anglolawyer
Banned
Did the prosecution present any empirical tests or analyses (such as finite element computer modeling) to support its hypothesis regarding the window break-in? Did Judge Massei present any such tests or analyses?
If not, from an engineering POV, there was no objective support for the hypothesis by either prosecution or judge. And doesn't the burden of proof rest on the prosecution? In a fair trial, in accordance with the Convention, that is.
What hypothesis exactly?
There are many ways of skinning a cat, I guess. The prosecution can prove the burglary was staged by inviting the court to draw inferences from the sheer improbability that a real, professional burglar would ever choose that window and from other evidence purportedly suggesting a scenario quite different from the lone wolf burglar one and that the inferences are so strong that scientific demonstrations are unnecessary. I see nothing wrong in principle with that, it's just that the application of the principle in this case gives rise to very weak (if any) inferences at all. I don't think the prosecute has to prove, in general, that what it is suggesting is not impossible*.
Is it possible for Nara to have heard the scream? I don't think it is so if I were a juror I would want that demonstrated for me if I were not to reject this part of the prosecution case (which I might still reject anyway for other reasons including her unreliability) but I don't think the prosecution is obliged to prove in any particular way whether she heard the scream.
*this may be too sweeping. We had a case of a guy who was found naked and dead inside a bag in his bath, itself within his locked apartment. At the inquest, evidence from an 'expert' was given that he could not have closed himself within the bag, the expert having tried repeatedly to do it himself, proving it was not suicide. Laughably, right after the inquest, some kid showed how to do it easily. Leaving that aside, suppose they found a suspect and accused that person of murder, using CCTV, DNA forensics, fingerprints and all sorts. On whom would the burden have fallen to show it was impossible for the guy to have trussed himself up? The party alleging impossibility or the crown as part of its burden of closing all avenues of reasonable doubt?