Yes, I can see why the Honorable Judge(wink/wink) would want to issue the gag order with the number of abduction attempts in the Denver area in the past year and with Elections less than two weeks away..
Why not, seems that there has been an unofficial gag order issued on the many abduction attempts and the state of Public Safety for the area's citizens for over a year prior to Jessica Ridgeway's tragic abduction/murder...
'The CO citizens deserve the truth.. Without public safety for our families, friends, and loved ones, we have nothing'...
? Colorado Springs is not "the area" when one is talking about Westminster/Arvada or even "north/northwest Denver 'burbs." Pueblo is not "the area." And the rest of the attempts are unsolved and likely by two or three different people who the police haven't caught.
Whether the truth comes out before or after a trial is not necessarily connected to public safety. I'm also not sure what benefit there would be to having the prosecution disclose everything now. As a community, we're already horrified. It's true that the rumors flying--many of which contradict each other!!--aren't helping, but if the suspect is caught and if they have every reason to believe he acted alone, it's hardly a public safety issue.
I thought that if you murdered someone you get either the death penalty or life in prison. Seriously, they are going to let this guy out to torture and kill again!!??
There hasn't been a trial yet, much less a conviction and sentence. The lightest sentence he could receive would put him in for 40 years. Perhaps someone has seen something to indicate that he would receive a light sentence? I haven't and think it's far too early to predict his sentence. The public defenders are just doing their job, and sure, it may be offensive to some in a case that seems cut and dried, but a good defense is one of our Constitutional rights as a U.S. citizen and I'm not willing to toss out a right that applies to this suspect just as much as it does to me.
I really think the whole thing should be credited to the neighborhood woman...
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Maybe. There were only 1000 tips given to LE. Hers happened to be right. And I think our LE did a fabulous job. Even if they wouldn't have picked him up that night because he confessed, I'm sure they would have caught him eventually. More importantly, their hard work is exactly why they have a ton of evidence that will put him away for long beyond the 40 years people are so worried about.
I'm beginning to realize it's time for me to distance myself from most of the media coverage. It's interesting how many of the stories have contradictory details: he was a loner, someone saw him with friends when running with her dog and thought he was terrifying, lab partners thought he was perfectly normal and not weird, others claim he was completely bizarre, the obligatory bullying issue has to be brought up whether or not there's any connection, and then there's more coverage of friends and neighbors who never suspected anything and random people who barely knew him who could just tell that he was "off." Sure.
I think I'm going to sit patiently and wait for the truth from police records and such to come out during the trial before believing people who want to be on TV or other unverified rumors. If there are easy answers here, I don't see it. It's hard to believe there are easy answers about 17-year-olds who kill other kids like this, or that he could be neatly linked to every abduction attempt in the area (Westy-Arvada maybe Thornton area) like in a TV crime movie.