Bosma Murder Trial 05.12.16 - Day 48

[JuneBug67]

If anybody would like to get significantly stupider about this case they can listen to Alex Pierson explain how we don't know from which direction the shot came because there was no front widow in the Ram because Shane Schlatman removed it.

https://soundcloud.com/am900chml/mark-smich-took-the-stand-today-at-the-tim-bosma-murder-trial

Starts at 12:25.

 

[ArianeEmory]

If anybody would like to get significantly stupider about this case they can listen to Alex Pierson explain how we don't know from which direction the shot came because there was no front widow in the Ram because Shane Schlatman removed it.

https://soundcloud.com/am900chml/mark-smich-took-the-stand-today-at-the-tim-bosma-murder-trial

Starts at 12:25.

Thanks, I was just feeling like my IQ could use some lowering.

 

[hellkat2]

Except, DM can't get on the stand.

IMO Who had the motive for DM's father? All roads lead to DM & MS . The jury isn't gonna get sucked into the idea that MS was just a kid in the beginning who found someone with a bit of money who gave him attention and then got molded into the psychopathic world of DM. MS is no victim and there is nothing altruistic in his testimony. MS is becoming unravelled and DM will soon as well. They are both going down and no-one should feel that somehow one is less guilty than the other. The idea that MS is saying he spent the last 3 years of his incarceration getting his GED and wants to continue to college, and his mother has cancer .......is IMO pathetic. Tim Bosma's family for the rest of their life will go through life with Tim not there. They robbed his child of a father and his wife of a husband and his parents of a son etc etc.

 

[Inspector_North]

Shhhhh this seems like a third person theory. Not plausible lol

What are your thoughts on what else he could have buried. Something of Bosma's maybe? One of Dellen's trophies so to speak? He seemed to like keeping those around. Jmo

Another gun? Or anything that may show his sob story was fiction. It seems that the idea that he can't remember where he buried the gun is not helping his last attempt at getting out of a first degree. Not remembering, after telling the court in detail how DM shot, acted, and cremated TB without his help seems to put all that in jeopardy.

MOO

 

[JuneBug67]

Thanks, I was just feeling like my IQ could use some lowering.

Welcome! If you need an additional downward nudge you can listen to the beginning too and hear her garble the sequence where they left the Bosma driveway and arrived at the Yukon.

 

[hellkat2]

Except, DM can't get on the stand.

I love that DM can't take the stand. And IMO.....MS's testimony will guarantee being treated like a rat in the prison milieu.

 

[hellkat2]

I just had a thought. MM(?) testified that MS wrapped the gun in duct tape and buried it. I assumed the duct tape implied an intention to preserve the gun for later retrieval, not just ditch it. That perhaps makes his testimony even more iffy.

Absolutely 100 percent agree. He wrapped it up so he could go back and get it.

 

[CJPRINCESS]

If anybody would like to get significantly stupider about this case they can listen to Alex Pierson explain how we don't know from which direction the shot came because there was no front widow in the Ram because Shane Schlatman removed it.

https://soundcloud.com/am900chml/mark-smich-took-the-stand-today-at-the-tim-bosma-murder-trial

Starts at 12:25.

Wow! She's had a few inconsistent statements. No wonder people are confused with things if they are listening and following her.

 

[hellkat2]

There is a possibility that it came off more credible in court. The words in tweets are curated and necessarily few, and there may have been context or bearing in court that made it make more sense. I guess the important question is not really is Mark Smich lying about this, but is he lying about this in a way that is material to the truth in this case? If you consider just this case, there are not that many, if any, clear reasons he would not be willing to have the gun recovered.

Things to consider IMO:
MS has turned his life around & got his GED while incarcerated & is going to college. MS's mom has cancer and he had no father . MS was afraid of DM because he looked like a lunatic so went along with it all. MS was so traumatized by it all that he now has post traumatic stress disorder. The PTSD is what is causing him to have memory lapses and his bum shoulder made it impossible to help DM physically with the "mission". DM is a lunatic and was temporarily insane and MS was afraid of him. DM & MS were under the influence of drugs and not themselves most of the time which all contributed to their murderous crime spree. MS couldn't go to police because he had a criminal record and didn't think he would be believed. Bleeding hearts can go ahead and bleed. I choose to focus on the Bosmas who lost their everything.

