4 ms·

I recently heard a podcast - forgive me I cannot recall the name atm - about Jeffrey Pyne and his conviction for the absolutely horrific murder of his mother Ru

I recently heard a podcast - forgive me I cannot recall the name atm - about Jeffrey Pyne and his conviction for the absolutely horrific murder of his mother Ruth. The prosecutions case was 100% circumstantial; it consisted entirely of "here's what we think happened... therefore this man is a murderer". In my naivety I didn't think conviction based on that kind of "evidence" was allowed in the US justice system. At one point when the prosecution didn't think the charge of 1st degree murder would stick they added a charge of 2nd degree murder. In the end the jury found him guilty of the latter.

rayiner 8y ago
Circumstantial evidence is a valid basis for conviction. You’re leaving out a few key details: http://jimfishertruecrime.blogspot.com/2012/12/did-jeffrey-pyne-murder-his-mother.html?m=1 http://jimfishertruecrime.blogspot.com/2012/12/did-jeffrey-p... 1) Jeffrey had motive. His mother had been abusing him for years. 2) Jeffrey was the last person to see his mother alive. The crime scene evidence also pointed to an “insider” who would’ve felt comfortable sticking around to clean up the crime scene (blood was found in the sink, there was no blood in exit paths). 3) Jeffrey had blisters on his hands consistent with weilding a bludgeoning weapon. 4) Jeffrey’s alibi was that he had been planting flowers at his teacher’s house. But the teacher testified that he had done that four days before. The second degree murder charge was proper. If the jury believed he killed his mothef because of the abuse, first degree murder might not stick. Second degree, “heat of the moment/emotional disturbance” murder would be the correct charge.
- lightyrs 8y ago
  I agree that the second degree charge was proper but adding it in after the jury had heard the entire case seems unethical.
  - derefr 8y ago
    Honestly, it seems to me that—given a hypothetical ideal jury with encyclopedic knowledge of the criminal code—it doesn't even make sense to have a trial that is "about" a particular crime. Rather, wouldn't it make more sense (again, given a jury that knows what the requirements are for every crime in the book) for the trial to just present the evidence in the case to the jury, and then the jury to come back with a list of zero or more crimes that they've decided that the defendant has committed? It seems to me that the only reason we do things any other way, is that juries don't have encyclopedic knowledge of the criminal code, and so you have to teach them about what the requirements are for guilt in the particular case. Given that the court system doesn't like jury nullification, and wants juries to be deciding solely on whether the facts presented to them match the legal requirements for the definition of a particular crime—why would it matter whether they know which crime they'll be asked to evaluate the facts against, before they know the facts? They can learn the facts first, or the law first. Either way, the last step is just matching one to the other. (In the Supreme Court's opinion, at least.)
    - logfromblammo 8y ago
      About half of states require a grand jury to screen criminal indictments. Your suggestion seems to be to coalesce the grand jury with the petit jury, and have the jury decide first that a criminal court should convene to conduct a trial, and then decide only later if the facts proved in that trial correspond to any particular crime or crimes. The prosecutors could still press for a specific crime, but the defense would also be able to argue directly to the jury that "even if X and Y were true (which they aren't), that would only be a class N crime, because the prosecution hasn't proved Z, which is necessary for it to be a class M crime."
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > It seems to me that the only reason we do things any other way, is that juries don't have encyclopedic knowledge of the criminal code, and so you have to teach them about what the requirements are for guilt in the particular case. The reason is more involved, because: (1) law, like facts, is subject to question and answering those questions is out of scope of the jury, which is the trier of fact alone. Your model would necessarily transfer the judge's responsibility to the jury. (2) The law creates permission for prosecution (bit civil and criminal , though only the latter is relevant here), but that permission is not a mandate. Judgement of the cake of prosecution is given to the offended party (in criminal law, the executive on behalf of the government). Your model would necessarily transfer the executives authority largely to the jury (though prosecutors could withhold inculpatory evidence to avoid undesired charges being triggered.) (3) But, most critically, your model would provide the defendant with a vast surface to defend against, and require the defense to provide evidence against any offense the jury might infer from the evidence. The use of specific charges and specifications putd the defense on notice of the specific charges they must defend against. (4) Related to (3), without specific charges, any trial is essentially a trial for all potential criminal conduct occurring before that point, which creates double jeopardy problems if concealed evidence of an early crime comes to light, as distinguishing between a trial addressing other charges (which would not foreclose a new trial for double jeopardy reasons) and a trial addressing the offense indicated by the new evidence but which merely failed to convict (which would foreclose a new trial) is impossible. Meaningful protection against double jeopardy while permitting trials for newly discovered offenses requires something like the current specific-charge model. > Given that the court system doesn't like jury nullification, The court system may not like it, but it has repeatedly been found to be part of the Constitutional order of government. By the court system, I might add, so obviously they like it enough to keep protecting it.
