Replies

I wonder why people think so conspiratorially in criminal trials. I read your profile: it says you're "intrigued" by it. This isn't a hobby horse: a girl lost her life. I think sometimes people get a little lost when they get too intrigued by it. I was a prosecutor, I've seen a lot of cases, weak and strong, and worked for 8 years. I know this evidence well, I followed it. This is a strong case. It just plain is.

When I picked a jury, I never put college professors or people who over-thought things on because people who get too intrigued and try to turn life into a mystery novel or detective novel miss reality. They become inaccurate. Plumbers and school teachers know the real world better than some very over-educated people I know. I have friends who are conservative but like to read one too many mystery novel: everything has to be a complicated mystery novel, and if all the loose ends don't neatly wrap together (hint, in the real world they never do), then the mystery is not solved. That's just not the way the world works.

I see from your profile we agree on many things. Yet we have fundamentally different ways of knowing things. Epistemology, you might say. And I'd say: no, knowing things.

How many times in my career did I stand in front of a jury and rebut a criminal defense lawyer's assertion that of *course* it didn't happen that way, of course his client didn't run north into a dead end or some such, it doesn't make sense! And my answer was always the same: look, I don't prosecute perfect crimes 'cause bandits don't get caught if it's a perfect crime. I prosecute messy, chaotic crimes that occur in the real world. Where yes there are some uncertainties. But reasonable doubt isn't a fanciful doubt.

A lot of the doubt I see expressed here is "fanciful" and "intriguing." And ultimately self-indulgent. Yet the girl who died is real, as is her family's grief. I think that fiction is a better outlet for the aesthetics of mystery.

I applaud your remarks, and I share your views. As you say, in real-life crimes there are always things that don't line up perfectly neatly. That's why you've got to look at the whole case. And realize that it IS real life, not a mystery novel --- where every time something is out of place it has a deeper meaning.

But reasonable doubt isn't a fanciful doubt.

Profound. This bit of logical sense would idiot-proof a lot of juries.

The problem is that most juries have members who are simply not inteleligent enough to understand the concept of "reasonable doubt".