Mr. Peterson, throw yourself on the mercy of the court. The best you can hope for is that you're buried in secret so you're grave isn't desecrated.
Completely ignoring any forensic evidence, let's look at the circumstantial evidence in this case, shall we?
Give it up buddy.
murder by a significant male is the leading cause [ 50% or more ] among pregnant white middle-class women and even higher in some other demographics. I guess it's the new alternative birth control method. He's innocent until proven guilty as the media are a bunch of sensationalistic scumbags who feed on your desire for dirt and scandal.
Re:Life Insurance
hfb on 2003-04-24T21:03:17
Life can be a really unpredictable thing and there are a lot of people who have been found innocent on death row after DNA or some other evidence turned up on an airtight case. I remember the case in Boston where the husband claimed a black guy jumped into the back of the car and shot his pregnant wife but only wounded him. I knew the first time I heard the news that he did it as, having lived in some poor black slums [ and Boston has
/very/ few black people ] I'm pretty certain that while a black male may do many things, shooting a random pregnant woman is not one of them. A lot of boys in the hood would pound a guy if he smacked his girl around. This case, however, is missing a lot of information for convicting him before trial is warranted. The odds are good that he did but imagine yourself in his position...you'd probably panic and try to leave the country too. And lots of people do things on christmas eve to relax...fishing is relaxing. The odds are good but I'd still like to believe that people are innocent until proven guilty even when people like OJ still walk free. If he is guilty though, the sad part is that it will do little to stop domestic violence and homicide. Noone ever wants to believe that it could be them or their neighbours and it's a very tough problem for people outside of the issue to get involved in. It's a horrifically sad story that will do little but sell more airtime on CNN and other news channels.
Re:being the devil's advocate here
pudge on 2003-04-30T14:17:49
First, presuming guilt is way wrong here.
For someone on the jury, for the judge, for the law, yes. For anyone else... eh. Freedom of presumption is in the Constitution, I think. Or something.
Re:being the devil's advocate here
gizmo_mathboy on 2003-05-01T00:32:38
True, but if one gets in the habit thinking someone's guilty before you know more of the facts wouldn't that make one less effective of a juror in general?
Odds are that if one did become a juror you wouldn't know about the case to begin with since not every crime is spread across every media outlet.
I guess I view it as sort of a prejudice in thinking. No real harm in forming a presumption as an individual but how many cases are tried in the media with what happens in the court room almost an afterthought?
Maybe another point is how many people change their presumptions once they are proven wrong? How many people think Ricci, that was accused of kidnapping Elizabeth Smart, was guilty? Lots of circumstantial evidence and even some physical but it turns out he was innocent, too bad he died in jail (as a result of a parole violation and not directly because of the kidnapping allegation).
Just my two bits on a nice spring day.Re:being the devil's advocate here
djberg96 on 2003-05-01T03:35:07
Murder in suburbia is simple, because the motivations are simple: sex and money, and he's got both as potential motives. Couple that with his other actions and lies (including lies told in his Diane Sawyer interview), and it becomes abundantly clear to me that this guy is guilty.I've also seen many real murder cases documented on television after the fact. With rare exception, it is always the spouse.
Having seen several interviews with jurors, I can tell you that circumstantial evidence weighs much heavier than lawyers would have you think. In the Binyon trial, several jurors said the most compelling piece of evidence was the behavior of Mrs. Binyon the day after her husband's death.
I can tell you honestly that I actually did hold my opinion on Ricci, but kidnappings are a different pathology altogether, so it's much harder for me to rely on "gut instinct", and therefore I hold my opinion on all kidnappings.
At the end of the day, though, cases like this are fluff compared to some of the nasty, rancid, horrible shit that I've heard about from murder cases from inner cities. When I was much younger, I happened to read the court transcript (provided by a neighbor, long after the fact) from a woman who had been kidnapped, raped and tortured by some random guy. I hope I never end up a juror in a case like that.