 

[JuneBug67]

Wow! She's had a few inconsistent statements. No wonder people are confused with things if they are listening and following her.

Whatever skills she may have as a journalist they're not this. It's not too strong a statement to say she is simply not competent to be filling the role she is currently filling in this trial. It's not necessarily easy listening attentively and transcribing what you hear accurately via social media technology and the required devices. But she needs to know the limits of her skills in this area and not accept jobs where she's an active source of disinformation over and over again. It discredits the whole profession in some ways.

 

[artek]

The idea that MS is saying he spent the last 3 years of his incarceration getting his GED and wants to continue to college, and his mother has cancer .......is IMO pathetic. Tim Bosma's family for the rest of their life will go through life with Tim not there. They robbed his child of a father and his wife of a husband and his parents of a son etc etc.

Couldn't agree with this more. What a pathetic little low life MS is.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[palisadesk]

Didn't have time to address this yesterday. Some may find it useful, if not, just skip. It's a little long,

In yesterday's thread, several posters brought up the issue of the shoulder bag that DM frequently wore, and which MS claimed to have seen him place the gun inside on the night of the murder. It was pointed out that neither SB nor the Bosma's tenant reported seeing DM wear such a bag that night, and that, because it was a fairly unusual item, they would certainly have noticed it (and remembered it) if he were wearing it.

This is a very reasonable supposition, but based on ideas about memory that have been rather conclusively shown to be false. One is the idea that our memories are like video recorders, "taping" events and filing them away for future retrieval if needed. This is definitely not the case. Our brains would be saturated with mostly irrelevant data if we in fact noticed everything; our attention is highly selective, though that process is largely unconscious.

In the last decade or two, a great deal of research has focused on a phenomenon called "inattentional blindness," which means when we are focused on something, we frequently totally miss other very significant things happening right before out eyes. We are (obviously) not aware that we are doing this, but it can be demonstrated in laboratory conditions, as well as documented in real-life examples.

A humorous article from some cognitive scientists at Harvard called "Gorillas in our Midst" showed how when people were watching a video of a basketball game and told to count the passes, most of them missed the fact that a person in a gorilla suit strolled into view, faced the camera and did a chest-beating display before lumbering off to the other side. Asked if they had seen the gorilla, the puzzled viewers later said, What gorilla?

Here's a brief article from Smithsonian about it:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...with-inattentional-blindness-17339778/?no-ist

and the original scientific paper can be seen here:

http://www.chabris.com/Simons1999.pdf

Here's a more general article on inattentional blindness:

http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr01/blindness.aspx

But it's not limited to watchers of videos and lab experiments. Studies with professional airline pilots on flight simulators found that experienced pilots did the same thing: if, when practicing a landing simulation, a large jetliner was parked on the runway where no jumbo jet would be expected to be, most of the pilots failed to "see" it; their attention was taken up with other aspects of landing and they weren't looking for impossible/unlikely things (Temple Grandin references this study in one of her books on visual perception and the mind but I can't recall which one off the top of my head. It may be Animals in Translation where she discusses how the autistic brain processes information and how it contrasts with most people's visual perception).

Where this connects to the Bosma case, is that when the two men came up the driveway, SB, TB and likely the tenant as well, were focused on the potential sale of the truck, so they noticed salient details about the two "buyers" -- relative size, and brightly-coloured items of clothing (orange shirt, red hoodie), but mainly were paying attention to their behaviour around the truck etc. Even if the "man bag" was indeed an anomaly in their eyes, they might not have noticed it sufficiently to remember it later. This is entirely consistent with what we know about how humans remember. Other examples are given in the articles I cited, and you can find them yourself.

Wikipedia has an unusually thorough overview of the topic, with links to interesting articles and further reading for those interested. When evaluating witness testimony, it's always a good idea to keep some of this in mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness

Now, on the flip side, here's a useful proven maxim, also from cognitive science: you remember what you pay attention to. If you habitually misplace your keys (something I used to do), consciously notice where you put them when you put them down; mumble it to yourself if necessary. You are much more likely to remember this because you paid close attention to it. Try it. It works.

When witnesses testify about events that are, in hindsight, very important, we may find the fact that they did not notice a, b or c totally incredible. But, if the person concerned was focused on something else, even something trivial, it's quite believable that they missed something major. Our brains constantly filter our perceptions.

