What evidence leads you to believe that?
And our court system is about justice and punishment, not vengeance.
Darlie Routier
- Thread starter Desert Fox
- Start date
What evidence leads you to believe that?
And our court system is about justice and punishment, not vengeance.
I gave up on the idea Darlie remembers anything about the attack a long time ago. I don't believe she was ever fully awake when the attack began and passed out while she was being attacked. I'm not certain what, if any, memories could have formed in that short time period under those circumstances.
I dealt with the conundrum by reading the state's theory of the crime, Darlie's version of events and then read the testimony and looked at photos of the crime. Darlie's version of events fits the evidence far better that the state's version.
Henri McPhee
Illuminator
There is an interesting newspaper article about the Darlie Routier case in the Dallas Morning News by Robert Wilonsky on August 29 2016. This is part of it:
"Last night, Susan Sarandon recapped Darlie Routier’s story on CNN’s Death Row Stories, which looks and sounds very much like something Robert Redford and Alex Gibney would have exec-produced. And, yet again, the question was asked: Was she perpetrator or victim?
Related
Court grants Darlie Routier DNA evidence testing
DNA testing in Routier case won't offer indisputable truth
For those who don’t recall the tragic events of June 6, 1996: Routier’s oldest sons — 6-year-old Devon and 5-year-old Damon — were stabbed to death in the family’s Rowlett home. Darlie also claimed she was nearly killed by an intruder, and that her life was spared only by the necklace that kept a butcher knife from reaching her carotid artery. But Dallas County prosecutors disagreed; so too a jury, which convicted Routier for stabbing Damon to death. (She was also charged with Devon’s murder, but that case never went to trial.)
A new book on Darlie Routier's case (TCU Press)
A new book on Darlie Routier’s case (TCU Press)
Routier’s currently on Death Row in Gatesville, still maintaining her innocence. Meanwhile, her husband Darin’s living in Lubbock, having divorced Darlie in 2011; their youngest son Drake, who was upstairs with Darin on the night of the attack, would be around 19 by now.
Routier’s case is very much alive: Court records show that just last April, State District Judge Gracie Lewis ordered additional forensic testing on several items, including the infamous bloody sock, a baseball cap, a nightshirt and the knife. Those items now reside at the University of North Texas Health Science Center’s Center for Human Identification. Routier’s been pinning her hopes on those items since 2008.
Clearly, there’s renewed interest in Darlie’s case again: The CNN doc aired just months after TCU Press published, with little fanfare, ....."
"Last night, Susan Sarandon recapped Darlie Routier’s story on CNN’s Death Row Stories, which looks and sounds very much like something Robert Redford and Alex Gibney would have exec-produced. And, yet again, the question was asked: Was she perpetrator or victim?
Related
Court grants Darlie Routier DNA evidence testing
DNA testing in Routier case won't offer indisputable truth
For those who don’t recall the tragic events of June 6, 1996: Routier’s oldest sons — 6-year-old Devon and 5-year-old Damon — were stabbed to death in the family’s Rowlett home. Darlie also claimed she was nearly killed by an intruder, and that her life was spared only by the necklace that kept a butcher knife from reaching her carotid artery. But Dallas County prosecutors disagreed; so too a jury, which convicted Routier for stabbing Damon to death. (She was also charged with Devon’s murder, but that case never went to trial.)
A new book on Darlie Routier's case (TCU Press)
A new book on Darlie Routier’s case (TCU Press)
Routier’s currently on Death Row in Gatesville, still maintaining her innocence. Meanwhile, her husband Darin’s living in Lubbock, having divorced Darlie in 2011; their youngest son Drake, who was upstairs with Darin on the night of the attack, would be around 19 by now.
Routier’s case is very much alive: Court records show that just last April, State District Judge Gracie Lewis ordered additional forensic testing on several items, including the infamous bloody sock, a baseball cap, a nightshirt and the knife. Those items now reside at the University of North Texas Health Science Center’s Center for Human Identification. Routier’s been pinning her hopes on those items since 2008.
Clearly, there’s renewed interest in Darlie’s case again: The CNN doc aired just months after TCU Press published, with little fanfare, ....."
