Thank you very much. I, like many other posters, am in awe of your contributions and analysis as well and am thankful you are here posting.
I keep running over and over in my mind how the State will lay out its case against all three. I have a legal degree (graduated from law school) and did have the opportunity to participate in a few trials (via work and internships). I have often found opening and closing statements by both sides to be incredibly impactful. Since NP is so loquacious and his best skill in spinning (taking facts and creating word salad or basically denying facts and spinning an entirely different narrative) I wonder if the better strategy is to allow him to make the opening statement first. This sounds really odd and backwards but I will try to explain the best I can.
State lays out their case/theory/story and the jury will be hooked and they will also want every single aspect of that be powerful and obliterate anything the Defense might do. They have to keep an open mind. Innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. By force him to go first I mean the state has a very short Opening statement. Save their best stuff for the summation/closing argument. It has to lay out the charges but be very brief. Very brief. It will basically say the state is charging FD with these crimes and they will prove each one beyond a reasonable doubt and the only reasonable conclusion that the jury can reach will be guilty.
But if you force NP to go first by not laying out this very long opening statement and narrative...he can't just pick apart line by line what the State has said in his opening statement. He will be forced to either (1) go with a short FD is innocent and the state cannot prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt or (2) lay out his own narrative of the case. This is important.
I could be entirely wrong about this but feel that it is an interesting albeit different way to go that neither NP nor the jury would be expecting. Like winning the coin toss at the beginning of the football game and electing to defer (kick and not receive and instead get the ball on offense to start the second half--for those of y'all not familiar with football).
I have no doubt that NP is highly skilled and will preserve every possible appeal for FD should he be found guilty. I would simply turn the tables on him. The state is going to have to show a bit more than what we have seen in the AWs in a Preliminary Hearing in front of the Judge regardless before there is a trial. After that NP will be getting all the State has and will know precisely how they will lay out there case.
I would just force them to go first in order to either put forth their own theory, which I am wondering if that is what they will actually do now. I'm starting to think it will be spaghetti at the wall...
NCPD focused on FD from the beginning
NO proof FD was in NC
Someone else could have done it (EE/KM/MT...)
JD is not dead. Has the wealth and means to do this.
FD was framed...
Oh also, after reading about kidnapping charges, the restraining/kidnapping can be very very brief. Just even a small amount of time to cause death. The blood evidence and other forensics should tell us a bit more. Blood evidence in her suburban for instance. Where was the blood inside. was it dripping? Did it indicate that someone was still alive? I think we will learn more and more at trial.
I am not btw discounting that she very well could have been alive...even all the way to Farmington. I just don't want to think that as the pain and suffering is too great for me to contemplate. She had already suffered in the garage. So the tender heart in me would like to think it was over fairly quickly and that she expired in the garage and was dead when she was placed in the suburban.
Either way, FD is a sick monster driving alongside the mother of his five children the almost two hours to Farmington (unless her remains never made it too far from NC) who was either dead or dying. Speaks to a level of callousness and compartmentalization that you basically only see in psychopaths and sociopaths. I'd put him in the sociopath category...but who can say really?
Really enjoy your posts tremendously
@oceancalling