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Comment by MikeAmelung | Hacker News Reader

"The next day, the police searched the Buick LeSabre and found the Post-Dispatch ruler and calculator belonging to Gayle. The police also recovered the laptop computer from Glenn Roberts. The laptop was identified as the one stolen from Gayle's residence."

https://law.justia.com/cases/missouri/supreme-court/2003/sc-...

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The full quote from the article in justia.com states the following: "In November of 1999, University City police approached Asaro to speak with her about the murder. Asaro told the police that Williams admitted to her that he had killed Gayle. The next day, the police searched the Buick LeSabre and found the Post-Dispatch ruler and calculator belonging to Gayle. The police also recovered the laptop computer from Glenn Roberts. The laptop was identified as the one stolen from Gayle's residence."

The only thing linking the laptop to Williams was the testimony of a witness. Even if the witness is telling the truth, he has no way of knowing how Williams obtained the laptop.

By any reasonable standard, all this is extremely flimsy evidence: More than a year after the murder, the police found a "Post-Dispatch ruler and calculator" in the suspect's car that belonged to the victim? And someone testified that Williams had the victim's laptop. And it is on the basis of this pitifully weak evidence that you would justify the execution of Williams, the suspect? Even though, as the Innocence Project correctly observes, there is no direct physical evidence linking Williams to the crime scene, and the DNA recovered from the crime scene does not match Williams?

https://law.justia.com/cases/missouri/supreme-court/2003/sc-...

I was just helping everyone understand that your important clarification, was in fact, wrong.

Since I wasn't on the jury, I can't say whether or not I would have been ok with the death penalty in this case, although the murder was particularly heinous.

It doesn't matter how heinous the murder was if you have the wrong suspect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DrsVhzbLzU

> Priti Patel: this is about having deterrents...

> Ian Hislop: It's not a deterrent killing the wrong people!

This is the second time in as many days I've seen some one use the argument that the severity of the crime meant the standards for conviction should somehow be less stringent. Sadly, I don't get the impression is an uncommon way of thinking.

This line of thinking peeks through all the time from otherwise intelligent people. Merely mentioning how heinous a crime was when we're talking about the guilt or innocence of a suspect should immediately kill your credibility. Too bad the criminal justice system doesn't care about that.

Horribly, you regularly see this in supreme court cases. Some case has the conservatives denying a significant right to a criminal suspect and the decision will start with a lurid depiction of the crime they were convicted of through the denial of some right.

Sometimes the crime in case isn't actually that bad, so they have to dig for a lurid description of a different crime entirely.

its not a deterrent for multiple other reasons too:

1. most murderers do not expect to get caught if they are acting at all rationally, and do not care if they do not, and, 2. unless you execute a high proportion of people committing a particular crime any one criminal knows they are unlikely to be executed.

I think the Tutu quote at the end of the video.

Most of the rest of the work world has abolished capital punishment, and most of the rest uses it very sparingly. The big exceptions are China and the Middle East. Good company to keep?

As I understand it, you have to be OK with the death penalty, to be on a capital jury.

This in and of itself very likely creates a bias against the defendant. For me, there is overwhelming evidence that many innocent people have been executed. To support the death penalty, you seem likely to either not believe in systemic injustice (which means you are also probably more likely to believe flimsy testimony) or accept that innocent lives are a tolerable tradeoff to ensure that some people are executed for their crimes. Both groups seem more likely to convict to me than a random sample.

Personally, I also feel that it is morally wrong to give jurors life and death decision making power. The jurors themselves can be deeply harmed by this if they later learn that they convicted a defendant on the basis of false evidence.

I think the bigger problem though is that the death penalty is too abstract. There are many people who believe that certain crimes are worthy of execution. I don't personally agree, but I accept other's beliefs on that point. But even if I grant the righteousness of execution in certain cases, it seems nearly impossible to implement justly and without heavy costs to society. This includes the costs to the people who must carry out the execution as well as the exceedingly high financial costs relative to other forms of punishment.

Indeed, it starts with the judge deciding (without trial or jury) whether capital charges can be brought. Then a capital jury is chosen.

In practical terms, it also requires an incompetent lawyer. Ruth Bader Ginsberg said "No well defended person receives the death penalty." I read that in an article about the one isolated case where she was wrong.

I also suspect that the death penalty corrupts the societies that use it.

Of all the situations within which it would be morally okay to lie..

false.

you mean, true?

In your prior comment you say that Asaro was incentivized by a reward offered in May 1999, but that doesn't agree with waiting for the police to approach her in November.

The "approach" by the police was essentially an offer to either testify and get the reward money and have police drop some charges against her, or not testify and face the charges herself.

Circumstantial. There are a 1000 different ways he could have obtained those items without committing a murder. Prove that having them is proof positive he killed someone.

I don't think we should have capital punishment at all, anywhere, and certainly this is a textbook example of why, but circumstantial evidence is real evidence, admissible in court cases.

This is true, but circumstantial evidence is seldom enough to have the DA bring a case to trial because it is weak evidence.

At least, thats my impression im not a lawyer.

My understanding is that the opposite is closer to the truth: most cases are made on circumstantial evidence. Jury instructions apparently tell jurors not to weight it any differently than direct evidence.

What does that mean? That they makeup spurious causal chains and believe that is reality?

Just search [missouri model jury instructions circumstantial evidence]. Jury instructions are written in plain English.

This is indeed true. Most cases are made on circumstantial evidence.

Actually the instructions tell the jury that how much weight to give to any evidence is up to them.

Multiple witnesses seeing a suspect run out of a store holding a smoking gun shortly after the store clerk was shot is both circumstantial evidence and plenty for a DA to bring to trial.

I don't think? this is even a real debate. One can want it to be otherwise, but criminal law does not disfavor circumstantial evidence.

"Circumstantial" evidence is often stronger than "direct" evidence. e.g. DNA is almost always "circumstantial", yet more modernly maligned eye witness evidence is "direct".

I don't think there are 1000 different ways to get both a ruler and a laptop that belonged to the same murder victim.

[1] Ruler is in the folded laptop, laptop gets stolen, laptop is sold, ruler inside, buyer is told he can keep the cool ruler.

[2] Murderer specifically tries to pin the murder on someone else. Someone else being prosecuted is a good way to live free after, gifts his laptop and a ruler to the suspect or leaves them somewhere where they are discovered and taken.

Is that unlikely? Is it more unlikely than a murderer keeping the laptop and ruler from a victim, tying him to the murder?

For me this alone would be absolutely insufficient evidence, to sentence someone to death. The ease with which some here would do this shocks me.

Fair, but the Innocence Project did not argue that the defendant received inadequate representation. So presumably the defense would have had to offer an explanation during the trial and the jury was apparently unconvinced.

Juries can get things wrong, but we’re also just getting the cliff notes of the trial rather than the whole story.

Did they ask Williams how the laptop got there? If yes, what did he say? If not, why not?

not the same thing at all lmao

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