03 November 2003

Death Cases:

(1) A full and complete pardon after serving 27 years for a murder he didn't commit.

(2) Life in prison for accidentally (we hope) killing your child with meth.

(3) The problem with loudly and falsely accusing one suspect of a crime is that when you catch the "real" perpetrator there's all sorts of Brady material.

(4) Prosecutors pass on the death penalty in a case where the Defendant is going to plead guilty to killing 48 women.

(5) The prosecution wants a continuance because scientific evidence shows that another man might be the killer. You know it's bad if the prosecutor stops the case rather than just turning it over as Brady evidence and minimizing it.

(6) Not even all that wealth can move this case from the realm of strange to "eccentric."

(7) When an officer pulls you over for speeding and sees a bloody axe on a seat you will spend life in prison.

(8) Cleaning up old screw-ups: the Missouri Supreme Court has changed three death penalties to life in prison because the penalties were determined by judges.

(9) When the prosecutor agrees that your client should be declared "definitively innocent" you probably should win your case at some point.

(10) As North Carolina considers stopping executions they are being pushed in more cases. Is it cause and effect?

(11) Muhammad case:
(a) The phone calls made.
(b) A poor quality video comes in as evidence of presence in the area.

(12) Malvo case:
(a) Introducing a police report? What exception allows that?
(b) Using the fact that no untainted petit jury could have been found (thus the change of venue) Malvo's attorneys are trying to get the terrorism charge dropped because the grand jury must have been tainted (having been done before the change of venue). Now that's a pretty sharp argument. Gotta admit, from what I've seen so far, I'm impressed with Malvo's representation; they don't seem to be missing anything.

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