Saturday, February 16, 2013

Murder Without a Body

Can a person be convicted of murder without a body?

A common misconception among the general public is that a person cannot be convicted of murder if a body is never found. The truth is that most states do not require that a body be found in order to convict a person of murder.

The California case of Dave Hawk is an example of how a person can be convicted of murder. Mr. Hawk was convicted of killing his ex-wife Debbie Hawk after the woman went missing from her Hanford home in June 2006. Debbie Hawk's body was never found but that did not stop the jury from convicting Mr. Hawk of murder in 2009. 

Another example of prosecution for murder is the case of an Arizona woman, Jerice Hunter. Ms. Hunter is being prosecuted for the murder of her daughter. The 38 year old Glendale, AZ woman was arrested in September 2012. Law enforcement believes that Ms. Hunter killed her daughter and dumped the body in a landfill however the body was never found.

The Hunter case was in the news recently because Judge Daniel Martin granted the defense attorney additional time to prepare for trial after Ms. Hunter's previous attorney was removed from the case because he had not been paid. I found the name of the judge to be interesting because my name is Daniel Martin and I am a criminal defense attorney, however there is no relation.

There are various types of evidence

Murder cases are not unique when it comes to rules of evidence. The general rule is that all relevant is admissible unless otherwise excluded. What exactly does that mean? Well it means that if something tends to prove or disprove a fact that is disputed then it is admissible. 

Prosecutors can prove that a person is dead by introducing various types of evidence. Obviously the easiest way to prove that a person died is bring in the coroner and ask him or her questions about the autopsy. If you think about it though, they don't actually bring the body into court because the person is usually buried or cremated by then.

Instead of calling the coroner to prove that a person is dead the prosecutor can call family members and friends to testify that the person would never just disappear without telling anyone , In the Hawk murder trial there was evidence of Debbie Hawk's vehicle left abandoned in Fresno, CA. The jury apparently came to the conclusion that Debbie was killed and that Dave Hawk killed her.

I have represented a number of people in murder cases but none of the cases involved a victim that had not been found. It is much more common to have other types of 'direct evidence' missing. For example drugs get destroyed prior to trial. Additionally the person's mental state is almost always proved by circumstantial evidence because the defendant usually does not admit to having the required state of mind.

For example a person that enters a business to steal merchandise inside is guilty of commercial burglary. In most cases the person does not admit that they went into the store to steal. The prosecutor must prove that the person intended to steal when they entered the business to obtain a conviction for commercial burglary. To prove the person's intent they will introduce circumstantial evidence like the fact that the person had no cash on them when they entered the business, or they brought a pair of clippers with them so they could cut off the theft deterrent devices. 

Circumstantial evidence is probably the most common form of evidence. There is a jury instruction that deals with circumstantial evidence. Essentially it explains circumstantial evidence with a hypothetical that goes something like this... If a person came inside a building wearing a raincoat and carrying an umbrella and there were water drops on the raincoat, there would be circumstantial evidence that it was raining outside. 

Circumstantial evidence is evidence that tends to prove something that itself makes it more or less likely that another fact is true or untrue. Due to it's nature circumstantial evidence must be treated with caution. Jury instructions caution jurors to be careful when evaluating circumstantial evidence, if the evidence can show that a person is guilty or innocent then the jurors are instructed to adopt the interpretation that suggests that the person is innocent. 

An experience criminal defense attorney can explain how direct and circumstantial evidence applies to each individual case and he can make the jury question the evidence. 


Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Police Officer Apparently Dead

Christopher Dorner May Be Dead

The former Los Angeles Police Officer that killed four people after going on a rampage may be dead. Previously here on Fresno Lawyer, I wrote about Christopher Dorner being disgruntled with his attorney. The former police officer was terminated after an administrative hearing where he was represented by Randy Quan. Mr. Quan is a retired Los Angles Police captain who became a lawyer after retiring from the department.

It seems that Mr. Dorner totally lost it after he decided that he was wrongly terminated from the police department for reporting that another officer used excessive force. Christopher Dorner kicked off his spree by killing Mr. Quan's daughter and her fiance. He then killed another officer east of Los Angeles and wounded another officer.

