I have to say, IMO, that this trial was one of the most pathetic attempts at a fair trial that I have ever seen. The crime scene investigation was shameful to say the least as there wasn't one. LE testimony reeked of bias, incompetence and lack of facts. The state testifying to time of electronic searches and not knowing how to tell time? And the jury never understanding how to tell time either. Add to that the abundance of admitted HEARSAY testimony and an ineffective council for the defendant, topped off with an unbelievable, incoherent, poorly recorded “hail mary” by the prosecution. Iowa is one state I will personally avoid driving through if this is what they consider justice. The state proved nothing.
I think this case could have had a very different outcome had "how to tell the difference in time" had been explained to the jury.
We all know there was little to no investigation done from either side. LE requested the Google searches that were made on basically a "public" computer used by everyone from the defendant, the victim, their children and their extended family. The prosecution didn't prove who was the one that actually conducted those searches.
IMO the jury not knowing the difference between UTC time and CDT time assumed that since many of the searches were conducted in what they thought was the very early morning hours according to what they were told, thought that the searches had to have been conducted by Todd and could not have been done by the children. When in actuality many of those searches were conducted in the early evening hours and some in the afternoon when Todd was perhaps not even home or would have still been working.
I doubt the defense investigated where Todd was at the time the searches were conducted by using his cell phone records, if they had it may have proven Todd could not have been the one conducting the searches on the tablet at the time that the prosecution claims Todd searched for the subjects that show Todd had motive to kill Amy.
One other thing relating to the searches is, if you look at the actual websites that were visited after the initial Google search that the prosecution claims Todd made, you will find that some of the searches were not what they were made out to be in court. It's been a while since I looked at them but I believe the search pertaining to "was killing more acceptable centuries ago" was followed by several visits to websites for books for sale on the subject. Now why would Todd be searching multiple sites that were selling books?
Another thing that bothers me is, LE said they used cell phone records to map the location of JF (man Amy was having an affair with) at the time Amy was killed, to show he could not have been the one who committed the crime. But no map was shown in court of the locations where his phone was supposedly at during that time. And I don't believe the defense on cross examination asked if JF's phone was shown to be in more than one location when mapped. If the phone never moved during the entire time frame it would have taken JF to drive to the Mullis farm, kill Amy and drive back, it would have raised suspicion that JF could have been possibly involved. Obviously if the phone never moved that isn't something the prosecution is going to bring up in court. Which makes you wonder why didn't the prosecution show a map which indicated JF's phone was shown to be in multiple locations at the time in question. Maybe because it didn't move? Just because someone's phone isn't shown to be at the crime scene, does not prove they couldn't have committed the crime.
JMO
