Media and Motives re: Phone Hacking.

Phone hacking came to prominence during the News of the World affair, in which the British tabloid had been involved in the interception of voicemail messages of the Royal Family, other public figures, and the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

What appears not to be quite so readily apparent is that all this was old news and apparently of no great interest to anyone at all until such time as Rupert Murdock was trying to buy a British television network and become an economic threat to the BBC.

Then the revelations about hacking a missing school girl's cell phone seems to have become a story with legs. Now the great attack is on. A paper folds? So what? They are all losing money to the online news agencies. Hacking a missing teen age girl's phone and deleting some messages to make room for more became a great rallying cry for an anti-murdoch campaign but most of the cellular hacking had already taken place and was well known.

Good for the Jury and the Jury System!!

The question is not is she guilty but is she guilty beyond a reasonable doubt based upon the evidence presented.

I have no idea what weight the jury gave to the fact that the duct tape is usually a great source of fingerprints and that the defendant's father was forensically aware. I have no idea what weight the jury gave to the father's evasiveness and belligerence, but it did seem he was not frank and forthright. He certainly can not claim to both recognize the smell of a human death based on his police work and to have driven away and kept silent without the jury wondering about the weight of those actions.

I doubt there was any sort of unknown nefarious kidnappers acting in cahoots with the meter reader and I imagine the jury was not swayed by that either.

The question is not whether she killed the kid but whether the prosecution proved it beyond a reasonable doubt.

Congenital liar? Yes, but the indictment did not charge her with that.
Wonderful roommate? Yes. Did she kill the kid to go nightclubbing or was the nightclubbing no more significant to her than the favors she performed for her other roommates by doing their laundry and ironing. Based on her interaction with the child there was no reason to assume that the nightclubbing meant anything more to her than the ironing did. Sure it more enjoyable but nothing showed a particular motive.

The jury of "twelve good men and true" may now contain women as well but I still maintain that the "good" and "true" remain applicable. In olden days a jury would be kept without light or heat and without food or water until they rendered a verdict. It took courage in those days. Now in our modern times jurors often have it much easier, but even this jury which had been sequestered knew they would be under great scrutiny and they bore up very well.

Darlie Routier

I've been informed that just prior to the July 4th holiday weekend, Darlie Routier's husband filed divorce papers in Lubbock, TX while his wife is on death row.

I don't know if the husbands contemplation of insurance fraud brought unsavory characters around his home or not. Many criminals do learn that bringing a weapon with them proves premeditation and that therefore it is better to use a weapon acquired at the scene.

I do believe the medical testimony that originally found the wounds were not self inflicted.

It is Texas however and defendants in Texas are generally found guilty, particularly in death penalty cases.