- crescentfresh 8y ago
  I understand the points of the case, I wasn't trying to include or omit details. My comment was about circumstantial evidence being a valid basis for conviction, I never realized it was. Has that always been the case? (no pun intended)
  - jakelazaroff 8y ago
    If it weren't, it would absolutely cripple the justice system. Any crime committed with no other people or recording devices present would be literally immune to conviction, no matter how strong the rest of the evidence.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Yes, it has. Folks hundreds of years ago could not articulate the rules of evidence in Bayesian terms, but intuitively understood that it is probabalistic. The question is, what are the odds that all these facts are true and the accused is not the killed. If that is below the threshold for reasonable doubt (1-10%) then a conviction is in order. Circumstantial evidence like “direct” evidence narrows that probability. Knowing the killer stayed at the same hotel as the victim on the night of the murder is circumstantial evidence, but dramatically narrows the probability that the accused is innocent compared to the prior odds ratio. Any given piece of circumstantial evidence may not be enough, but together it can narrow the odds sufficiently to achieve a conviction. (He was in the same hotel, had an insurance policy on the victim’s life, and had recently purchased a gun, which cannot be found.)
  - derefr 8y ago
    Consider: a closed-room murder mystery. For example, there are five people on an island, and in the night one of them is murdered. To prove who committed the murder (after proving that the person's death was a homicide at all), all you need is to exculpate two of the three remaining people (by e.g. having them supply air-tight alibis.) Then, by process of elimination, the last one must be the murderer. Even though that's entirely "circumstantial evidence", it really is a proof, in the deductive sense.
  - gowld 8y ago
    What is "circumstantial" evidence? Scientifically, really, isn't all evidence cicumstantial, and "circumstantial" just means evidence with some unspecified (low) level of Bayesian weight or something?
- kamaal 8y ago
  That looks like a serious flaw in the system. Jeffrey committing the murder doesn't follow from 1) 2) and 3) Regarding 4) its still hazy as every one's recovery time could be different. Granted it won't be 100 days or something like that, but four days is still touch and go. Law et al aside. How do Judges rule in this case? There is huge chance of getting this wrong, and how do you live with this thing on our conscious that you would have sent an innocent man to the gallows?
  - harryh 8y ago
    We don't send anyone to the gallows anymore. And there isn't capital punishment of any kind for 2nd degree murder.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Evidence doesn’t need to inexorably lead to the conclusion of guilt. The evidence taken together must establish probability of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Having motive to kill someone doesn’t prove you did it. But statistically, those with motive are much more likely to be the killer than a random person. That narrows the probability. Likewise, lying about where you were at the time of the murder (which is what #4 is about) doesn’t prove you committed it, but makes it more likely. Those compund—each additional fact narrows the probability that the accused is not guilty. If you take a random sampling of 100 situations where there exists facts similar to this case, I think you’d find that 95%+ of the time the accused really did commit the murder. That’s all that’s required.
    - crescentfresh 8y ago
      Re #4, didn't she also say she left her door unlocked when she went to work that morning and when she came home it was locked, and that Jeff was the only person who locks her door when he's finished his work for her?
    - kamaal 8y ago
      >>If you take a random sampling of 100 situations where there exists facts similar to this case, I think you’d find that 95%+ of the time the accused really did commit the murder. That's 5 innocent people sentenced per hundred people to death/prison for a crime they didn't commit. That is a lot. In many cases for the innocent, the trial itself is a big punishment.
lightyrs 8y ago
The podcast is called "Sword and Scale". http://swordandscale.com/ http://swordandscale.com/
derefr 8y ago
One thing I've learned about the US justice system from watching a lot of criminology dramas (not that this is valid source of inferences, but it causes me to look things up for real): You can choose to prosecute a case with basically any evidence (including "no evidence.") In a jury trial, it's up to the jury to decide whether the suspect is guilty—i.e. jury nullification goes both ways, and a jury can return a "guilty" vote despite a complete absence of a case, just because they feel like it. (A judge does have the ability to overrule any guilty verdict they feel was reached unjustly, but in the sorts of situations you'd expect a community biased enough to return a guilty verdict in absence of evidence, you'd also expect the judge—if they're a member of the same community—to be biased as well.) Usually, though, because juries are almost never that biased (and are not aware of jury nullification), prosecutors just "decline to prosecute" cases that they don't think have enough evidence to sway a jury.
Matticus_Rex 8y ago
Circumstantial evidence isn't necessarily bad evidence at all. The proverbial "smoking gun" is circumstantial evidence.

