Frankly there has been a lot more kids gloves for those who claim these 3 are innocent....
I have seen nobody in this thread claim they're certain these three boys did not commit the murders. Only that they were railroaded.
from what I have seen in this thread. jharyn is getting the third degree, often for not getting people the info RIGHT NOW.
If jharyn is getting the third degree, it's because he has claimed to be an expert on the case but has failed to back this up with any substantive posting on the matter. On the contrary he has posted some general legal stuff which was extremely wrong, suggesting that his expertise might not be all he claims it is.
Wheras the 'they wuz framed by rednecks' crowd seem to get a free pass despite all the legal challenges that have not indicated any impropriety.
I don't even see a crowd. I see a couple of people who appear to be quite familiar with the case say that they agree with a couple of quite well-argued articles indicating the boys were railroaded. And if that seems to be getting an easy ride, then it's because the people who say they believe the boys committed the crime haven't taken issue with any of the points in these articles.
If someone wants to say, Rolfe you are being naive in believing that a WM3 support site and Wikipedia are definitely right about this, here is the position of those who believe they did it, then fine. If they have substantive points that weigh against the points made in these articles, or if they can show that what is said in the articles is erroneous, I'd be happy to accept that.
But that's not what's happening. It's the weirdest conversation I can remember. All jharyn's links are either to huge tomes of primary documentation (police statements and so on), or to another forum where he says we could discuss this case with a whole different set of people if we wanted to.
That's no way to set out an argument. If someone is an expert on the case, and knows his way round the primary documentation, it should be simple to post an explanation of why the wiki article, and the (impressively well-written) support site are wrong in fact, and support this with appropriate quotes from the primary documentation.
Although there was no physical evidence, murder weapon, motive, or connection to the victims, the prosecution pathetically resorted to presenting black hair and clothing, heavy metal t-shirts, and Stephen King novels as proof that the boys were sacrificed in a satanic cult ritual.
This seems to be the summary of the case for the support team. So where is it in error? Is there physical evidence? A murder weapon? A motive? Did the prosecution not allege a satanic cult human sacrifice?
I will say that the WM3 case is nowhere near as open and shut as the Mumia case was from what I have seen but that does not mean they are innocent.
And I don't think anyone in this thread claimed they were certain they were innocent. I think the initial claim was that the evidence should not have been sufficient to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt, but that the defendants were railroaded. You almost seem to be agreeing with this, when you agree that the case isn't open and shut.
And yes, the mental history of the defendants is quite relevant. It goes to motive which is quite important.
No. It would only be relevant if there was positive evidence linking the defendants to the crime. You can't be convicted on the basis that the police believe you have a motive. Which is why it was very peculiar that jharyn chose that point to begin with. In a case like this, we need to know why jhared thinks they murdered the children, and "one of them had mental health issues" isn't going to cut it unless there's something
much more definite that he hasn't told us about yet.
ETA: Actually, this is more serious than that, and a bit of a hot-button topic for me. "Give a dog a bad name and hang him," we say. It's relatively unusual for someone to be framed who is a completely normal person with nothing in their past. It's always far far easier to railroad a conviction against someone with previous. Barry George was a weirdo fruitcake with a stalking habit and previous convictions for sexual assault. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was a Libyan intelligence officer. The Maguire Seven were petty criminals living in a squat. Even when someone apparently respectable is targeted, there's almost always a smear campaign. Sally Clark was a "lonely drunk". Sion Jenkins lied on his CV. And so on. Thus smears and innuendo take the place of actual evidence, and the real culprits end up getting clean away.
The first accused in the Damilola Taylor murder case are a good example. They were a bunch of antisocial lowlife, who could easily have done it, looking at their backgrounds. They were railroaded. However, they had an alibi the police couldn't quite break, and the jury acquitted them, despite a ridiculous tabloid campaign trying to imply that the alibi wasn't valid because they could have run from A to B at a speed that would have made them good prospects for the Olympics. Only after that acquittal was the forensic evidence re-examined and a sizeable bloodstain noticed for the first time that led the investigation to the real murderers,
So no, I don't consider this "evidence of motive" relevant.
Rolfe.
