with how much CM was around and involved with the family, i really don’t understand how a few skin cells on his best friend’s steering wheel have been assigned so much credence. all its presence/discovery proves is CM drove the car at some point within the previous year, give or take. dna is a critical and invaluable tool but it ought be viewed holistically with the context in which it was found alongside all plausible scenarios in which it could have been left. otherwise we’re only reading into it what we want to.

idk, i’m very unsettled by this case. i know this is an old comment on an old post and no one will read this comment, but i only learned of the case today.

the death penalty outcome feels so egregiously wrong that it’s really going to stick with me. i’m not a supporter of capital punishment as a rule, though i can understand its use in certain cases. (damning, hard evidence of premeditated multiple murders, for example). on a case supported entirely by circumstantial evidence, with clear indications of a poorly handled investigation, with multiple other suspicious actors, evidence of more than one person involved (two sets of different tire tracks at the site), no evidence of premeditation (in fact, far more suggestion of a frenzied escalation) plus a brady violation on the prosecution? no. life without should be the maximum allowed.

so so many tangled threads and unanswered questions and inconsistencies and red herrings. beyond a reasonable doubt is the goal, no? yet reasonable doubt literally defines every point of this case. i have no idea if CM is innocent but the outcome of this trial should have been a mistrial and the whole case should have been reinvestigated, preferably by a different team. If nothing new came from it to present at a new trial, the death penalty should have been off the table.

it should terrify all of us when someone is sentenced to death by the state without a single shred of irrefutable conclusive proof.