Posted on 06/30/2006 6:47:31 AM PDT by lunarbicep
The confession of a man charged with kidnapping, raping and killing 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford isn't admissible in court, but the discovery of her body can be used as evidence, a judge ruled today.
John Evander Couey, a 47-year-old convicted sex offender, gave the confession to detectives, but also told them that he wanted to consult a lawyer. He wasn't given the opportunity to do so.
Jessica Marie Lunsford was found kneeling and clutching a stuffed animal, hands tied with speaker wire and fingers poking through the garbage bags in which she was buried alive in March 2005. Two days earlier, Couey told detectives he kidnapped, raped and killed the 9-year-old girl.
I had only read
the excerpt. I didn't know
that he'd confessed twice.
It's possible that
the judge dropped the first knowing
it makes "the system"
look extra careful
while the other evidence
ensures conviction.
If you look at this legally the judge did the prosecution a favor. The confession was grounds for appeal. By not allowing it in that tactic is taken away from the defense once he's convicted.
Now they'll be left with the normal "he had a difficult life", "he was on drugs and not responsible" or whatever else BS things they come up.
Here again, even though the judge is allowing evidence in from that search, winning this reversal decision could get Couey's attorney to decide that is the next evidence to try to get thrown out.
From the attorney's I have known over the years, justice takes a back seat to getting the client off, no matter what.
No one should blame the judge for this. He has to do this or risk a guilty verdict being overturned on an appeal. The detectives are the ones that bear the blame.
To he*l with a trial.
Get one large garbage bag, dig one deep hole...
(I cannot even think about what that child endured. Can you imagine what those grandparents and parents of little Jessica will go through for the rest of their lives? The horror will never end.)
Bury this piece of garbage - he doesn't not even come up to the level of 'human' garbage.
And what about his relatives that were THERE! They walk scot free...
In a perfect world the defenses job would be to assure their client's constitutional rights are being upheld. Reality is their job is now to make up any and everything to get the guilty free.
From what I'm hearing this hearing included the evidence gathered from the confession and was not thrown out.
But but - Screaming HOward Dean says we need to go back to the 60's and the values of that decade...
No, you're correct. The "no.freakin.way" comment was disbelief that they could have screwed that up so ROYALLY. What is u with these people? Geez....
And how could they be unaware that he was digging a huge hole in the yard? And did that puny little piece of garbage dig that hole all by himself?
I suspicion NOT
But but but - they can't be responsible, with all the crack in their bodies they didn't know what planet they were on..
How Brad King (prosecutor who refused to press charges) could have let those scumbags leave Florida but not go after them is unbelievable.
They are just as guilty of her murder as Couey IMO.
He deserves a large garbage bag and a larger hole...in a garbage dump...and buried, alive.
If a few perps were given the Biblical "eye for an eye" punishment, I wonder if such heinous crimes might go down?
And the aiding relatives scums need to be taken to the brink of a pit, put in a bag and dumped into the hole, then have to wait for hours, expecting at any moment for the dirt to start falling.
Despite my objections to Billy O, I usually stand behind his crusades against idiotic judges.
oh, yeah........GO BILL!!!
It could still be easily overturned on appeal and the perp could be golfing with OJ by next Christmas.
I don't blame the detectives at all. They cracked the case, retrieved the body, and brought closure to the family. There is no indication they applied coercive measures or torture in isolation from the perp's lawyer to extract a confession. This appears to be a purely technical violation of an arbitrary rule created out of pure liberal bias by the Warren-era SCOTUS.
I blame "let the perp walk" liberalism as defined most eloquently in Ann Coulter's new book.
I think that was exactly the thought processes involved in bringing this legislation to fruition. That's the idea behind it - make it difficult for the predators to settle in the community.
Lest you think that's a bad, bad thing to do for someone who has "paid his debt to society", just check the rate of recidivism for these people, and the desired outcome of what the law envisaged becomes apparent.
At least the legislature is making an effort to protect our kids. That appears to be a boast the judicial system cannot make at this time.
CA....
Exactly! Why bother arresting these POS? They will find their justice. Publish their pic and info. KARMA will find them!
People like that should be tattooed on the forehead with their priors before being let back out! (I don't think they shoud be let back out, but there are enough libs that do, obviously) I live in FL and cringe at some of the new requirements/laws, etc, but when I see her name attached to it, I feel selfish. How much extra time does it really take to get the additional page or two of paperwork done at the school to be a volunteer or chaperone?
Not just the community, but the state. Even rural areas have bus stops within a thousand feet of most residences. ...Or they simply don't have a bus service.
It's a "cute" way of exile without saying so.
I'm in agreement about the recidivism, and frankly think that the kinds of sex offenders that most think of (especially the monster in this article) should never exit a prison at above room temperature. ...But if you let people out of prison, you can't consider it a crime for them to be *anywhere* outside of prison. In California theres a big thing going on because none of some parolees in some county can find places to live within the legal requirements so they're being housed in trailers on prison grounds - and the local popluace is complaining about that as well.
It's one thing to say that they can't live in particularly opportunistic locations, like directly adjacent to an elementary school, but quite another to say they are no longer in prison but can only live in a tree on a property at least a quarter mile from all roadways, because a bus stop might be established at any point on said road.
This is essentially the same stunt that the anti-gun people did with the law prohibiting firearm posession within some ridiculously large distance of a school.
One might argue that it is consented to and isn't "cruel and unusual" to the person who's done the deed.
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