4 Univ of Idaho Students Murdered - Bryan Kohberger Arrested - Moscow # 72

[Dotta]

This makes sense to me.

I would think "party noise" might mean laughter, music, merry shouting .

Not whimpering, crying, sobbing, thuds.
JMO

 

[pittsburghgirl]

Yep. The prosecutor would/should consult with victim/families regarding the death penalty and plea deals to get their wishes and input. But the prosecutor is the one that will decide. He represents the state, not the victims and/or families.

It's understandable that victims' families might think the death penalty is the just sentence because of the heinous and brutal nature of the crimes. But the death penalty has some big downside--years of appeals, the requests for stays of execution. That process can take more than a decade, a time in which the families are still enmeshed in the killer's evil deeds.

 

[Gemmie]

I would think "party noise" might mean laughter, music, merry shouting .

Not whimpering, crying, sobbing, thuds.
JMO

I put thuds in the party noise category but that's me.

But yeah, it's definitely not a good sound to hear when in the whimpering, crying and sobbing category.

 

[crumbcleaner]

.


Absent-mindedness is not uncommon for true geniuses. (For example, Norbert Wiener, the MIT father of cybernetics, was fantastically absent-minded. It is just how some people think, what they focus on, and what they consider unimportant). But of the talents of BK we know nothing. His onetime professor who saw him on Zoom thought he was bright, but that’s all.

I agree. My late fiancé was a genius but he was as always losing/misplacing things and asking me where they were. Go figure.

 

[gliving]

Idaho Cases of Interest: Bryan Kohberger's file was updated again today but nothing new on the case summary. Maybe on Friday like last week.

Latah County CR29-22-2805

Case Summary (Updated 02/14/23)

Idaho Judicial Cases of Interest

 

[BeginnerSleuther]

I put thuds in the party noise category but that's me.

But yeah, it's definitely not a good sound to hear when in the whimpering, crying and sobbing category.

I don't remember sobbing being mentioned in the PCA, but crying is likely not an unusual noise in a house with 5-6 college girls. When I lived with roommates, there were only 4 of us and I feel like someone was crying over a breakup or argument every week. MOO.

 

[Nova]

But outside of forensics settings, mental health professionals don't use the term "insanity." It's not in the DSM, for example. It's a legal concept only these days days, not one that is used in mental health settings. And while about half the US states do use the M'Naghten Rule, the Model Penal Code Test is also in high use.

The Insanity Defense Among the States - FindLaw

Most states allow criminal defendants to plead not guilty by reason of insanity if they can prove they lacked mental capacity for the crime. Learn about the insanity defense among the states and more at FindLaw's Criminal Procedure section.

www.findlaw.com

(That test requires the defendant was unable to appreciate the criminality of his conduct OR was unable to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.)

(Emphasis added.)

I'm repeating your entire post, because the point you make re "insanity" and the mental health profession is so important!

But I'm really just addressing the last sentence. I was struck while watching the recent Jeffrey Dahmer documentary and docudrama series that the only evidence as to Dahmer's legal sanity was his own testimony. And his account freely admitted he knew he was doing wrong, but he couldn't stop himself. He kept expecting LE to stop him and was surprised it took so long for them to do so.

To me, his is a clear case of being "unable to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law", but the jury either disagreed or didn't care.

Given the violent explosion allegedly perpetrated by BK, I can imagine an argument that he was similarly incapable of conforming, but I don't know how such a claim would be treated in Idaho.

I am hoping PrairieWinds will be back to explain Idaho's "Guilty but Insane" in more detail. She mentioned that a defendant could claim he lacked the ability to form the required intent, but I'm not sure if that means "Not Guilty" or "Guilty but Insane".

 

[rsd1200]

According to the jail's website, they do not. Latah County Jail has its own website, complete with ways to send $ or gifts to inmates and describing what's available for the one hour a day that each inmate gets outside their cell. Books, chin-up bar, etc. No mention of computers.

I've never heard of a jail with computers, personally.

