> At trial, witnesses also testified that Roberson had a bad temper and would shake and spank Nikki when she wouldn’t stop crying.
>Its argument cites testimony from Teddie, Roberson’s estranged girlfriend, who said he had a bad temper and would yell at Nikki and hit her. Roberson’s legal team counter that Teddie was not a credible witness. Her own sister testified for Roberson, insisting she had never seen him mistreat Nikki and telling the jury Teddie had a problem with telling the truth.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/24/texas-death-ro...
If you don't have evidence a crime exists its pretty meaningless to speak to someone's motivation to commit it.
Do you know more about this case than was written in the article? Because as far as I know, shaking remains a possible explanation for our observations -- what was "junk" about the science was that it jumped to conclusions too hastily.
>If you don't have evidence a crime exists its pretty meaningless to speak to someone's motivation to commit it.
This claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny. We don't know if a crime exists, because there are multiple possible explanations for our observations, but that certainly doesn't imply that a crime did not occur. Motivation is important here. (Based on other comments, the defence claimed the partner is unreliable, which is also important here, if true. But the point remains that if a credible witness made such a claim about him, that would be important in determining the likelihood that a crime took place.)
This means the standard to investigate and gather evidence. The standard for conviction is beyond a shadow of a doubt. The question was never ever can we reverse the burden of proof and prove that he is innocent. The point is we never proved his guilt because we initially met that standard based on pseudoscience.
> This claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny. We don't know if a crime exists, because there are multiple possible explanations for our observations, but that certainly doesn't imply that a crime did not occur.
Again this is the standard to investigate a crime and you are affirming my claim that we don't know that a crime occured.
>if a credible witness made such a claim about him, that would be important in determining the likelihood that a crime took place.
Again no this is completely backwards. It WOULD be relevant if and only if the child has a cause of death wherein we had to decide if he could have done it. If the question was did the child fell or did he push her it would be extremely relevant but if we can't convince ourselves that something happened it is meaningless to ask why something happened.
They are properly independent questions. Lets make it simpler if we weren't sure he was actually in Texas would you say a witness to his character was relevant to the question of his location like his motivation could go back in time and teleport him in space to another locale?
I'm not asking for your fuzzy judgement where we just stack positives and negatives on either side and user our gut to figure out which side is heavier I'm asking for you to exercise logical reasoning. Logical reasoning is that we never met our burden of proof in the first place and covered over that lack with prejudice and pseudoscience.