OT/ I was forced to pay attention to city hall for a job I took some years ago and it wouldn't have been possible to make heads or tails of it without reading Robert Wilonsky's reporting. IIRC he was at The Observer then, but I have a lot of respect for him as a journalist./OT
Henri McPhee
Illuminator
There is another interesting article about the Darlie Routier case on the internet at:
www.texasmonthly.com/articles/maybe-darlie-didnt-do-it/
This is part of it:
"Yet according to Richard Reyna, a private investigator working for Darlie’s appellate attorney, Darin Routier admitted last year that in the spring of 1996, when his business was in trouble and he was $22,000 in debt, he had asked Darlie’s stepfather, Bob Kee, whether he knew anyone who might break into the family’s house as part of an insurance scam. Once the furniture and other items were “stolen,” Darin would retrieve them from the “burglar” and pay him out of the proceeds from his insurance claim.
A couple of months ago, when I asked Darin if he had made such a statement, he denied it. But a few days later, when I confronted him with affidavits given to me by Darlie’s stepfather and Reyna, he confessed that he had, in fact, talked to Kee about faking a burglary. When I asked if he had discussed the plan with anyone else, including a couple of reputed car thieves in Rowlett, Darin hesitantly replied, “There is a possibility I said the same thing in conversation with people that worked around me. I don’t remember what I said. But there’s a strong possibility that was on my mind, and in conversation I could have said that.”
Darin insisted that he never carried out the plan, and Reyna said he has found no evidence to the contrary. The prosecutors who tried the case against Darlie chuckled when I told them about Darin’s story, noting that it was suspicious that he would go public just in time for the filing of the writ. They said that Darlie’s lawyers might be using me to get favorable publicity for their client while the Court of Appeals is considering her case. Anyway, they said, if someone really did break into the house to burglarize it, why didn’t he grab some of Darlie’s jewelry, which was sitting in plain view on the kitchen counter? Why grab only a butcher knife and commit murder?
Darin’s reluctant admission certainly raises more questions than it answers. But it also suggests some tantalizing what-ifs. If, for instance, Darin’s fake burglary scheme had come out before Darlie’s trial, prosecutors might still have gone after her but probably would not have sought the death penalty in what would have been a tougher case to make. Darlie’s defense lawyers surely would have used that admission to create reasonable doubt as to her involvement, perhaps leading to her acquittal, regardless of whether she was guilty. Most significantly, if Darin’s admission leads to additional confessions about a break-in at the Routier house, it could well prove what Darlie has been saying all along: that she did not kill her kids."
www.texasmonthly.com/articles/maybe-darlie-didnt-do-it/
This is part of it:
"Yet according to Richard Reyna, a private investigator working for Darlie’s appellate attorney, Darin Routier admitted last year that in the spring of 1996, when his business was in trouble and he was $22,000 in debt, he had asked Darlie’s stepfather, Bob Kee, whether he knew anyone who might break into the family’s house as part of an insurance scam. Once the furniture and other items were “stolen,” Darin would retrieve them from the “burglar” and pay him out of the proceeds from his insurance claim.
A couple of months ago, when I asked Darin if he had made such a statement, he denied it. But a few days later, when I confronted him with affidavits given to me by Darlie’s stepfather and Reyna, he confessed that he had, in fact, talked to Kee about faking a burglary. When I asked if he had discussed the plan with anyone else, including a couple of reputed car thieves in Rowlett, Darin hesitantly replied, “There is a possibility I said the same thing in conversation with people that worked around me. I don’t remember what I said. But there’s a strong possibility that was on my mind, and in conversation I could have said that.”
Darin insisted that he never carried out the plan, and Reyna said he has found no evidence to the contrary. The prosecutors who tried the case against Darlie chuckled when I told them about Darin’s story, noting that it was suspicious that he would go public just in time for the filing of the writ. They said that Darlie’s lawyers might be using me to get favorable publicity for their client while the Court of Appeals is considering her case. Anyway, they said, if someone really did break into the house to burglarize it, why didn’t he grab some of Darlie’s jewelry, which was sitting in plain view on the kitchen counter? Why grab only a butcher knife and commit murder?