Detention

Latah County is located in the northern Idaho panhandle; to the immediate west lies Whitman County, Washington. These counties are referred to as The Palouse, which produces a large share of the wheat, lentils, peas, oats and barley in the United States. The Palouse is home to two major...

latahcountyid.gov

Hopefully NorthIdaho or someone else will know more (but most people don't know much about what it's like to be in jail, even if it's near their house). IMO.

Some jails do allow video visiting, and some do have a text messaging system. However, both are through the corrections dept. I've not seen one where an inmate could have unfettered access. Numbers have to be provided and added to the phone/text system. If any internet access is gained, via a correctional facility, it would be through a portal that would restrict all but what they want the inmate to use. Most county jails don't allow access to the internet. Once sentenced, and moved to a prison, there might be computer/internet access, but it's very restricted and highly monitored. If someone from within a prison is updating their social media, making a live stream, or emailing from a private email account, etc... then they have likely scored a personal cell phone (which is considered contraband).

 

[WingsOverTX]

I would think "party noise" might mean laughter, music, merry shouting .

Not whimpering, crying, sobbing, thuds.
JMO

If I've been awakened from sleep by noises in a house of roommates with frequent guests, I'm not sure I would leave my room to investigate unless the whimpering, crying & sobbing made it obvious someone needed help. The PCA - quite irresponsibly! - leaves us hanging in that regard.

I do think the PCA has put a target on DM very unfairly. That document has left her open to attacks that a better thought out affidavit would have taken great care to avoid since it was likely to be become public.

LE has made it clear she is a victim. What we have read & heard does give one pause to wonder but I really don't think that has anything to do with her.

She has made no public statement. In her shoes I would be LIVID with LE for writing an account that leaves me open to wild speculation instead of carefully wording what I reported in a more balanced way.

I blame loose lips (2nd & 3rd hand reports) plus the PCA author.

IMO LE should make a further statement re: she is a victim & did all she could to help LE solve these crimes that occurred outside her locked door in the 4 a.m. darkness to which she responded sleepily & no doubt annoyed that odd noises were interrupting her rest.

MOO

 

[Nova]

...

I would like to think that Banfield will have a LOT of egg on her face if it turns out all this stuff from their own sources turns out to be completely wrong, but I suspect think most people assume the press believe we've reached the point where the press now make up anonymous sources to justify what they really want to say. MOOooo

I don't know why you are rooting against Banfield, but that is neither here nor there. I have few feelings about her one way or another.

More to the point, I am having trouble parsing your compound sentence in which "most people assume" [that] "the press believe" [that] the press now make up anonymous sources to justify what they really want to say."

There's no question that the pressures of 24/7 news channels have pushed against traditions of journalistic ethics. It seems well known that many major outlets will now go with one source (anonymous or not) where Woodward and Bernstein, say, had to have TWO sources for everything they published re Watergate.

But if "most people" assume journalists merely invent anonymous sources, then The Big Lie has done its work and we are far gone down the road to fascism. If Banfield were merely inventing anonymous sources, she could have reported everything she has said of late back in the first weeks following the murders.

 

[Nova]

I don't totally discount the theory that the sheath was left behind on purpose.

It wouldn't take an evil genius to assume the sheath might point LE toward military veterans. We've since heard that belief would have been mistaken, but I can understand a non-veteran making that mistake.

 

[Nova]

Masked, I tend to agree. We only have a tiny portion of what DM has told LE, so it is hard to really tell. But even what we see in the PCA tells us there is a bit of a disconnect. What the PCA says she told police in a way doesn't make much sense. Was she terrified or not? If so, why? I suspect if we were able to see her full statement many of those questions may be answered. It could be that she really witnessed a heck of a lot more that night then is in the PCA. She is a victim as well so we wont attack her here. But the defense will look at her statements closely. I have seen a lot of posters here say the Defense attorneys will treat her with kid gloves at trial. But I'm not so sure.

Absolutely. Another possibility was that DM was terrified in the moment she saw a masked intruder dressed in black; but once she was safe (at least in her own mind) behind a locked door, she talked herself out of what must have been an almost-impossible-to-conceive scenario of mass murder in her own home.

Obviously, this is speculation on my part.

