I'll use your post as a jumping-off point to discuss the defense's own motion to admit third party culpability <modsnip>... Defense motion is attached.
Pages 1-3 are relatively boilerplate statements about RA's rights to admit evidence of third party culpability. There are some assertions, but they aren't substantive. They claim RA has produced evidence, but the specifics of this evidence is not produced here.
Pages 4-7 are predominately about the testimony of Perlmutter and how she has connected various elements to Odinism. There are no specific claims about responsible third parties here, and the only evidence presented is Perlmutter's testimony.
Page 8-9, they talk about police not adequately following up on leads. On Page 9, their assertion is "Something happened at 4:33 a.m. on February 14, 2017 that caused [LG]'s cell phone to suddenly connect to the cell phone tower and it is logical to believe that whatever caused the phone to connect was the result of actions taken by third party suspects". That is vague, speculative, and does not directly tie any subjects back to the crime.
On page 10, they start going into precedent regarding third party culpability:
To be admissible in criminal prosecution, evidence that a third party has committed the crime with which the defendant is charged need not show substantial proof of a probability that the third person has committed the act; it need only be capable of raising a reasonable doubt of the defendant's guilt... While a criminal defendant may present alternative perpetrator evidence at trial in order to cast doubt on the defendant's guilt, the defendant must first lay an evidentiary foundation to establish that the alternative perpetrator evidence has an inherent tendency to connect the alternative perpetrator to the actual commission of the charged crime.
Emphasis mine. There can't be some vague links to the general theory of the crime. The third party perpetrators must be connected to the
actual commission of the charged crime.
Allen v State -
Allen v. State, 813 N.E.2d 349 | Casetext Search + Citator
The defense wanted to admit witness testimony that included a witness that saw the third party case the establishment with them prior to the crime (while talking about robbing the place), and immediately after the crime came and admitted they committed a robbery and killed several people in the process. They were only a couple of blocks from the store and were coming from the direction of the store. They stated the weapon they had with them was "dirty" and they needed to get rid of it. The witness had provided additional testimony regarding other crimes that was corroborated and deemed valid. The confession testimony was originally permitted under a hearsay exception after a hearing, but the witness then refused to testify, fearing for his own safety. The court then refused to admit the prior testimony of the witness. This was a clear error, because the third party had clear links to the actual commission of the crime.
This is a patently different set of circumstances because there is specific witness testimony from a proven-credible witness tying a specific person to the specific crime, in the location the crime occurred, with knowledge only the perpetrator would have been able to share.
Joyner v State - Joyner v. State, 678 N.E.2d 386 | Casetext Search + Citator
The defense leaves out that the third party in this case left hair on the murder instrument that tied them to the murder via DNA analysis.
Rohr v State -
Rohr v. State, 866 N.E.2d 242 | Casetext Search + Citator
The defense completely misstates the conclusions in this case - it's not about third party culpability, but whether it was proper to exclude witnesses due to a lack of timely disclosure. The witnesses that were ultimately admitted would testify to the fact that they had witnessed the mother beating the victim, that died from beating, in the past. The defense has not disclosed any past bad acts that I'm aware of regarding the Odinists having killed other girls in ritual sacrifices.
Kucki v State -
Kucki v. State, 483 N.E.2d 788 | Casetext Search + Citator
The entire relevant portion of this ruling is about mistaken identity - courts are more lenient about admitting evidence of third party culpability if there is evidence that the third party bears a "striking physical similarity" to the accused. I'm not aware of any claims of RA doppelgangers running around.
That is the substance of their cited legal precedents for admission of evidence of third party culpability.
From Pages 11-26, they go into specifics about each individual and why they're possibly relevant third parties. Since they have been officially excluded as suspects in the trial so far, I'm not going to discuss them specifically or at length to keep in line with the TOS. However, the general formula is:
- Their alibi is invalid if we move the timeframe of the murders with little factual basis
- They made weird statements to police if taken out of context
- They practice Odinism
- Double hearsay from an unreliable witness says someone committed the murders
- A white pickup truck was in Delphi
That's about it as far as substance. Nothing nearly as compelling as any of the evidence in the cases they cited, no matter how many pages it took them to describe the "evidence".
Just my opinion, of course.
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