Darin’s reluctant admission certainly raises more questions than it answers. But it also suggests some tantalizing what-ifs. If, for instance, Darin’s fake burglary scheme had come out before Darlie’s trial, prosecutors might still have gone after her but probably would not have sought the death penalty in what would have been a tougher case to make. Darlie’s defense lawyers surely would have used that admission to create reasonable doubt as to her involvement, perhaps leading to her acquittal, regardless of whether she was guilty. Most significantly, if Darin’s admission leads to additional confessions about a break-in at the Routier house, it could well prove what Darlie has been saying all along: that she did not kill her kids."
Ampulla of Vater
Illuminator
So there goes the defense that they had plenty of money in the bank and just because they were late with their mortgage doesn't mean they had money problems.
Desert Fox
Philosopher
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I think the argument is that the whole situation is more nuanced than that.
And it was Darlie who was angry at Darin for trying to set it up. So your theory is Darlie was opposed to a little insurance scam to get some money but completely cool with murdering her two children because they cost too much money to keep around?
Henri McPhee
Illuminator
There is an interesting article on the internet about the Darlie Routier case at:
www.thetroublewithjustice.com/darlier-routier-not-gone-with-the-wind/
This is part of it:
"It was not enough for prosecutor Greg Davis to call her materialistic and superficial; he declared on TV that she was a psychopath. A totally unsubstantiated claim not supported by the state forensic psychiatrist who never took the stand in her trial.
‘’She has been evaluated, and no one has said that,” Dallas attorney Stephen Cooper said, negating Davis’ psychopath label. He and others have been fighting to save her life since her conviction in 1997. But the State of Texas is stubborn and would rather send a woman to her death than admit it might have erred. Making that kind of claim publicly should have brought a lawsuit but instead, it increased Davis’s popularity.
Legal ethics expert Ellen Yaroshefsky declared that referring to Routier as a psychopath with no factual basis to confirm it is “outrageous”. “Particularly, a public servant who is a minister of justice should not be characterizing defendants in this manner. It is unethical to do so,’’ she said. So give me a break Greg Davis!"
www.thetroublewithjustice.com/darlier-routier-not-gone-with-the-wind/
This is part of it:
"It was not enough for prosecutor Greg Davis to call her materialistic and superficial; he declared on TV that she was a psychopath. A totally unsubstantiated claim not supported by the state forensic psychiatrist who never took the stand in her trial.
‘’She has been evaluated, and no one has said that,” Dallas attorney Stephen Cooper said, negating Davis’ psychopath label. He and others have been fighting to save her life since her conviction in 1997. But the State of Texas is stubborn and would rather send a woman to her death than admit it might have erred. Making that kind of claim publicly should have brought a lawsuit but instead, it increased Davis’s popularity.
Legal ethics expert Ellen Yaroshefsky declared that referring to Routier as a psychopath with no factual basis to confirm it is “outrageous”. “Particularly, a public servant who is a minister of justice should not be characterizing defendants in this manner. It is unethical to do so,’’ she said. So give me a break Greg Davis!"
Desert Fox
Philosopher
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Prosecutors seem to love to characterize defendants as sociopaths and psychopaths. Maybe that assessment needs to simply be off limit to the prosecution (and maybe the reverse with the defense) and just concentrate on the evidence for the crime.
LTC8K6
Penultimate Amazing
That is something that has changed with me in the last decade or so.
Prior to that I would have trusted in a jury verdict in the USA. I would have said things like "fair trial" and "all the facts" and "the jury spoke", etc.
I'd have said that a prosecutor wouldn't bring a case unless...
Today it all doesn't mean very much to me any more.
Today it seems to me that a jury trial may just be a crap shoot as far as determining guilt.
And a grand jury indictment may not mean anything at all as far as guilt.
The Duke lacrosse case really opened my eyes about grand juries, prosecutors, trials, and the law. Several other cases reinforced that.
I now view settlements and plea bargains with less cynicism. I can see why one might not want to take a chance on a jury trial.
Henri McPhee
Illuminator
There are similarities in the Darlie Routier case to the JonBenet Ramsey case. The prosecution still maintain that she is guilty because we should read the court documents. The trouble is the original court documents were inaccurately transcribed for some strange reason. It was bad police, and bad FBI work.