Christopher Dorner Cornered

On February 12, 2013 officers apparently cornered Christopher Dorner in a house near Big Bear Lake California. A couple of days prior to cornering Mr. Dorner officers found Dorner's pickup truck burned out and abandoned. After days of an extensive manhunt a report came in that someone broke into a home and tied up the two female occupants. One of the occupants freed herself and notified police.

A subject matching Dorner's description was holed up in a house near the location of the burglary. After an exchange of gun fire that was caught on a video by a local news station, the house that Dorner is believed to be inside of burned. It is now believed that Mr. Dorner died inside the house after it burned. 

With today's shootout the death total rose to four. Randy Quan's daughter, her fiance, the officer east of Los Angeles and a deputy sheriff that was shot in the shoot out today. My thoughts go out to the officers that died at the hands of Christopher Dorner. 

Unfortunately Mr. Dorner is not the only person who blamed his lawyer for an unwanted outcome in a legal matter. Many lawyers have been shot and killed by their own clients. When I worked for a worker's compensation defense firm we always kept the front door locked because many people who had worker's compensation claims were very upset with my firm because they had been denied treatment or otherwise were unhappy with the outcome of their case and they blamed the firm that I worked for. 

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Former Police Officer On Crime Spree

Former L.A. Police Officer On Killing Spree

This site is about the law and the criminal justice system. I have written about a Deputy District Attorney that was shot and killed in front of a courthouse in Texas and some judges in Pennsylvania that were charged with corruption so I thought that I should cover a related news story. 

If anyone has not been following the news then they may not know about Christopher Dorner, a former Los Angeles police officer who was fired by the department a couple of years ago. Apparently he is still disgruntled over being fired. Actually that is the understatement of the year, this guy has lost his sanity. He has already killed at least three people.

Mr. Dorner has been trained by the police department and the military. In fact, he recently received an honorable discharged from the National Guard after ten years of service. That was before he started his crime spree by killing two people as they sat in a vehicle in a parking structure. 

One of the two initial victims was the daughter of an attorney, former police officer that represented Mr. Dorner at an administrative hearing that ultimately resulted in his termination from Los Angeles Police Department. 

The concept of disgruntled client blaming his attorney for an unwanted result is not new. A couple of years ago a Fresno attorney was shot and killed during a lunch break by a husband that was bitter about the proceedings in a divorce action. That attorney is not alone many attorneys have been injured by clients over the years, some killed. 

As of this writing, Mr. Dorner has killed three people and injured more people. He has pledged to continue to kill people until his name is cleared. I hope he is located before he can hurt anyone else. 


Sunday, February 3, 2013

Obama's Immigration Plan - Tighter Borders

President Obama recently outlined a four part plan to overhaul immigration in the United States. I previously discussed the pathway to citizenship in another post. The White House claims that an important part of the plan requires that the borders become more secure.  

Strengthen Border Security

In an effort to address concerns of conservatives and to increase the effectiveness of other parts of the plan, President Obama's plan would include provisions intended to 'shore up' border security. The plan calls for additional border patrol agents and increases in the use of technology to made borders more secure.

Personally, I do not believe that a lot of money should be invested in shoring up the borders. True we need to secure the borders to reduce the threat of terrorism. However when it comes to unwanted immigration we can practically eliminate the problem with mandatory E-verify.

E-verify is the system that is currently in place to ensure that employers only hire people who are in the United States legally. If the system was used by every single employer there would be almost no illegal immigration. The reason people are coming to United States is because they can work here and build a better life for themselves.

Many Businesses Rely On Aliens

The reality is that many businesses in the United States rely on cheap labor made possible by illegal immigration. In California the fields are worked by Mexican nationals that crossed the border illegally. In Colorado there are illegal aliens working in meat packing plants. In hotels across the country there are rooms that are cleaned by illegal aliens. 

If every employer had to use E-verify to ensure that each employer was in the country legally there would be almost no jobs. After a short period of time, illegal immigration would screech to a halt. Although it is true that a person could come into the country illegally and live with family or friends for a while, without a job they could not contribute to the family and would have to go back. 

The additional taxes that would be collected when every employer used E-verify could be used to reduce the national budget and support public assistance programs. There are several benefits of immigration reform, for the most part it would shift the benefit of having illegal aliens in the country from the farmers and business owners that take advantage of the cheap labor to the general public because taxes would go to everyone instead of the few businesses that reap the windfall of cheap labor.