 

[canadiangirl]

Wow! She's had a few inconsistent statements. No wonder people are confused with things if they are listening and following her.

And this is why people need to remember media are normal people like everyone else and are not experts. Although they have sat in on probably way more cases then any average person has the time for, at the end of the day they have their own versions and not everything they say is gospel.

 

[MrsThreadgoode]

Didn't have time to address this yesterday. Some may find it useful, if not, just skip. It's a little long,

In yesterday's thread, several posters brought up the issue of the shoulder bag that DM frequently wore, and which MS claimed to have seen him place the gun inside on the night of the murder. It was pointed out that neither SB nor the Bosma's tenant reported seeing DM wear such a bag that night, and that, because it was a fairly unusual item, they would certainly have noticed it (and remembered it) if he were wearing it.

This is a very reasonable supposition, but based on ideas about memory that have been rather conclusively shown to be false. One is the idea that our memories are like video recorders, "taping" events and filing them away for future retrieval if needed. This is definitely not the case. Our brains would be saturated with mostly irrelevant data if we in fact noticed everything; our attention is highly selective, though that process is largely unconscious.

In the last decade or two, a great deal of research has focused on a phenomenon called "inattentional blindness," which means when we are focused on something, we frequently totally miss other very significant things happening right before out eyes. We are (obviously) not aware that we are doing this, but it can be demonstrated in laboratory conditions, as well as documented in real-life examples.

A humorous article from some cognitive scientists at Harvard called "Gorillas in our Midst" showed how when people were watching a video of a basketball game and told to count the passes, most of them missed the fact that a person in a gorilla suit strolled into view, faced the camera and did a chest-beating display before lumbering off to the other side. Asked if they had seen the gorilla, the puzzled viewers later said, What gorilla?

Here's a brief article from Smithsonian about it:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...with-inattentional-blindness-17339778/?no-ist

and the original scientific paper can be seen here:

http://www.chabris.com/Simons1999.pdf

Here's a more general article on inattentional blindness:

http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr01/blindness.aspx

But it's not limited to watchers of videos and lab experiments. Studies with professional airline pilots on flight simulators found that experienced pilots did the same thing: if, when practicing a landing simulation, a large jetliner was parked on the runway where no jumbo jet would be expected to be, most of the pilots failed to "see" it; their attention was taken up with other aspects of landing and they weren't looking for impossible/unlikely things (Temple Grandin references this study in one of her books on visual perception and the mind but I can't recall which one off the top of my head. It may be Animals in Translation where she discusses how the autistic brain processes information and how it contrasts with most people's visual perception).

Where this connects to the Bosma case, is that when the two men came up the driveway, SB, TB and likely the tenant as well, were focused on the potential sale of the truck, so they noticed salient details about the two "buyers" -- relative size, and brightly-coloured items of clothing (orange shirt, red hoodie), but mainly were paying attention to their behaviour around the truck etc. Even if the "man bag" was indeed an anomaly in their eyes, they might not have noticed it sufficiently to remember it later. This is entirely consistent with what we know about how humans remember. Other examples are given in the articles I cited, and you can find them yourself.

Wikipedia has an unusually thorough overview of the topic, with links to interesting articles and further reading for those interested. When evaluating witness testimony, it's always a good idea to keep some of this in mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness

Now, on the flip side, here's a useful proven maxim, also from cognitive science: you remember what you pay attention to. If you habitually misplace your keys (something I used to do), consciously notice where you put them when you put them down; mumble it to yourself if necessary. You are much more likely to remember this because you paid close attention to it. Try it. It works.

When witnesses testify about events that are, in hindsight, very important, we may find the fact that they did not notice a, b or c totally incredible. But, if the person concerned was focused on something else, even something trivial, it's quite believable that they missed something major. Our brains constantly filter our perceptions.

Such fascinating information! Thank you so much for your words and all the links!

 

[deugirtni]

I really wish we were privy to the evidence they have against MS in LB's murder......

Call me naive, but unless MS is a deeply disturbed psychopath with no conscience (and he just doesn't come across that way, imho), what reason would he have had for murdering LB? Did he even know her? It was like this case, where it seems everything about it was related in DM's wishes and needs. He was said to have a sexual relationship with her, he was also seeing another girl at same time, he supplied LB with drugs, she seems to have been out of control, mentally ill, perhaps she was blackmailing/threatening him to help her (in whatever way, ie drugs, place to stay, money?) or she would spill to the girlfriend(s), and so she became a burden to him?

