:yes: :yes: :yes:
Regarding the earring, you guys really have no faith in the Bibb County prosector's office, do you? Do you really believe they'd enter just any old earring into evidence without being able to establish that it belonged to Lauren. Or at least, that she owned a very similar pair, which witnesses and/or photography will attest to. That would be risky. Consider if Sonya's suggestion is true, and the earring belonged to his mom, or to his sister. I can just imagine the true owner jumping up in the courtroom screaming, "that's mine! that's mine! I still have the matching piece at home." Pleeeeease tell me they're smarter than that.
BW, I believe DV mentioned the jewelry because there were rumors circulating about a lost piece of jewelry. Maybe he got confused. The family told him an earring was missing, and remembered it as "necklace". Just a thought.
The thing is, I'm not so sure that the earring WILL figure into evidence at the trial.
I didn't see the live stream of the part of the hearing that dealt with the evidence from the car, just a few snippets of it. And I know that, after the judge's ruling, the media has picked up on "earring" as something in the car that will be allowed. I take it the judge ruled basically to allow all the car evidence in.
But heretofore, from the wording of the motions (the ones we got to see) and some earlier media reports, it seemed to me that the defense, in trying to get the car evidence thrown out, was focusing more on the ponchos:
...In another motion, McDaniel's attorneys also requested that any evidence found in McDaniel's car, specifically four rain ponchos be excluded from court. Two ponchos were found inside the glove compartment and two inside the trunk. All of them were in original packaging. McDaniel's defense team stated that evidence is irrelevant....
http://www.41nbc.com/news/local-news/24138-mcdaniel-s-defense-file-motions-to-drop-evidence
Now, it certainly
could be that this was a strategy of the defense -- to highlight items (ponchos still in the packaging) it felt had the best shot at getting their motion to exclude the car evidence granted (and perhaps items they are not all that worried about, at that) while not mentioning the "smoking earring", so to speak, which they would not want to draw especial attention to. But I'm not convinced of that, either -- especially without having read all the motions or seen all the hearing discussion of them.
And I do think --
if it's just a random earring and not Lauren's -- that the prosecution MIGHT still put it in, especially if they've determined it
doesn't belong to Stephen or his family, etc., and/or if they know who it belongs to and feel certain that person won't pop up at the trial as a witness or gasping out in court, "That's MINE!" They (prosecution) might just say to the jury -- we found this earring -- could be Lauren's. No, it wouldn't be strong evidence, but they still might throw it in, IMO, just kind of as filler.
It was named in the search warrants and I'm sure raised a lot of eyebrows (did mine), so the reporters are well aware of the earring. Maybe that's why they're mentioning it in recent coverage of the trial.
Then again -- it MAY have been specifically discussed at the hearing; I just don't know.
