By omitting the perp himself (we know that he matches to his own DNA), the prosecutor made a boo-boo. He should have said there was a perp, and there were roughly 9 million other men in California in 1972, 8 or 9 of whom should be expected to match to him, bringing the total of potential perps to either 9 or 10.

That would be correct if the State of California were a sovereign nation with strict border controls and accurate records of who was or wasn’t in the state on any given date. It’s not, of course, so rather than focusing on the 9 unidentifiable Caucasian males who probably were in the state on December 22, 1972, we must instead look at the larger pool of identifiable Caucasian males who might have been. Timing, tourism and transients skew this even more, as more people travel to California than away from it at Christmas, and a disproportionate number of those who travel to California either as tourists or transients (such as Baker, the most likely “real killer” IMO) end up in or around San Francisco.

Score me.

“Poke A Bear’

Were I allowed only one attribute for Due Process I would pick predictability. What do I need to know to conform my conduct to the requirements of the law? What should I be prepared to face in court were I ever accused?

Volumes can be written about fairness and balance — about the relative powers, rights and privileges of the government and the defendant. I take the view of the sailor: The sea [substitute "government"] is what she is. Adapt to her or perish.

Whatever. I don’t care. We can’t communicate on this case and that’s that. OK?

As to comment 18, you’re obviously convinced the misunderstanding is 100 percent my fault, that your comment was written with crystalline clarity, and that any interpretive failing is mine alone.

No, I don’t blame you for misinterpreting Comment 18. Like I said in the last comment, these things happen. What I do blame you for – completely – is how badly you handled the matter after the misunderstanding was pointed out to you, first in the form of other comments consistent with one reading but not the other (which was the best I could do at the time since I wasn’t entirely clear on what you were getting at, either), and then in the form of me vociferously denying having said crazy stuff I had not, in fact, said (but you had mistakenly assumed I meant, which I guess was close enough), and finally in Comment 30, where I said:

It’s what you thought I was saying about your prior posts, when I was actually talking about what you seemed to be saying in this thread, and drawing a contrast to what you were clearly advocating in those posts.

I can see why someone might read Comment 18 in a vacuum, and mistakenly interpret it to mean that the two older posts advocated reforms to the Evidence Code that unilaterally favor the prosecution. I cannot see how any reasonable reader could continue in that mistaken interpretion after reading Comment 30.

You have a valid point about trials spiraling out of control, and there is that potential. My main point is that most of the stuff hidden from juries is hidden to protect the defendant. If I could tell juries the defendant’s full record, what his punishment should be and why, etc., I’d put up with admission of some otherwise inadmissible defense-oriented nonsense.

Here in California we have the rule that you say you seek in Illinois: only felonies of moral turpitude are impeachable.

But note two things:

1) 1108 and 1109 aren’t unilateral. They actually level the playing field, since all prosecution witnesses have to disclose their own past crimes of moral turpitude.

2) The fact that a defendant was convicted of the conduct is not admissible — unless the defense wants it to be. Some jurors might consider that important; by keeping the database evidence out, you may also be keeping out any suggestion that the defendant was convicted of the past crimes (if he doesn’t testify).

There is a difference between the rules as they exist and the rules one might choose if one had absolute power. The fact that one might select a different set of rules than exist doesn’t suggest that a trial has been unfair under existing rules.

No. You’re such a dick. You can’t even acknowledge the possibility that *you* wrote a crappy comment. You just explained what you meant in an understandable way for the first time. Before that, you didn’t appear to be pointing out an error. You simply appeared to be saying something completely inconsistent with what you’d previously said.

I now understand, for the first time, what you meant. It would now be irrational for me to continue to maintain that you *meant* to make an accusation. But it’s not irrational to point out that your comment was most reasonably read as one.