convict him. But a jury DID convict him and some jurors even showed up at the sentencing, so that tells me there may have been more to this than the story tells.
My thoughts, too. I wish we had a juror to chat with.
I expect the flames to be poured on you, but I see your point. If all the evidence that was presented to the Jury is in this article, then I too have a reasonable doubt. I have to trust that more evidence of his guilt was available.