And now we wait. The defense finally showed their cards on Monday, with Elliot Weinstein closing the defense’s case with a not-surprising defense theory that “Rachel Did It”: That a depressed woman killed her baby, then herself. While advancing this defense at the last minute, in their closing arguments before…
In my previous post I discussed how I expect that when the defense opens its case this week, it will offer as one (or more) of its chief witnesses, an expert in the field of depression and suicide in women. I wrote that I expect such a witness(es) will testify…
For a time yesterday (Friday June 20 2008) it appeared the prosecution may have finished with its last witness, State Police Sgt. Robert Manning, but a technical difficulty preventing the jury from adequately hearing the recording. Because of this, Judge Diane Kottmeyer decided to end testimony for the day. Sgt.…
Today’s testimony from Medical Examiner William Zane was graphic and disturbing. His testimony laid out in pathological, medical detail how both Rachel Entwistle and her baby, Lillian, died. What made the testimony difficult to absorb, apart from the fact that two innocent lives were stolen, was how calculated the murders…
As I expected, Friday the 13th didn’t hold any pleasant surprises for Neil Entwistle. Before going into Friday’s developments, I want to comment on the style of the prosecutor in this case, Michael Fabbri. It’s obvious he is not a grandiose person, given to theatrics. Instead, he is taking a…
My apologies for not posting an entry last night, as promised in my last post. I appeared on Court TV (now called TruTV) on Wednesday, providing live commentary and analysis of the trial, and my time during the balance of the afternoon and evening became very limited. Well, in keeping…
Things aren’t getting much better for Neil Entwistle as the trial moves into its seventh day now. Of course, bear in mind that at this procedural point in the trial, it wouldn’t be expected that Entwistle’s world would look too bright, but as I said in my last post on…
Elliot Weinstein has his work cut out for him. So far, judge Dianne Kottmeyer has denied the attorney for Neil Entwistle’s motions for both a change of venue and dismissal of charges based on excessive pre-trial publicity. No reasonable legal observers expected the judge to grant either motion, especially the…
Paul Shanley, a former catholic priest with the Archdiocese of Boston who was convicted in 2005 of the repeated rape of an altar boy in the 1980’s, has filed a Motion for a New Trial, challenging the validity of the evidence used to convict him in 2005, reports the Boston…
My previous post on this topic talked about what mandatory minimum criminal sentencing is all about. Now I’ll speak to why it’s a bad idea. The principal reason advanced for enacting these kinds of law is deterrence: Make sure that no lenient (read: liberal) judge is allowed to reduce a…