The witnesses saw BG. No one ID’d RA.
There is no audio/video to support DDs note, so it cannot be proven and is not considered a fact. Therefore, we would default to the only recorded proof of RA actually stating what time he left - the video recorded statement saying 1:30pm. The state holds the burden to prove their facts to be true.
This is why audio/video recording statements is so important.
MOO
Actually, the default would then have to be believing that a Conservation Officer intentionally and purposefully lied and recorded time details etc erroneously into his notebook back in the immediate aftermath of the crime in 2017 when randomly approached by RA in a grocery store parking lot. Thus setting up RA to take the fall way back in 2017 - the fall .... that would only years later would be pulled off the shelf, have the dust blown off the notebook ...
Thankfully, we actually have other evidence and witness' to back up RAs original statement as given to the CO in the immediate aftermath of the crime:
- RA indicated clothing he was wearing
- RA indicated he was there from approx 1330 to 1530
- RA states he was on bridge platform 'watching fish' and was watching 'stock ticker' on his phone
- RA indicates where he had backed in and parked (backed up by footage of similar car passing the Harvester Store on video) and also backed up by
- Three juvenile female witness' that RA admits encountering on the trail give generalized statements of a man they passed by inclusive of clothing (their timing of this can be tracked to verifiable based upon the bench photo they took that day) coming from the direction he stated he came from at the time he originally stated he arrived there;
- a Fourth adult female witness who placed BG, dressed in similar clothing that RA said he was dressed in, on the bridge platform at the timing RA would originally have been on that platform based on his original statement (important note: RA did not know he was seen by this eye witness);
- Fourth female eye witness then turns to leave and encounters Abby and Libby going down the trail towards the bridge where the man dressed in similar clothing to RAs-admitted clothing is/was standing on the bridge (their arrival timing is also verifiable by Harvester Store video);
- Fourth female witness departs the MHB trail and leaves the scene; her departure timing (well after 1330hrs) also being witnessd and verifiable by the Harveter Store video;
- Abby & Libby cross the bridge and have occasion to record a video of a man fast approaching them from behind on the MHB. The timing will be verifiable by video data. Remarkably, the man in the video is wearing the same type of clothing described by the fourth female eye witness and by RA himself.
Only later, after it is learned that the girls recorded the very man who ordered them DTH and to their deaths, and that a female eye witness observed BG on the bridge and on the very platform RA placed himself on wearing the same type of clothing at the same time in his original statement ... does RAs story suddenly change. Ooops.
I'll just say that IMO, the state will be able to show great motivation as to why RA needed to change his story from the original. And, IMO they dont need to
"prove" that the CO "didn't lie" at all to "frame up RA" because that is what is being insinuated. They only need to show the reasons why RA needed to modify his own original statement recorded into the notebook of the CO way back in the immediate aftermath of the 2017 murders.
The jury will then get to "weigh" the odds of each scenario:
1) CO lied in 2017 to intentionally set up RA years later despite everything else that collaborates the original timings in the original statement; or
2) That it is RA who lied in attempts to cover his butt and to mitigate the witness' and girls' recording he found about after he had given that original statement.