rayiner 8y ago

Circumstantial evidence is a valid basis for conviction. You’re leaving out a few key details: http://jimfishertruecrime.blogspot.com/2012/12/did-jeffrey-pyne-murder-his-mother.html?m=1 http://jimfishertruecrime.blogspot.com/2012/12/did-jeffrey-p... 1) Jeffrey had motive. His mother had been abusing him for years. 2) Jeffrey was the last person to see his mother alive. The crime scene evidence also pointed to an “insider” who would’ve felt comfortable sticking around to clean up the crime scene (blood was found in the sink, there was no blood in exit paths). 3) Jeffrey had blisters on his hands consistent with weilding a bludgeoning weapon. 4) Jeffrey’s alibi was that he had been planting flowers at his teacher’s house. But the teacher testified that he had done that four days before. The second degree murder charge was proper. If the jury believed he killed his mothef because of the abuse, first degree murder might not stick. Second degree, “heat of the moment/emotional disturbance” murder would be the correct charge.

lightyrs 8y ago
I agree that the second degree charge was proper but adding it in after the jury had heard the entire case seems unethical.
- derefr 8y ago
  Honestly, it seems to me that—given a hypothetical ideal jury with encyclopedic knowledge of the criminal code—it doesn't even make sense to have a trial that is "about" a particular crime. Rather, wouldn't it make more sense (again, given a jury that knows what the requirements are for every crime in the book) for the trial to just present the evidence in the case to the jury, and then the jury to come back with a list of zero or more crimes that they've decided that the defendant has committed? It seems to me that the only reason we do things any other way, is that juries don't have encyclopedic knowledge of the criminal code, and so you have to teach them about what the requirements are for guilt in the particular case. Given that the court system doesn't like jury nullification, and wants juries to be deciding solely on whether the facts presented to them match the legal requirements for the definition of a particular crime—why would it matter whether they know which crime they'll be asked to evaluate the facts against, before they know the facts? They can learn the facts first, or the law first. Either way, the last step is just matching one to the other. (In the Supreme Court's opinion, at least.)
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    About half of states require a grand jury to screen criminal indictments. Your suggestion seems to be to coalesce the grand jury with the petit jury, and have the jury decide first that a criminal court should convene to conduct a trial, and then decide only later if the facts proved in that trial correspond to any particular crime or crimes. The prosecutors could still press for a specific crime, but the defense would also be able to argue directly to the jury that "even if X and Y were true (which they aren't), that would only be a class N crime, because the prosecution hasn't proved Z, which is necessary for it to be a class M crime."
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > It seems to me that the only reason we do things any other way, is that juries don't have encyclopedic knowledge of the criminal code, and so you have to teach them about what the requirements are for guilt in the particular case. The reason is more involved, because: (1) law, like facts, is subject to question and answering those questions is out of scope of the jury, which is the trier of fact alone. Your model would necessarily transfer the judge's responsibility to the jury. (2) The law creates permission for prosecution (bit civil and criminal , though only the latter is relevant here), but that permission is not a mandate. Judgement of the cake of prosecution is given to the offended party (in criminal law, the executive on behalf of the government). Your model would necessarily transfer the executives authority largely to the jury (though prosecutors could withhold inculpatory evidence to avoid undesired charges being triggered.) (3) But, most critically, your model would provide the defendant with a vast surface to defend against, and require the defense to provide evidence against any offense the jury might infer from the evidence. The use of specific charges and specifications putd the defense on notice of the specific charges they must defend against. (4) Related to (3), without specific charges, any trial is essentially a trial for all potential criminal conduct occurring before that point, which creates double jeopardy problems if concealed evidence of an early crime comes to light, as distinguishing between a trial addressing other charges (which would not foreclose a new trial for double jeopardy reasons) and a trial addressing the offense indicated by the new evidence but which merely failed to convict (which would foreclose a new trial) is impossible. Meaningful protection against double jeopardy while permitting trials for newly discovered offenses requires something like the current specific-charge model. > Given that the court system doesn't like jury nullification, The court system may not like it, but it has repeatedly been found to be part of the Constitutional order of government. By the court system, I might add, so obviously they like it enough to keep protecting it.
crescentfresh 8y ago
