IMO, there was plenty of evidence for both cases to end up with homicide convictions.
rsbm
What I've observed in this case, in general and not specific to any particular poster, is that some who said they didn't think the evidence was sufficient for a conviction didn't progress from this stance as the trial unfolded. The trial is not opening statements, it's a fluid thing, things were not crossed off lists as they fell to the unreasonable or downright obviously fabricated side, leaving the only one reasonable conclusion. And then there are others who are and were always fixed on a different perpetrator or group of perpetrators at the start of trial and didn't follow the trial, who persist with incorrect facts and still insist the only evidence against Merritt was theft of money which is not evidence of murder.
I'll give some examples of what the evidence proved while opinions did not shift -
Cathy Jarvis admitted in conversation with Merritt in the jail in February this year that she does not know where Merritt was that night. Wave goodbye to your alibi right there Merritt - her testimony was perjury. We can forget anything and everything else she said, including Merritt getting cheques on the 4th.
The phone call from Joey's phone at 8.28 that night that did not connect to Merritt's phone which was off the grid she could not have seen.
She was calling him from 6 pm and he wasn't answering for 3 1/2 hours.
Merritt uttered the first ever lie in February 2010 that Joseph wanted to delete QB (custom account) to hide money from Summer. The hiding QB from Dan was an attorney/client fabrication for trial and the DKDI defence. Where's the critical thinking?
What are the reasonable possibilities for who could have raised
the cheque in the house at 8 pm that night in the same peculiar manner cheques were raised that week and the next? Who? Joseph the account owner or Chase the payee. Once you know that they were murdered and buried and not traipsing across the border, in what world is it reasonable to assume Joseph and Summer were alive after that critical event but not using their phones? In what world is it reasonable to assume that Chase unknowingly raised a cheque with the exact same memo line next day? Or that Joseph would print a cheque alignment page and try to create a cheque he'd already asked Chase that day to write, and then just leave it mangled in his printer, or would delete it same as Chase did on a cheque which had a forged signature on the 2nd; that someone a ghost maybe but not Chase would go back and try to bury the QB activity in the early hours of the 8th but that Chase would as a matter of coincidence call QB that day and the next to delete QB custom from the cloud; that Chase would backdate cheques to the only possible last date Joseph was alive to write cheques. Where's the critical thinking, or discussion of what is reasonable?
It's more than theft - as all these many MANY incriminating details illustrate - it's what happened in the house at 8 pm on the 4th, the forgery before the 4th, Joseph's calls to the bank and log in to QB sandwiched in between all the while bombing along the freeway to Rancho, Chases's phone activity that lunch time, Joseph's last call to Chase coinciding with Chase's phone going dark, Cathy's fabricated (null) evidence, and the attempts to wipe QB in the days afterwards before reporting Joseph missing.
Supplemented by knowing Chase with his phone was in the desert where the family was buried. Not explained by the defence as some postulate without pointing to a shred of evidence and not a whiff of Vlad. Who needed them missing? - as McGee pointed out in his opening. This was more than murder, it was a need to hide the family and evidence of murder. The Trooper was staged for the wild goose chase and whose evidence was in it? Not some other random unidentified profile - Chase's.
So finally, upwards of 11 touch-DNA profiles in the graves. But none belonging to the McStays, proving BRD that those touch-DNA results are not representative of what went into the graves over 9 years ago.
It's frightening to think some have 'convicted' DK or Mike in their own minds, based on early dislike and prejudice, accused SBSD of tunnel vision and bias based on nothing, but maybe malice, all the while ignoring their own biases, and ignoring the evidence in this trial.
It's fruitless IMO to keep stating over and over again that reasonable doubt exists all the while refusing to acknowledge the number of convoluted and mostly ridiculous (and as we've seen brazenly fabricated) alternative explanations that are required, most of which don't pass the smell test but none of which do when viewed all together, and not recognizing what totality of evidence means in this case. I have to wonder about some people's motives for maintaining a position throughout a trial which revealed the answers and much more about the underhanded tactics of the DT and their attempts to sabotage the trial since their case flopped with the jailhouse tapes, particularly when the prosecution did not overstate their case in opening speeches and many jumped off that to say they thought then he was guilty but the prosecution didn't prove what they set out to.
MOO
(sorry I got a bit of a bee in my bonnet this morning.
)
