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Would the truth made a difference?

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  • Re: Would the truth made a difference?

    Originally posted by sheeee View Post
    I wonder about the certainty of it all. I am opposed to a death penalty for any person, even heinous criminals. I am not opposed to super maxx prisons and life without parole but death---no. So where is the case at now? What happened as a result of that hearing?
    I've heard nothing since the oral hearing. There's still one month to go of the 90 days the justices have, but I don't know if that 90 is cast in concrete or if it's just a recommendation or tradition.

    What I have learned is that the justice system is flawed and fallible - as I suppose is any system run by flawed and fallible humans - so I would be very reluctant to put anyone to death.

    I agree with life without parole. But if the prisoner is unlikely to re-offend, then I would consider parole.


    • February 15 phone call

      There is something puzzling me. The police had put a “trap and trace” on the van Dams’ phone. But when the relevant phone call came - apparently that call on the 15th was the only relevant call - they had negligently allowed it to expire. And they apparently then made no attempt to trace that call. A call which could have resulted in Danielle being rescued.

      Why didn’t they try to trace it? The only reason I’ve seen is that the “trap and trace” had expired. So what? Surely they could still have traced the call, they trace calls all the time. They get the information from the phone company. It just takes a little longer.


      • The Medical Examiner assumed Danielle had been kidnapped - hence his determination that the “Manner of Death” was “homicide”. (See both the Autopsy Report and his testimony during the trial, also page 220 of “Rush to Judgement”.) But how did he come to that conclusion? The only evidence is that the parents said they hadn’t given anyone permission to take her. But they, and the other people who were present during the presumed kidnapping, were inebriated and high on marijuana, so their memories are unreliable. And they lied to the police, so we doubly can’t trust them.


        • The defect in Danielle’s abdomen

          There was a large defect in Danielle’s lower right abdomen, which Dr Blackbourne, the Medical Examiner (ME), thought was caused by animals. (He didn’t specify if the “animals” were maggots or larger carnivores such as coyotes, but seems to have meant the latter, and the defense entomologist Neal Haskell, although he wasn’t sure what might have “cleared the skin”, thought it likely that a coyote fed on the stomach area.)

          (The prosecution took this a step further - and not a small step either, but a giant leap. They argued that the body had been there for a long time, during which time it (superficially) mummified, before the animals came and opened it up causing this defect.)

          The ME’s belief is certainly possible. I’ve seen documentaries, e.g. of lions at a kill, showing them feeding from the abdomen - I think the skin there is softer, allowing easier access to the nutritious internal organs. But this lower right quadrant is also the part of the body where decomposition normally begins (page 221 of “Rush to Judgement”), so I think that’s another possibility.

          In Danielle’s case, only part of that muscle wall covering the abdomen was gone (just that defect), and the organs underneath - the intestines - were intact, implying the animals had stopped feeding on this part of the body directly they had consumed that portion of the muscle. But lions don’t stop at that point. Which casts doubt on that scenario. I’m wondering if there were additional dead animals in that area, which died because of the drought, as a result of which the coyotes weren’t all that hungry, and by the time their appetite returned, the body was more decomposed, making it less attractive to them.

          Alternatively, if decomposition was the cause of that defect, then I would have expected the intestines to also have been decomposed, but they were still intact. Which surely points to a more recent dumping. Which is more consistent with the defense scenario based on the entomology dates. And is supported by the still trampled meadow grass, the relative lack of decomposition odor, the lack of a body silhouette, and the failure of previous searches of the area about a week earlier to find the body (pages 335-337 and 495 of “Rush to Judgement”).

          The third possibility is that it was the maggots which created that defect. Which seems plausible as entomologist David Faulkner testified that most of the maggots were in the abdominal cavity - and there were a lot of them, an entire maggot mass. And Haskell thought the abdominal and pelvic area had been chewed out by maggots, so why not this defect as well?

          Anybody got any ideas to resolve this dilemma?


          • Cause of Death not determined

            I’ve been watching a Paula Zahn documentary on the Katie Hamlin case (Georgia, 2002). It was stated that the cause of death was “undetermined”, so they couldn’t arrest the suspect. The cause of Danielle van Dam’s death was also “undetermined”, but that didn’t stop them arresting David Westerfield.


            • Defense attorney’s belief

              From an Interview with Mark F. Renner, who defended Ron Gillette for the 1984 murder of his wife, Vicki:

              Q As one of his defense lawyers, did you really believe he was innocent?
              A I never thought he was innocent. No lawyer approaches a defense having to believe someone’s innocent. What you’re doing is compelling the government to establish its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The death penalty was on the table, so our real focus was defending him from that.

              I don’t know about that first sentence, “I never thought he was innocent”, but the rest of that reply sounds pretty much like what I think was Feldman’s attitude when he defended DW. And I wonder if he would have done a more effective job had he believed DW innocent.