I understand the points of the case, I wasn't trying to include or omit details. My comment was about circumstantial evidence being a valid basis for conviction, I never realized it was. Has that always been the case? (no pun intended)
- jakelazaroff 8y ago
  If it weren't, it would absolutely cripple the justice system. Any crime committed with no other people or recording devices present would be literally immune to conviction, no matter how strong the rest of the evidence.
- rayiner 8y ago
  Yes, it has. Folks hundreds of years ago could not articulate the rules of evidence in Bayesian terms, but intuitively understood that it is probabalistic. The question is, what are the odds that all these facts are true and the accused is not the killed. If that is below the threshold for reasonable doubt (1-10%) then a conviction is in order. Circumstantial evidence like “direct” evidence narrows that probability. Knowing the killer stayed at the same hotel as the victim on the night of the murder is circumstantial evidence, but dramatically narrows the probability that the accused is innocent compared to the prior odds ratio. Any given piece of circumstantial evidence may not be enough, but together it can narrow the odds sufficiently to achieve a conviction. (He was in the same hotel, had an insurance policy on the victim’s life, and had recently purchased a gun, which cannot be found.)
- derefr 8y ago
  Consider: a closed-room murder mystery. For example, there are five people on an island, and in the night one of them is murdered. To prove who committed the murder (after proving that the person's death was a homicide at all), all you need is to exculpate two of the three remaining people (by e.g. having them supply air-tight alibis.) Then, by process of elimination, the last one must be the murderer. Even though that's entirely "circumstantial evidence", it really is a proof, in the deductive sense.
- gowld 8y ago
  What is "circumstantial" evidence? Scientifically, really, isn't all evidence cicumstantial, and "circumstantial" just means evidence with some unspecified (low) level of Bayesian weight or something?
kamaal 8y ago
That looks like a serious flaw in the system. Jeffrey committing the murder doesn't follow from 1) 2) and 3) Regarding 4) its still hazy as every one's recovery time could be different. Granted it won't be 100 days or something like that, but four days is still touch and go. Law et al aside. How do Judges rule in this case? There is huge chance of getting this wrong, and how do you live with this thing on our conscious that you would have sent an innocent man to the gallows?
- harryh 8y ago
  We don't send anyone to the gallows anymore. And there isn't capital punishment of any kind for 2nd degree murder.
- rayiner 8y ago
  Evidence doesn’t need to inexorably lead to the conclusion of guilt. The evidence taken together must establish probability of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Having motive to kill someone doesn’t prove you did it. But statistically, those with motive are much more likely to be the killer than a random person. That narrows the probability. Likewise, lying about where you were at the time of the murder (which is what #4 is about) doesn’t prove you committed it, but makes it more likely. Those compund—each additional fact narrows the probability that the accused is not guilty. If you take a random sampling of 100 situations where there exists facts similar to this case, I think you’d find that 95%+ of the time the accused really did commit the murder. That’s all that’s required.
  - crescentfresh 8y ago
    Re #4, didn't she also say she left her door unlocked when she went to work that morning and when she came home it was locked, and that Jeff was the only person who locks her door when he's finished his work for her?
  - kamaal 8y ago
    >>If you take a random sampling of 100 situations where there exists facts similar to this case, I think you’d find that 95%+ of the time the accused really did commit the murder. That's 5 innocent people sentenced per hundred people to death/prison for a crime they didn't commit. That is a lot. In many cases for the innocent, the trial itself is a big punishment.

lightyrs 8y ago

The podcast is called "Sword and Scale". http://swordandscale.com/ http://swordandscale.com/

derefr 8y ago

One thing I've learned about the US justice system from watching a lot of criminology dramas (not that this is valid source of inferences, but it causes me to look things up for real): You can choose to prosecute a case with basically any evidence (including "no evidence.") In a jury trial, it's up to the jury to decide whether the suspect is guilty—i.e. jury nullification goes both ways, and a jury can return a "guilty" vote despite a complete absence of a case, just because they feel like it. (A judge does have the ability to overrule any guilty verdict they feel was reached unjustly, but in the sorts of situations you'd expect a community biased enough to return a guilty verdict in absence of evidence, you'd also expect the judge—if they're a member of the same community—to be biased as well.) Usually, though, because juries are almost never that biased (and are not aware of jury nullification), prosecutors just "decline to prosecute" cases that they don't think have enough evidence to sway a jury.

Matticus_Rex 8y ago

Circumstantial evidence isn't necessarily bad evidence at all. The proverbial "smoking gun" is circumstantial evidence.