 

[10ofRods]

Correct. If they refused to release HR records due to privacy laws, that might be understandable (and FOIA request might not require that) but the idea that they have no records cannot be correct, as they likely chose someone to hire.

The April 2022 police chief BK interviewed with retired in July.

I believe this FOIA request was for his fall 2022 application to the same department.

It will all come out eventually IMO.

But failure to properly respond to the FOIA is a problem. The city attorney, for one, would know this.

I'm not surprised by the stonewalling. Anyone who has worked in government knows these kinds of records are standard. Any records having to do with grant funding (which is likely here) & interviewing/hiring people are maintained.

Maybe the media will continue to fight for the info. Even so, I still doubt anything related to personnel matters would be released to the public.

JMO

Where I work, interns are not employees. I was one once, and there are many at my college. Plus we have internships at many local businesses - none of them involve the IRS or a W-2 or an employment agreement.

That's why it's called an internship. Research internships exist as well. I did that too. No pay, no pay stub, no W2. TA's and RA's are often considered employees (I got a W2 for mine) and where I work, firing one goes through HR.

Police internships can include community volunteers, people who document crime in ride-along programs, etc. No pay, just an agreement about being allowed in police cars, premises, certain trainings, etc.

 

[rsd1200]

Than


BBM Thank you for that information and helpful link. My husband is SERT Corrections Sergeant. I just learned the other day that inmates in my county will soon have iPads, which infuriates me. It has not yet been determined what the internet limitations will be (if any, although I cannot imagine there wouldn't be), but criminals will be criminals and find their way around it. I wasn't sure how far this progressed nationwide, and was curious whether BK or had access or not.

My boy had a pad in county, but has not had access to one after being moved to his permanent location. They've been available around here, in county, for a while now. The inmate must submit each person's phone number that they call/text through the prison's system. The pads are pre-loaded with the DOC's chosen software and are not true iPads or Amazon Fire Tablets, Samsung Notes, etc... in the sense that we know them. The inmate, or rather their family, must also pay for use of the pad's features, such as phone calls and/or texts to approved phone numbers/ and any entertainment option (such as listening to a selection of music, prison approved, of course). Those are the three main options, in county, that I recall. An inmate can also lose pad privileges just as they can any other privilege.

 

[rsd1200]

Wow!
And school children?
Do they get iPads too?
To use at school and home to help with learning?

Not ipads, per se, but Chrome Books, yes, students are provided those at the beginning of each school year. At least in my kids' school systems.

 

[10ofRods]

Correct. If they refused to release HR records due to privacy laws, that might be understandable (and FOIA request might not require that) but the idea that they have no records cannot be correct, as they likely chose someone to hire.

The April 2022 police chief BK interviewed with retired in July.

I believe this FOIA request was for his fall 2022 application to the same department.

It will all come out eventually IMO.

But failure to properly respond to the FOIA is a problem. The city attorney, for one, would know this.

I'm not surprised by the stonewalling. Anyone who has worked in government knows these kinds of records are standard. Any records having to do with grant funding (which is likely here) & interviewing/hiring people are maintained.

Maybe the media will continue to fight for the info. Even so, I still doubt anything related to personnel matters would be released to the public.

JMO

Where I work, interns are not employees. I was one once, and there are many at my college. Plus we have internships at many local businesses - none of them involve the IRS or a W-2 or an employment agreement.

That's why it's called an internship. Research internships exist as well. I did that too. No pay, no pay stub, no W2. TA's and RA's are often considered employees (I got a W2 for mine) and where I work, firing one of those goes through HR.

Police internships can include community volunteers, people who document crime in ride-along programs, etc. No pay, just an agreement about being allowed in police cars, premises, certain trainings, etc. The agreement is usually pretty clear and allows for the internship to be discontinued and lays out the rules for conduct while working for LE as an intern.

We have unpaid forensic internships for our anthropology program (with County). They get units. Our forensic anthropologist oversees them, in conjunction and close cooperation with the head of the forensic lab and the forensic anthropologists at the County. I have supervised mental health interns (for research in county mental health). They get units, not money.

IME. IMO.

 

[WingsOverTX]

Where I work, interns are not employees. I was one once, and there are many at my college. Plus we have internships at many local businesses - none of them involve the IRS or a W-2 or an employment agreement.

