Ed James - The Rest of The Story

[huntertrw]

briarlee:

In your opinion, were the charges (first-degree arson and first-degree murder) appropriate if it was ever proved that the suspect started the fire?

 

[ssjones]

Wow, that's a awful story (and great to have the expertise of Ashdigger)

I was HOPING, when I encountered the paywall, that the grandson was found incompetent to stand trial and at least ended up in a mental health prison.

But nope, the SOB is free.

Early on, when I started restoring pipes, Ed sent me me an old Grabow to work on, and gave me a lot of tips and advice. I'll smoke the Grabow this afternoon, with a raised pipe for a wonderful gentleman who deserved a better fate.

 

[Briar Lee]

briarlee:

In your opinion, were the charges (first-degree arson and first-degree murder) appropriate if it was ever proved that the suspect started the fire?

Setting three fires is felony murder at least.

But prosecutors charge first degree, and the defense (in Missouri) get lesser included offense instructions of murder two, manslaughter and felony murder. So, that wasn’t why the case got kicked.

The case against shitball stepson is circumstantial. James is dead, and two other people were in the house. Neither blame the other under oath.

Even in the doors were locked, the real killer could have had a key, however unlikely.

There’s a famous Missouri case where a young man went out with two girls at night on the Chain of Rocks bridge at St Louis. There were other kids on the bridge, he said, that tossed him off the bridge, and he swam to shore.

Until one of the girl’s bodies was recovered from the river, no case at all.

After one girl’s body was recovered, the police almost charged the guy who was tossed off the bridge.

Then the kids on the bridge were located (they really did exist) and began to blame each other.

One kid was executed, the others got varying sentences.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Julie_and_Robin_Kerry#:~:text=The%20rapes%20and%20murders%20of,to%20murder%20the%20sisters'%20cousin.

This James case is hard. I hope is had the courage of the judge to dismiss it.

 

[Briar Lee]

Wow, that's a awful story (and great to have the expertise of Ashdigger)

I was HOPING, when I encountered the paywall, that the grandson was found incompetent to stand trial and at least ended up in a mental health prison.

But nope, the SOB is free.

Early on, when I started restoring pipes, Ed sent me me an old Grabow to work on, and gave me a lot of tips and advice. I'll smoke the Grabow this afternoon, with a raised pipe for a wonderful gentleman who deserved a better fate.

One thing I’ve learned over the last forty years of law practice.

Shitballs like other shitballs. They congregate. My grandmother always said “Trash loves trash.”

What if stepson was out with another shitball and somehow made the other shitball angry ?

The facts do not exclude that reasonable hypothesis.

I’ve not actually told a perjured lie in court in forty years of doing this.

But I’ve danced around it occasionally.

I had a case many years ago, where my client was caught at a phone booth drunk as Hooter Brown about a quarter mile from where his huge Chrysler was stuck in the median in a rather large town, with lots of traffic.

He had called the Judas Iscariot (.) towing company to pull him out.

Otherwise he was smart enough to shut up.

No plea deal offered.

I had a bench trial.

The prosector should have called the tow truck operator, who’d snitched him out, but maybe even that would not have mattered. They had no eyewitness to his operation of the car.

The title to the car was in the name of him and his wife who lived a long ways off.

I asked the policeman, did you see a woman running away from the scene ashamed of being out with a married man?

No

Did you look for one?

No

Could there have been one?

Yes

Happy client, angry prosecutor.

 

[Briar Lee]

Why, would the wife plead the fifth if she’s innocent, as a presume she is?

The obvious motive might be to protect her son.

But any competent lawyer should advise her to not testify.

The power of a prosecutor to ruin somebody’s life is necessary but something you do not want a client exposed to.

She has no alibi. The other person in the house that’s alive claims he got her out of the house.

He doesn’t say that he started the fire.

If the prosecutor wasn’t happy with her testimony he could charge the wife, if the son got off.

These cases are hard.

But in the last two decades anout 200 condemned prisoners have had their cases reversed and let off death row. It happens far, far too often.

The person in the room with the most courage is that judge.

In Missouri, they are elected.

 

[huntertrw]

briarlee wrote, in part:

Now, suppose our friend here lit the fire that killed him?

He had a lot of lighters. The man loved pipes.

His wife has plead the fifth.

His stepson says he’s innocent and was passed out asleep.

This is why I never was a judge.

This is a correct legal result.

The stepson is the most likely culprit, of course.

But either the wife, or the man himself, cannot be excluded as the culprit.

And unless somebody talks this case is sleeping.

The wife and stepson have not been found not guilty.

New evidence would allow this case to be reopened.

Some 2,000 years ago Jesus the Christ said, "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgement." John 7:24.

It is tempting and easy to judge, and condemn, Mr. James' step-grandson on the appearance of the reported particulars of this case, but as you pointed out above, he is currently not the only possible suspect. Hopefully new evidence will surface that will allow this case to be reopened and rightly and finally judged.

 

[Briar Lee]

briarlee wrote, in part:


Some 2,000 years ago Jesus the Christ said, "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgement." John 7:24.

It is tempting and easy to judge, and condemn, Mr. James' step-grandson on the appearance of the reported particulars of this case, but as you pointed out above, he is currently not the only possible suspect. Hopefully new evidence will surface that will allow this case to be reopened and rightly and finally judged.

Read this exhoneration.

I know both prosecutors and those men would never intentionally send an innocent man to prison. But in hindsight that is exactly what they did. Helming had a bad reputation. But if you get out a map, he didn’t drive from Fulton to Linn and murder his mother when he was flooded out from coming home, during the worst flood in about a thousand years on the Missouri River, in 1993.

It defies all common sense.

Xxxx

On July 30, 1993, 37-year-old Dale Helmig reported that his mother, Norma Helmig, 55, was missing from her home in Linn, Missouri.

On August 1, 1993, her body, clad in a nightgown and weighed down by a concrete block tied to her torso, was found in the Osage River in Osage County, Missouri. She was last seen alive leaving a Jefferson City, Missouri restaurant about 12:30 a.m. on July 29.

Dale Helmig lived with his mother, but because of severe flooding on the Missouri River, had been unable to get home from a painting job in Fulton, Missouri, about 50 miles away. He became a suspect because authorities believed he knew information that only the killer would know.

Dale Helmig - National Registry of Exonerations

www.law.umich.edu

Xxxxx

Any honest, unbiased observer knew that Linn is a small town and one of the woman’s enemies saw her son’s truck was not there, and murdered her and dumped her body in the Missouri in Osage County thinking because of the flood it would never be found.

Prosectors and the police develop a sort of closed vision (prosecutorial blindness) to where they simply cannot see the truth.

That’s why a strong willed, independent judge is such an essential part of the system.

If the scumball can be convicted with inadequate evidence we are next in line.

What bothers me about the James case:

1. If the scumball stepson wanted to burn down the house,,,,set three fires? One would do. Somebody was angry.

2. If he’s the murderer, that’s a good way to get caught. He’s a drunk and has a bad reputation.

3. The wife and James are sleeping far apart. Wife upstairs and him downstairs. Did either one have enemies, a lover, somebody with a grudge?

4. If somebody else set the fire, what has the stepson done an innocent man would not?

These are very hard cases.

But there just isn’t enough evidence to send anybody to prison,,,yet.