Maddy's Mom said:
Genecam, not EVERYONE is innocent. Sometimes they really do convict the guilty people! I went to high school with this guy. I don't know if he did this or not, but I do remember him as quite the arrogant *advertiser censored**hole. He always thought he was better than everyone. He came off as a spoiled jerk who always told everyone how much better he was than them. Just as the judge said, he has shown no remorse whatsoever. Now, his sister said he shows no remorse because he is not guilty of anything. On the other hand, when someone is as arrogant as this guy was, why would he show regret? He thinks mom and dad will get him off. He believes he cannot be touched.
However- I think its odd he was convicted of molestation on 7 out of the 14 girls who accused him. Why not all 14? The other girls changed their stories and nothing could be proven. Hmmm. I also have a hard time wrapping my brain around Zellner taking over the appeal if she doesn't believe in his innocence. But, I guess shes just doing her job.
Maddy's Mom - Thank you for providing your usual cogent insight here in analyzing all sides of a situation. I am glad to see that not everyone on this site is on "automatic think".
I was trying to point out the vast amount of reasonable doubt that seems to be apparent here, and I don't see how questioning the rationale for the verdict automatically makes one a pedophile supporter or "fellow traveler."
I have also seen false accusations first hand. My family was involved in a trial where some witnesses lied with encouragement from the prosecutor, and the lying witnesses were praised by the judge while the truthful witnesses were roundly castigated by him as "lacking credibility." That is one reason why I have such skepticism of the criminal court system.
I think all lawyers are prostitutes of one form or another -- both prosecutors and defense attorneys and the ambulance chasers. If I was a criminal defendant, I would want the meanest, nastiest most amoral attorney of all. I don't really think Michael's lawyers did a very good job for him here, and probably cost the family a lot of money. Both Donohue and Laraia are part of the DuPage old boy network, along with Terry Ekl and John Flowers, the plaintiffs attorneys in the civil suit. I think the Cardamones would have been better off getting a lawyer from outside DuPage. Someone like Thomas Breen, Rolando Cruz's last attorney, a former prosecutor who has exhibited a sense of fairness and a tough streak and, from his remarks after the last Cruz trial, has nothing but contempt for the DuPage State's Attorney's Office.
I am sure Michael was as arrogant as you say. He seems to have done a lot of "interesting things" while he was in high school and college. However, being an arrogant a$$h**e does not automatically translate into being a pedophile. And sometimes people mature and change for the better after high school. I am sure we have all done things in our youth that we now regret.
Your mentioned one of the main factors leading to my reasonable doubt here --the fact that all 14 stories appeared to be the same, and the testimony was related the same way, yet the jury curiously believed 7 and dismissed 7. And it was late on a Friday afternoon, and several jurors were overheard to be griping about not wanting to be sequestered over the weekend. Sounds like it could have been a simple mathematical compromise to reconcile opposing viewpoints in the jury room and get things over with before the weekend -- with no regard for the life-ruining consequences for a defendant that they may not all have thought was guilty. That would be disgusting if they were that cavalier about it. The only juror statements I saw after the trial were from one older woman who thought he should have been convicted on all of the charges, and from the jury foreman who gave a totally disjointed and unintelligible explanation for the verdict. Taken together, these statements provided more questions than answers about how the verdict was reached. There have been no juror statements since then, as is their right, so we will probably never know.
And we both know, as you said, Zellner wouldn't have taken this one on unless the odds were good for winning. There is no DNA, so it is a challenging one for her. If she gets this verdict overturned her reputation will skyrocket.
And I know one thing for sure -- if Birkett got this one wrong, on top of Nicarico, he is toast politically, and the DuPage State's Attorney's Office will need a complete purge if it is to have any credibility whatsoever.
We will have to wait a few years to see how this one turns out. I hope Michael survives that long.