That's why it's called an internship. Research internships exist as well. I did that too. No pay, no pay stub, no W2. TA's and RA's are often considered employees (I got a W2 for mine) and where I work, firing one goes through HR.

Police internships can include community volunteers, people who document crime in ride-along programs, etc. No pay, just an agreement about being allowed in police cars, premises, certain trainings, etc.

I understand. But it's a selection process, perhaps even a competitive one. And someone from a pool of candidates gets chosen.

Interns have some kind of formal supervision even if they are not paid, given an HR intro/paperwork, etc.

Some resources are used to supervise, provide work tools/space, etc.

Based on my workplace experiences of 35+ years in the private & public sectors, an answer of "we have no records" is ridiculous & untrue.

YMMV + JMO

 

[BeginnerSleuther]

Based on my workplace experiences of 35+ years in the private & public sectors, an answer of "we have no records" is ridiculous & untrue.

YMMV + JMO

Snipped for focus. This is what it really comes down to. Paid or unpaid, all personnel decisions should have a paper trail. I don't buy that they don't have records.

MOO.

 

[schooling]

I would think "party noise" might mean laughter, music, merry shouting .

Not whimpering, crying, sobbing, thuds.
JMO

You have the gift of hindsight. And the wisdom that comes age.

I went to a 30k undergrad university that regularly ranks as a top party school. My junior year I moved into an off campus house with 4 close friends from my home town. It was 2 blocks away from the downtown bars and about a mile walk from campus. We kept things close that year and barely had anyone over unless they were from our hometown.

At the end of my junior year 2 of our roomates graduated. Our rent was way too expensive for us to split the difference. So we took in friends of friends of friends (the two guys were best friends) we barely knew.

Our house turned into a party house. 1 or 2 times a week we hosted after hours. 1 or 2 times a month we had kegs. There were times where all of us would leave the house and the people partying there and go to the bars. Our doors were constantly unlocked because we lost our keys and our landlord gave us “DO NOT COPY” keys and charged $250 for replacements. We made every mistake in the book and not for one moment would I ever imagine something like what they went through was plausible.

I would wake up to sounds of vomiting, fighting, crying, drunken arguing, wrestling between the other two guys. I’d always manage to rationalize what I was hearing and dismiss it as more college drama or laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Occasionally screaming from my bed “y’all out there or what”.

Sometimes I’d walk out of my room at 4am to go to the bathroom and walk past people who I didn’t recognize. Friends of our 2 new roomates. Random faces and personalities zombified by the night of heavy drinking and god knows what else. But I always existed there with the comfort of knowing that 4 other people were there with me. And in it with me.

I lived in that house for two years, mostly incident free. The police quieted us down every once in a while, someone punched a hole in one of our walls during an after hours party, other than that nothing ever went seriously wrong. We even had a prominent unsolved murder on campus, and the spread of swine flu. I barely remember those events being a thing or mattering.

DM woke up to noises. As she likely did many times before. And IMO tried to rationalize them. “Sounded like … was playing with the dog”. Each time dismissing them. Likely thinking that something like that could never happen, especially when everyone was home, including Ethan.

Have you ever heard a noise coming out of your closet? Under the bed? And decided against getting up and checking? Rationalizing it. Probably much easier to do when you have a house full of people.

All of this is MY opinion of course. And I only say it because of course hindsight is 2020. But condition yourself for 2 years, in that environment, during some of the best years of your life, going through the same routine weekend after weekend.

I can’t even imagine the cognitive dissonance that was likely going through her head as she repeatedly opened the door to sounds that contradicted what her brain was telling her.

Honestly, I don’t think any of us will ever understand.

All my opinion. IMO MMO and whatever other MO I have to put here.

 

[Tillyjames]

I put thuds in the party noise category but that's me.

But yeah, it's definitely not a good sound to hear when in the whimpering, crying and sobbing category.

agreed, but also something that does happen late at night after drinking… (not saying this is normal given the circumstances and what happened, but crying and sobbing isn’t necessarily out of the ordinary in a house full of girls) MOO