Please add me to your ping list.
Stay safe; stay armed.
Posted on 10/23/2002 5:04:02 AM PDT by KS Flyover
Mary Dudley spoke with a soft bedside manner Tuesday as she gave the jury a clinical view of killing in the capital murder trial of Jonathan and Reginald Carr.
Testimony by Dudley, Sedgwick County's coroner, came with diagrams and color photographs of autopsies to document beatings, rapes and gunshot wounds that left five people dead in December 2000.
Such evidence inevitably becomes part of any murder trial, and it can be difficult to watch. A juror fainted in one Wichita murder trial last year, but the Carrs' jurors maintained the stoic demeanor they have shown throughout the past three weeks.
Prosecutors say the evidence is necessary to prove elements of crimes, including premeditation and the intention to kill. Appellate courts agree. Last summer the Kansas Supreme Court ruled: Gruesome crimes result in gruesome photographs.
The crimes charged in the Carr case are gruesome.
Dudley could tell just by looking at bodies in a soccer field the morning of Dec. 15, 2000, that Heather Muller, Aaron Sander, Brad Heyka and Jason Befort died of gunshot wounds to the head. Later that day, Dudley began closer examinations at the Sedgwick County Forensic Science Center to study the bullets' paths and how close the shooter was standing to the victims.
The shooter stood closest to Heather Muller and Aaron Sander, the pistol touching their heads as the killer squeezed the trigger. Brad Heyka and Jason Befort, Dudley said, were shot from just slightly farther away.
Mark Manna, Jonathan Carr's lawyer, asked if those distances showed that only one person did the killing.
Dudley said she couldn't say that for certain. She also said she couldn't say exactly what position the victims were in when they died.
But she told District Attorney Nola Foulston that the ballistics were consistent with someone kneeling with heads bowed in front of their attacker.
Other marks left clues, too, and helped support the story of a woman who survived. She testified earlier that two intruders raped the two women and beat the three men before shooting them in the soccer complex at 29th Street North and Greenwich Road.
Dudley found bruises on the bodies of Sander, Heyka and Befort. She said red ridges suggested those injuries came from a golf club -- a driver with a wooden head -- found in the triplex where the men lived.
The post-mortem exam on Muller, Dudley said, showed injuries consistent with a sexual assault.
Another victim, Ann Walenta, was shot three times on Dec. 11, 2000, and died of complications from her injuries on Jan. 2, 2001. Dudley said Walenta died from a blood clot that traveled from her leg to her lungs.
At the request of police, Dudley also performed an autopsy on a pet schnauzer that belonged to the survivor of the Dec. 15 quadruple homicide. Dudley said the dog had been bludgeoned, possibly with the golf club, and then stabbed through the neck with something like an ice pick.
Such evidence frequently brings objections from defense lawyers, as it did in this trial, over the necessity of graphic photographs showing close-ups of wounds. The defense is often willing to concede to cause of death.
But lawyers say proving causes of crimes is an elementary law-school lesson.
94? We need more.
Nola Foulston(sp) wants this trial kept quiet. In googling, I found that she wants to make sure that the Carr Bros. get a "fair" trial. I purchased the only living witness of the 5's trial transcript, (80 pages) and most people will never know what these victims went through.
Thanks for the ping!
It bothers me that what I want isn't the text book justice of life behind bars or even some painless benevolent death by lethal injection. I want eye for an eye justice. I want them to suffer, long and intensely suffer.
When I look at their victims, I see in my mind friends and relatives, people I love and care about. It becomes personal to me and I want the satisfaction of old testament style justice that the left wing liberal wackos call vengeance.
Yeah, whatever. Just hand me the pliars and a blowtorch. It's time to get medieval on their asses.
Every time I think about that poor girl (the lone Carr survivor) stumbling over a mile naked in the snow, a bullet wound in her head, her agonized body screaming in pain from being run over, and then climbing over two fences before she reached help, I literally get sick to my stomach. I hope God keeps the worst that Hell has to offer on stand-by for these ba$tards. May they burn for eternity, and have to re-live over and over all the pain they inflicted on the innocent.
New spin on an age old philosophy question--If a black on white hate crime occurs and no one hears about it, did it still happen?
I understand the guests seats on both sides of her have been empty during this trial.
I don't think a "guilty" plea in a capital case is allowed, but I might be wrong.
I feel the same way. I have two beautiful daughters around the age of the victims. If some evil pond scum did these things to my girls, I would make sure they didn't live long enough to go to trial. It would be worth spending the rest of my life in prison to avenge myself on such monsters.
Please add me to your ping list.
Stay safe; stay armed.
This is the next thread:
Jurors view Wichita crime scenes / DNA ties Carrs to victims [Wichita Massacre day 13]
We was outstanding on the liberal hypocracy that refuses to call a hate crime what it is if whites were the victims.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.