The Circumstantial Case Against Phil Spector
On September 26th, 2007, the murder trial of Phil Specter ended in a mistrial. Two jurors were unable to find Spector guilty of murder. In spite of the many pieces of circumstantial evidence that made up the cumulative case, these two jurors focused on single isolated issues (more on this HERE) and these single issues proved to be the downfall of the prosecution’s case.
Just a few days later, a cumulative, circumstantial murder case of my own came to a very different conclusion. Our jury returned a guilty verdict in a 23 year old case in the city of Torrance (you can download a Word Document of the news coverage HERE and HERE). Like Phil Spector, our case was cumulative in nature, originally built on a large number of circumstantial pieces of evidence, all of which pointed to the killer, a man named William Marshall. But unlike the Spector case, our jury had been carefully picked as a part of the judicial process. We interviewed the prospective jurors carefully, and seated a panel that understood the value of circumstantial evidence and also understood the power of a CUMULATIVE case.
Cumulative, Circumstantial Cases
Our jury was instructed over the course of four days as we interviewed and screened the candidates. From the prosecution’s perspective, we wanted jurors who understood how powerful circumstantial evidence can be when taken cumulatively. Circumstantial evidences, by definition, are unrelated facts that, when considered together as a whole, can be used to infer a conclusion about something that was previously unknown. In this sense, circumstantial evidence is different than direct physical evidence. Let me give you an example. If you are sitting in a restaurant and someone comes inside and tells you that it is raining outside, you now have an eyewitness and you have direct physical evidence that it is raining. On the other hand, if you are sitting there and you see several people come in carrying umbrellas and dripping wet, you may reasonably infer that it is raining from this circumstantial evidence, even before any of them tells you that this is true. You see, all of us assess circumstantial evidence as a part of our normal experience.
As we selected our jury for the homicide trial, we simply wanted people who (1) understood the power of circumstantial evidence and (2) would not fixate on minutia. We wanted jurors who would not ‘major on the minors’ but were capable of seeing the ‘big picture’. We were trying to avoid jurors like the two hold outs in the Spector case; jurors who would ‘camp’ on minor ‘possibilities’, while ignoring the major ‘reasonable’ inferences. We wanted jurors who could understand the difference between what is ‘possible’ and what is ‘reasonable’.
Read more
Resource: PleaseConvinceMe.blogspot.com
On September 26th, 2007, the murder trial of Phil Specter ended in a mistrial. Two jurors were unable to find Spector guilty of murder. In spite of the many pieces of circumstantial evidence that made up the cumulative case, these two jurors focused on single isolated issues (more on this HERE) and these single issues proved to be the downfall of the prosecution’s case.
Just a few days later, a cumulative, circumstantial murder case of my own came to a very different conclusion. Our jury returned a guilty verdict in a 23 year old case in the city of Torrance (you can download a Word Document of the news coverage HERE and HERE). Like Phil Spector, our case was cumulative in nature, originally built on a large number of circumstantial pieces of evidence, all of which pointed to the killer, a man named William Marshall. But unlike the Spector case, our jury had been carefully picked as a part of the judicial process. We interviewed the prospective jurors carefully, and seated a panel that understood the value of circumstantial evidence and also understood the power of a CUMULATIVE case.
Cumulative, Circumstantial Cases
Our jury was instructed over the course of four days as we interviewed and screened the candidates. From the prosecution’s perspective, we wanted jurors who understood how powerful circumstantial evidence can be when taken cumulatively. Circumstantial evidences, by definition, are unrelated facts that, when considered together as a whole, can be used to infer a conclusion about something that was previously unknown. In this sense, circumstantial evidence is different than direct physical evidence. Let me give you an example. If you are sitting in a restaurant and someone comes inside and tells you that it is raining outside, you now have an eyewitness and you have direct physical evidence that it is raining. On the other hand, if you are sitting there and you see several people come in carrying umbrellas and dripping wet, you may reasonably infer that it is raining from this circumstantial evidence, even before any of them tells you that this is true. You see, all of us assess circumstantial evidence as a part of our normal experience.
As we selected our jury for the homicide trial, we simply wanted people who (1) understood the power of circumstantial evidence and (2) would not fixate on minutia. We wanted jurors who would not ‘major on the minors’ but were capable of seeing the ‘big picture’. We were trying to avoid jurors like the two hold outs in the Spector case; jurors who would ‘camp’ on minor ‘possibilities’, while ignoring the major ‘reasonable’ inferences. We wanted jurors who could understand the difference between what is ‘possible’ and what is ‘reasonable’.
Read more
Resource: PleaseConvinceMe.blogspot.com
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