I still think it was a mistake for Darlie Routier to be persuaded to use the same lawyer as her husband. There was a conflict of interest. Her original public defender lawyers were doing excellent legal work on the case before they were taken off of the case.
The system of justice in America is not quite the same as English Justice from which it derives. The penalty for murder in America can be death, which no longer applies in the UK, or Australia,, or Canada, or New Zealand. The penalty for murder in America can be sixty to eighty years, while in somewhere like Canada or Australia for the same sort of crime it can be six to ten years. The result of that is that cold-blooded murderers can be walking the streets after a few years, which can be absurdly lenient.
There is some background information to all this at:
https://soapboxie.com/government/Darlie-Routier
I still think it was a mistake for Darlie Routier to be persuaded to use the same lawyer as her husband. There was a conflict of interest. Her original public defender lawyers were doing excellent legal work on the case before they were taken off of the case.
The system of justice in America is not quite the same as English Justice from which it derives. The penalty for murder in America can be death, which no longer applies in the UK, or Australia,, or Canada, or New Zealand. The penalty for murder in America can be sixty to eighty years, while in somewhere like Canada or Australia for the same sort of crime it can be six to ten years. The result of that is that cold-blooded murderers can be walking the streets after a few years, which can be absurdly lenient.
There is some background information to all this at:
https://soapboxie.com/government/Darlie-Routier
Last edited:
wasapi
Penultimate Amazing
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This is a case I have followed from the beginning. I have read thousands of pages of documents and interviews.
There is now not a trace of doubt in my mind that Darlie Routier is guilty. While Darin is not a good person, a good father or citizen or husband, he did not murder his sons. Darlie was the killer.
It seems in many high profile death penalty cases there is always a liberal cry of injustice. Susan Sarandon jumped on the wagon and shouts of Darlie not being guilty. She cherry picks facts to support it, and ignores the evidence that points directly of her guilt.
No doubt it sounds harsh to some, but Routier has been given endless appeals. She needs to pay for murdering her two little sons in such a vile way.
There is now not a trace of doubt in my mind that Darlie Routier is guilty. While Darin is not a good person, a good father or citizen or husband, he did not murder his sons. Darlie was the killer.
It seems in many high profile death penalty cases there is always a liberal cry of injustice. Susan Sarandon jumped on the wagon and shouts of Darlie not being guilty. She cherry picks facts to support it, and ignores the evidence that points directly of her guilt.
No doubt it sounds harsh to some, but Routier has been given endless appeals. She needs to pay for murdering her two little sons in such a vile way.
How should she pay?
wasapi
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
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In some cases I feel the death penalty is the correct way. This is one.
Ampulla of Vater
Illuminator
I'm with you sister.
Harsh. There is a strong support group who think she's innocent, what is the most compelling data point she can't evade?
Henri McPhee
Illuminator
There is reasonable doubt in the Darlie Routier case. The prosecution never proved its case. Darlie's lawyer was more interested in defending Darlie's husband. He was willing to throw Darlie under a bus because of that. The prosecution tried to say that Darlie's wounds were superficial, as in the MacDonald case, but they don't look superficial to me, or to jurors when they saw the photos after the case. Leads and suspects were disregarded. It was never a complete investigation. The police are apt to jump to conclusions.
The trouble is the police and FBI don't have the brains to detect difficult murders. They are far more keen on solving murder cases by prosecuting innocent people in order to cut down on the number of unsolved murders. The lawyers are keen on prosecution for profit, rather than for any abstract sense of justice, or being fair and just. The court of public opinion don't have the detective skills. They are mostly amateur lawyers. The press are not much help. They are only interested in sensational and unusual cases and unless somebody makes a scene serious injustices pass unnoticed.
What is needed is some competent and just judges who can seize the situation like a man, and some sort of police Chief Superintendent with a great reputation, if there are any, rather than working class constables, who does not allow himself to be fooled and conned by Darlie's husband, or by Fleet White in the JonBenet Ramsey case, or by Mazerolle and his pals in the Jeffrey MacDonald gross miscarriage of justice case. It's not justice for the innocent to be convicted, and executed, and for the guilty to go free.
What evidence points directly towards Darlie's guilt?