I get what you're saying, it's an excellent succinct comment. My mind just can't progress to convicting someone to life+ (156 years) in prison when you have no body, no blood, no cadaverine, no eyewitness, no weapon, no smoking gun, no documented history of DV. Honestly it seems the determination of Suzanne's death was no cell phone pings/hits, after a certain time. We don't know their money story/ cash story, a million could be gone, whos' to say?
I do think we'll hear way more at trial. I was glad to see the two CC's in the AA. One of them should make a very interesting witness, indeed. You'll just have to wait for it - or go suss it out on your own.
The jury is not in charge of sentencing in CO, is my understanding - they are to figure out the degree of murder. I think Barry's frantic construction of an alibi on Saturday is evidence of premeditation. He actually did no work in Broomfield (very little, anyway, besides cleaning his shovels). We don't know that there was no cadaverine (dog hits on the Bobcat may have been verified with other techniques - meaning that even if the Bobcat never moved from that spot on May 9-10, Barry may have transferred cadaverine to it - it was on the seat).
Using a combination of factors to indicate death in no body cases is a precedent long respected in CO (and other) courts. It's not just pings. It's total cessation of communication, she doesn't have her ID with her, she didn't make it to her maintenance chemotherapy (after religiously attending for over a year), she has contacted no friends, she missed an important wedding, she hasn't contacted JL, and I think we'll see no money has been taken out of any of her accounts. Juries have found many a murderer guilty using even half of that. It's actually an interesting thing to look up (I'm not one of those who remembers all the case names - but others here do).
Why do you think absence of cell pings is what is being used to establish that she's dead? Why not at least include phone calls as well?
While we don't know their cash story - LE does. And it's probably in the discovery evidence by now. The AA was written in haste, the evidence is submitted in an ongoing fashion (and the Judge can look at all of it, if he is so inclined - and I bet he is).
So, if we find out at trial that there was cadaverine on the seat of Barry's Bobcat, that the SIM in the Bobcat doesn't detect whether Bobcat was turned on and movement of the Bobcat needs to be a certain distance before it's retained in memory - in short, if a Bobcat expert says all that, you don't think that will be convincing?
Suzanne mentions being wrestled and being pinned down two times. Barry says he "blocked her" with his body (but not his hands -if you don't think that's DV, that's fine - but many people do). There's the financial control (which is part of a pattern of DV - most experts would say that controlling behavior is DV - you may think it's just beatings, but that's not what most juries think, thankfully).
Would you help me out, though, by explaining what kind of violence would need to take place for you to think there was a prior history? We have a prior history of fighting (a lot, enough to scare the daughter), and I'll agree that fighting is not DV. But blocking someone with one's body (especially if the person is small and the blocker is linebacker sized) is DV. I know this because I do DV training for LE and we include slides of this behavior. ANY blocking of a person's movement is DV (grabbing an arm, blocking a door, putting an arm across a door and leaning against the frame so that the person has to contort themselves and be vulnerable while passing, hair pulling, scratching, etc). Barry won't take the stand, so he can't claim self defense (and who would buy that?)
Where I live, keeping a loaded weapon inside the house is considered threshold domestic violence if it's within reach of the offender, even if they don't go for it, it's just lying around. Most DV cases don't come to murder - or to trial, but I'm truly curious whether people here think Barry's admitted behavior (body blocking her) or Suzanne's own words (wrestling away, being pinned down on the bed) are not DV?
