This is not good. This defendant got on the stand and couldn’t explain any of the evidence that points directly to her. She has no burden to do so, of course. But she chose to take the stand. In doing so, she took on a burden to create a defense for herself, or to refute the state’s evidence. And she offered nothing In the way of either. The state‘s evidence stands. There shouldn’t be any reason for the jury to go over any of the evidence in detail again. No need to look at each and every phone call or recording. They were all obviously bad for Katie, and the defense offered nothing to counter that. They also offered no evidence that Charlie arranged the murder with Sigfredo directly, which they said they would do in their opening. The State should have held them to that very strongly in its closing. It’s an own goal. The defense also said in closing that the state looked for a connection between the murderers and the Adelsons, and went for “the easiest” connection, Katie. But what else should they have done? Found another connection? There isn’t one. It’s true, Katie IS the easiest connection, because she’s the ONLY connection. There‘s no way this murder gets committed by Sigfredo without her telling him about it and getting him to do it. He doesn’t know Dan, or Charlie. She sat in that Dolce Vida restaurant listening to Charlie talk about a situation in which his family was being blackmailed, concerning an incident which appeared on international News. She admits that. She also admits she didn’t ask him what he was talking about. And she admits she then called Sigfredo, a person who just so happens to be the person also implicated in this situation with Charlie’s family that made international news. Her husband just happens to have murdered Charlie’s brother in law, without ever having met Charlie except for one time, the jet ski incident, which occurred AFTER the first murder trip to Tallahassee. After all of this, when the jury was sent back, there should’ve been an instant straw poll, resulting in everyone voting guilty. I think the strategy of putting Katie on the stand worked last time in that it got at least one or two jurors to feel bad for her. I think it will work this time, too. And unfortunately, without Katie, it will be much more difficult to convict Charlie because, as has been established ad nauseum, there is nothing to connect him to the trigger man except Katie. No direct payments from Charlie to
him. No communications from Charlie to him. That’s why Charlie used Katie as an intermediary in the first place! And thats why he’s going to go free? Terrible. If the state can’t get her convicted, they haven’t done their job. Sure, there’s not much direct evidence against Katie in the sense that she’s not on tape discussing the murder. But what murderer is? Why can’t juries ever understand that reasonable doubt doesn’t mean no doubt, (other wise, the defense could just argue that Martians could’ve come down with a spaceship and killed Dan, and there, case closed). Why can’t they understand that circumstantial evidence IS evidence? Again, a good prosecutor needs to be able to explain that. Otherwise the defense will, as they did here, just throw out all kinds of alternative explanations, and the jury will think it has to weigh those. Which is what this jury seems to be doing here, and why they have chosen to take up a holiday weekend deliberating. This should have been over today. I want to think that Katie didn’t take a deal all this time, because she really didn’t do it. But I can’t figure out, logically, how she wasn’t involved. Nothing else makes sense. Charlie could not have done this without her. Is this jury that dumb not to be able to put that together? Did they put it together, but still think the state didn’t give them enough to support that conclusion ? Just how big do they think the state’s burden is? The whole thing is nuts. End of rant. What does everyone else think? Talk me down.
. This issue of jumpiong the border was surely a consideration with charging him with murder / homicide when they did.