Some of you are naive enough to think that no one is found guilty of crimes unless we are certain that they committed the crime. Well, that is obviously untrue. The below two stories demonstrate that. Both the stories are about women who were convicted of murdering their husbands. In the first story, the wife's husband had died from being poisoned with automotive anti-freeze. The only evidence: They found an opened container of the poisonous anti-freeze in the man's garage, but no fingerprints were found on it. If the man had recently poured it, they assumed his fingerprints would probably be on it. The couple had recently separated, and the woman may have wanted the man's house and money and to avoid an expensive divorce. She would later get $200,000 and the house after he had died. The woman claimed the man had called her brother and said that he had no reason to live without his wife. The man's relatives did not believe he could have been suicidal. The woman claimed the man had alcohol problems, but no alcohol was found in his body. (If he was indeed an alcoholic and was about to commit suicide, it is probably he would have been drinking alcohol before, so this reduces the likelihood that it could have been a suicide) Doctors had told the woman that she had the option to take her husband off of life support and that it appeared he was already brain dead. The man's relatives said they were adamant about not taking the man off life support, but said that while they briefly left his bedside at the hospital, the woman made the decision for the doctors to pull the plug and take him off life support. She also wanted to have his body cremated right away and did not want to hold a funeral. (Might she have been trying to hide evidence of some other drug in the man's system? Doctors did already know that the man had been poisoned with anti-freeze. This also may have suggested she did not care about him much and was anxious to get rid of him) Teresa Kotomski Says She's Innocent Of Murder, Blames Diabetes | Crime News (oxygen.com) The second story involves a man who was shot dead while at work. The only evidence: The woman was seen on surveillance camera footage driving to and from the place where her husband worked, at the time he was killed. The woman owned a gun that was consistent with the type of gun that could have fired the bullet. The woman was a murder mystery book writer, and one of the plots in her writing involved someone swapping out the barrel of the gun so the bullet could not be traced to the gun. Prosectors suggested the woman may have been motivated by money problems and a life insurance policy on her husband. One of the woman's books she had written was titled "How to Murder Your Husband". 'How to Murder Your Husband' writer Nancy Crampton Brophy found guilty of murder : NPR In both stories, the evidence was entirely circumstantial. We don't know with complete certainty that either of these women killed their husbands. Yet, both women were charged and convicted of murder. My opinion is that both women should be punished for murder, but the amount of the punishment should be less because enough uncertainty exists that they might not be guilty. They should also not be able to benefit in any way from their husband's death. They should only get what they would have gotten in a divorce.
Wait...so...having an open container of coolant in the garage is now evidence of murder?! Heck, I have one. (I might have a couple.)
Jarlaxle, thank you for taking the time to respond in this thread. All sorts of little things can be taken as "evidence" for a murder prosecution. In this case the evidence mostly seems to be coincidental or circumstantial. And yes, even normal things sitting around someone's house can be used as part of the "evidence". (I could link you to all sorts of other examples of this in other stories that I have posted in this forum) Why don't we try to analyze exactly what the evidence was against this woman? I'll try to organize and characterize it in a simple way. 1. There existed a potential motive for her to kill the victim. 2. The same type substance that the man was poisoned with also happened to be found in the home, even though it is a pretty common substance that could be found in many homes. 3. The woman seemed anxious to remove her husband from life support, despite his family having expressed their wishes to contrary, suggesting that there may have been a drive for her to want her husband dead. Not wanting to hold a funeral also suggests she did not care about him as much. 4. The woman introduced a claim that made it look like it could have been a suicide, yet the husband's family did not have this perception. This fact slightly increases the probability that the claim might have been a lie and the woman may have been trying to mislead police. But as you can see, there is no clear evidence that she murdered him. Everything is just little separate pieces of coincidental evidence that, when all added up, paint the picture that she may have wanted him dead, and could have conveniently done so. I do think that in a murder trial, they are often willing to use a lower standard of evidence, because murder is a crime that has a very high priority for being stopped and they do not want to take the risk that a murderer who is guilty might not be convicted. It is obviously conceivably possible that this woman might not have killed her husband, even though she was found guilty of doing so.
