Circumstantial evidence is the lynchpin of any murder case. A prosecutor MUST establish the circumstances of the crime and place the defendant AT THE SCENE. He must also establish motive, and demonstrate a plausible method beyond a reasonable doubt. There is NO legal precedent requiring forensic evidence to obtain a conviction. In fact, forensic evidence can be planted, faked, or sabotage easier than well-grounded circumstantial evidence.

The idea that "circumstantial" somehow equals "secondary" or "weak" is a ridiculous one that has been publicly disseminated by television shows. Read case law, you'll discover that the truth is quite reversed. Forensic evidence can break a circumstantial case in rape cases (but not murder cases), and it can make stronger a circumstantial case, but it can NOT make a prosecutor's case without circumstantial evidence. Forensic evidence is ONLY useful as it helps establish the circumstantial case - but it is not needed to do so and never has been.

Anyone in a free society SHOULD be reading law, philosophy of justice, and politics and economics. Without these things, you can't hope to understand the surrounding world in any but the most basic personal terms.

The prosecutors had the admission of the defendant and witnesses that placed the defendant at the scene of the crime. They established motive from three angles. They established a history of sociopathic behavior. They have recipts from the defendant's house documenting his purchase of equipment used to dispose of the body. They have records from his computer from three days before the murder indicating he was looking up tide tables FOR THE EXACT LOCATION where the body was dumped.

That's hardly no evidence. The above paragraph is irresponsible journalism, and utterly disingenuous.

Perhaps what you're seeing is the cheering of people who remembered the O.J. and Menendez trials and wanted to see justice done.

Subjugation? Where? Who's being subjugated.

Based on nothing? Bullshit.
It's based on a conviction for 2 counts of murder with special circumstances. It's based on 5 months of testimony and a case VERY carefully laid out in the best legal fashion, and done so so well that a celebrity defense attorney couldn't poke holes of reasonable doubt in it. It's based on a perponderance of evidence so large that the jury had no reasonable doubts that Scott killed Lacey and Connor.

Your complaints, my friend, are based on nothing.

This is called a straw man argument. Scott did not just want to "lead a bachelor life." He procured girlfriends, boasted that he would be soon coming into money, he lied pathologically about his life, and the timing of his wife's death (aside from him being AT the body dump ON the day of the murder) was such that she was about to find out he was cheating on her. Add to that, she was pregnant and wouldn't get an abortion, and he had told people repeatedly that he would rather die than father a child - particularly in the months of the pregnancy itself.

Until you're on the wrong side of our justice system, Ro-bear, you don't know what a crock of shit it is.

Half of our prison population (which is currently the highest documented rate at 701 per 100,000) is composed of individuals who have committed no violent offense. While there have been higher rates, ours is approaching heights achieved only by unstable totalitarian nations.

You would be suprised what is criminal or how crimes are defined in our justice system. By most accounts burglary, for example, is often defined as a person breaking into a house and stealing property or some other crime.

Not so - you could leave your door wide open and if someone even walks in, walks out and doesn't take anything, it's still burglary -- a felony offense.

You'll find odd definitions for crime all over the place and this, in combination with the device of a plea bargain, allows the goverment to trump up charges in order to get a conviction for lower crimes, or punish people severely who choose to defend themselves by costing them time, their jobs, their reputation and, if convicted, years of their lives for minimal or no crime.

In addition, I'm sure you have heard of double-jeopardy and the Constitution. Federal duplication of crime law has made it possible that you CAN be tried twice for the same crime.

Every protection in the Constitution and Bill of Rights has been compromised by legislators and the justice system, and there is no indication that high imprisonment rates for non-violent offenders has anything to do with a safer nation.

What about deviant behavior like sodomy, drugs, prostitution, and other victimless crimes? What about carrying a gun for your own protection?

I understand what you're saying Cerise. But your assertion that a conviction shouldn't be attainable without forensic evidence is 1) unreasonable, 2) unrealistic, and 3) unprecedented. From the time of the Pre-saxon Anglos, this has been the way English common-law has worked (which is what our system is based on).

Moreover, "reasonable doubt" doesn't mean "beyond a shadow of a doubt." It means that, all other things being equal, it would take something quite extraordinary to take THIS set of circumstances and evidences and to still have someone else have done the deed. Most people (and I'm not saying you're among them, Cerise) confuse the two. But you don't need forensic evidence to remove reasonable doubt. In fact, up until 20 to 40 years ago forensic evidence was rare because we didn't have the technology to analyze DNA, some bodily fluids, spallter patters, etc.

Kitten:

Of course, I agree with you. There is no reason in and of itself why our justice system shouldn't work. But the fact remains, it still doesn't work, and I'm not really interested in playing who shot John (maybe that's because I'm John and I don't much like the idea of being shot :smiles:). I'm not saying there shouldn't be a justice system, although I don't think it makes a difference and I suppose that is a philosophical argument there.

I don't see how juror judgement is any different from a mob lynching, except that it is a better organized lynching. Time and time again it has been demonstrated to me that when you place collective control in the hands of the few that ideology is so easily corrupted as to be no different from a lynch except in its ability to allow corruption and graft to thrive all the longer.

Then again, the mob is also an act of democracy. I would not exchange one form of collectivism for another. I fear that every time we form a hive with kings and queens running the show, we have lost all that makes us as individuals unique and happy.

Instead we are told by government that we are unique -- just like everyone else.