DM seems to have put everyone in his service, ie build an incinerator for me, help me steal plants for my property, machinery for my hangar, etc. He made empty promises to his friends to get them to help, ie he'd pay them (apparently not), he'd get them set up with a recording studio, he'd let them build a house on his property, he'd set them up in a lucrative home building business, etc, but nothing ever seemed to come to fruition for them.

I have no idea what they have on MS as far as LB's murder, but I feel like he's going to be able to beat that charge somehow. jmo

 

[ArianeEmory]

Call me naive, but unless MS is a deeply disturbed psychopath with no conscience (and he just doesn't come across that way, imho), what reason would he have had for murdering LB? Did he even know her? It was like this case, where it seems everything about it was related in DM's wishes and needs. He was said to have a sexual relationship with her, he was also seeing another girl at same time, he supplied LB with drugs, she seems to have been out of control, mentally ill, perhaps she was blackmailing/threatening him to help her (in whatever way, ie drugs, place to stay, money?) or she would spill to the girlfriend(s), and so she became a burden to him?

DM seems to have put everyone in his service, ie build an incinerator for me, help me steal plants for my property, machinery for my hangar, etc. He made empty promises to his friends to get them to help, ie he'd pay them (apparently not), he'd get them set up with a recording studio, he'd let them build a house on his property, he'd set them up in a lucrative home building business, etc, but nothing ever seemed to come to fruition for them.

I have no idea what they have on MS as far as LB's murder, but I feel like he's going to be able to beat that charge somehow. jmo

Same page, and I also agree I wish we knew more about the LB case. People have speculated that he might have ended up with an item belonging to LB. Would they have charged him on something that thin? Did DM throw him under the bus? MS seems to have split a lot of us regulars right down the middle, so I imagine it's having a similar effect on the jury.

(Still unsure. I'm going on gut instinct as well, but I generally prefer to use my brain if at all possible. I can't quite separate out my near-hatred of DM and his supporters after all these years, which makes anyone else look so much better by comparison. But that's no way to make an objective decision, and I'm not sure how much that bias is affecting my "gut" feeling about MS not being a psychopath.)

 

[Arnie M]

If anybody would like to get significantly stupider about this case they can listen to Alex Pierson explain how we don't know from which direction the shot came because there was no front widow in the Ram because Shane Schlatman removed it.

https://soundcloud.com/am900chml/mark-smich-took-the-stand-today-at-the-tim-bosma-murder-trial

Starts at 12:25.

That is an embarrassment to journalism if I ever heard one .... musta bin snacking from MS' backpack.

 

[JuneBug67]

Another factor in the witnesses not remembering a satchel if it was present could be how we seek information in various circumstances. I have no research to point to but I've wondered since the issue arose whether there was some subconscious or primal pull for Sharlene and Wayne to spend their time searching the faces of the two men rather than taking in other details. The situation was unusual and caused some unease and perhaps triggered some fundamental instinct to try to perceive safety or danger in the men. Perhaps we do that most by studying facial expressions and micromovements, and perhaps the gathering dark caused them to need to focus longer and more exclusively where the best information about the situation and the men's intentions lay.

 

[ArianeEmory]

Mild satchel confusion: was DM wearing the satchel at his arrest, or did they find it in a washer? I think I'm conflating some memories of Jodi Arias here.

 

[canadiangirl]

I'm on the fence with MS. Part of me wants to believe no matter what, they are both lying pieces of **** and deserve to rot in prison for murdering an innocent man.

On the other hand from what we've heard DM does what DM wants. Takes what he wants. In his mind he's above everyone else. Controls them with empty promises and IMO preys on the weak. I consider all his minions weak. MS. CN. AM. SS. MH. all have no backbone.
He takes no responsibility for his actions. And even spends his days plotting how to frame his partner in crime.

So for me at this point, yes MS has a story with some holes. But is that enough to convict him with first degree murder without a reasonable doubt?

A few days ago I wanted both to go down equally. Throw away the key.
Now I'm just not sure and hope the coming days shed more light.

I'd say for that reason alone MS testifying was a good idea for him. I'm pretty sure between 14 people, some are on the fence tonight. I wish them luck in the coming days




All comments are JMO unless stated otherwise