I think you've made a thoughtful post, so let me add my thoughts. I've snipped out a couple of passages:
Karen's statements at the scene were excited utterances and therefore they are evidence.
I realize most people posting actively here believe the trial is a sham, based on a conspiracy by dozens of people.
I've said previously that I'm not onboard with the full conspiracy defense.
But I don't think you need to be a believer in a wide-ranging conspiracy to be suspicious of eyewitness testimony. There are reams of evidence about how unreliable it can be. I won't go into all that, but I think that's especially true in this case where there is absolutely no contemporaneous documentary evidence that Karen said "I hit him". The dashcam didn't record her saying it even though she was said to be yelling it. And no one on scene wrote down her supposed admission of guilt or put it in any of their reports.
In every case, Karen's statement wasn't documented until days, months or even years later.
In her excited utterances at the scene and in the ambulance, Karen admitted involvement in differing ways to first responders and friends. Many first responders testified to what they heard. The statements varied in the degree of self-incrimination, but the weaker admissions of possible culpability support the more direct ones heard by others.
I disagree with this. The wide variation between what people say they heard makes their testimony less reliable not more. This was a chaotic scene. Lots was happening simultaneously. It was very cold and a steady snow was falling. Karen was screaming and crying. The EMTs were focused on saving John's life. How can anyone be so certain of what they heard? Especially since of the 15 or so at the scene who testified, only four heard her say "I hit him." That's a pretty low percentage.
If all the first responders were in on a conspiracy or coached on what to say, they would all have tesitified they heard direct admissions of "I hit him."
Again, I don't think people are necessarily lying, per se. But memory is fragile and what we think we remember can morph over time.
Let's take Jen McCabe as an example. Lots of people think she's straight out lying that she heard Karen yell "I hit him". I don't necessarily agree. It's likely that in her mind she 100% believes that Karen said it. However, that's not what she told investigators in the days following the murder. Nor is it what she testified to in the state grand jury that was held in the fall of 2022. It wasn't until the federal grand jury in the summer of 2023, that she first stated on the record that Karen said "I hit him".
Keep in mind that just a few months before that, in April 2023 was the first time that the defense publicized Jen's alleged "hos long to die in the cold" 2:27 AM google search. That was around the time that Turtleboy made her infamous and she and her family started getting harassed by the FKR folks. Do you think it's possible that this harassment could have affected what she recalled? There's a phenomenon called
memory conformity, where you start remembering another person's experiences as your own. This could have easily been what happened to Jen in that year since John was killed.
(As an aside, I'll add that I'm not convinced that Jen made that search at 2:27. I'm waiting for the expert testimony to form a conclusion.)
IMO, when you put all this together, the evidence that Karen made this statement is just not sufficient for a guilty verdict.
www.nbcboston.com
