I read that story a couple of days ago, at least the start. It inspired me to tell my son not to play with matches and to ponder if I were accused of murder, how many people would tell the cops bad shit about me. I think I'm O.K. on both.
Jesus. You can't ask people to testify about thirty-year-old shit! Even if they're being perfectly honest about what they remember, which they probably are, you end up with just this sort of thing happening.
They probably wrote down what they said in the first trial.
The most recent Transistor podcast is relevant.
A coworker used to work in a forensics lab. He had a bit of a specialty in arson. He says he quit in response to undue pressure from his bosses (and the prosecutors) about the results he was acquiring. Independent labs/investigators are a big problem. Forensics is also a funny field in terms of adapting to new technology/data.
Apparently forensic pseudoscience goes way beyond fire.
it came as a surprise when around 90 minutes after deliberation began, the jurors sent their first note out asking this question: "How many jurors does it take to reach a unanimous verdict?"
Oh, boy.
3: they did, but the witnesses all said that they had remembered new stuff.
And the insane bit about the fellow inmate testifying in exchange for privileges...
I've read about this case and I think Graf is probably guilty, but what a farce. Is there any sort of mechanism for this sort of case to be judged not by calling a bunch of witnesses to testify to things that they remember after thirty years of talking about it? A panel of judges looking at the original trial testimony and any new scientific evidence, but treating it as a new trial instead of an appeals hearing?
I think Graf is probably guilty
Really? How come?
I hope he's guilty. He spent a very long time in prison.
Also, if he is guilty, it would cheer the part of me that blames Slate for pointless contrarianism. But I kind of doubt he did it if the forensic stuff from the first trail isn't right.
I think the weight of the forensic evidence is "don't know" rather than directly exculpatory and the circumstantial evidence in this case is pretty convincing to me. (I mean, I'm not in the jury; this is "yeah, I think there's a more than 50% chance he did it based on what I read about the case at the time of the Willingham controversy".) That said, if the prosecutors don't have enough to convict him on based on his original trial plus modern forensics without a convenient jailhouse informer*, Graf should walk. People do shitty, awful things every day and get away with a lot less than 26 years in jail.
* Has a prosecutor ever been censured, let alone a real penalty, for this bullshit?
Obviously, the best solution would be for somebody with two young children to marry him and see what happens this time.
11: Meta-slatepitch: "Why Slate contrarianism isn't pointless at all."
Or even: "Why everything you think about Slate contrarianism is wrong."
The motive seems weird to me, but then again, I have trouble grasping murder in most situations.
There's all kinds of situations where I understand murder, but not with little kids. Once they get past 4 or 5, you hardly ever feel like they need murdered.
17: So there's a range -- maybe 6-12 years old? -- when you can't understand killing them?
Murder... how does it work?
(Seriously agree though. Very difficult to grasp.)
There's like 15,000 a year in the U.S alone. It can't be that hard. I bet you have more education that most of the people who figure it out.
Really? How come?
An embezzler insures two kids under aged ten for 100K days before they die at his house? That's a chunk of change now, let alone in the 80's. What possible legit reason was there to do that?
I didn't get to the insurance part. That's pretty convincing.
Ultimate Slatepitch: "You're doing everything right. Nothing new is worth bothering with. Don't watch TV. Very few things 'matter'."
The insurance thing seems explainable (and was explained) as an investment - whole life insurance, not term. Often a lousy investment, but still a common one.
Gerber sold insurance to nearly every middle class parent of that day, but still, not $100,000.
28: And this is on the heels of him having to cash out his pension to repay the bank he'd embezzled from. Also, the insurance agent testified he'd only inquired about the kids, not any kind of insurance for him and his wife. The ex wife testified that he took out those policies without telling her.
On the other hand, you'd expect someone to be setting up alternative savings methods if they'd just lost their pension.
Probably everybody taking out insurance on their stepkids without telling their spouse plans on murdering them eventually.
The equivalent in fairy tales is, "Kids, let go take a walk in the forest and then you can wait while I go back and run an errand."
The spouse knew about the insurance, though, and apparently it was some established savings scheme?
The "Don't Let The Kids Carry Bread Unless There Are a Fuckton of Birds" fund.
If the article's description of the Herrera testimony is accurate, then the people going to jail here should be the prosecutors for suborning perjury. That's some serious bullshit.
I'll give you that the life insurance is suspicious, but his explanation seems reasonably plausible, and the rest of the prosecution's case doesn't make any sense. You can't convict someone just because they bought life insurance, people make strange investment decisions all the time.
That's my business model.
In case people didn't read that part, his explanation for the life insurance was that it was intended to pay for college for the kids (which is why it was for the kids) and that this was exactly how he himself had paid for college. Furthermore, the mother eventually admitted that it was not secret, that they were both beneficiaries, and that they had discussed buying such insurance for around half a year. So again, it's suspicious, but really not proof of anything.
My understanding is that the the mom admitted he had brought up insurance that year but not those specific policies. Also, the guaranteed amounts the investment aspect of the insurance is 25K per kid, but the policies had double indemnity benefits for accidental death that brought the payout to over 150K for both. So, the rough current day equivalent of someone having 300k in accidental death insurance for two kids under aged 10. Again he'd recently had to give up his pension and pay back over 70k embezzled from a previous employer. His new job at State Farm involved working on cases including arson cases and family members testified at trial how he'd talked earlier that year about arson cases were so difficult to solve because they destroy their own evidence. His stepkids then die in a fire literally days after he takes out insurance policies that have an absurdly high payout for the accidental death of a child.
Agree with 36.1. There's also the part where Herrera was not offered a deal in exchange for his testimony, because that would violate state law, but by strange coincidence he pled guilty to substantially reduced charges one month after Graf's conviction and walked three months later. A deal struck with the same guy handling Graf's prosecution, to whom Herrera's case had only recently been reassigned.
I don't think there's anything at all suspicious about her not knowing the details of the policy. I think it's pretty normal for one spouse to pay attention to those kind of details and the other not to. The high accidental death benefits are certainly the most suspicious thing in the whole case. But I don't even understand what the prosecution is claiming that he did. The door wasn't even closed, let alone locked. They have one person claiming he closed the door and then later opened it due to his time-travel based expertise in arson. They have another person claiming it was locked the whole time (which contradicts the physical evidence, and is based on decades old memories not recorded at the time). The only plausible theory presented for what actually happened is that it was an accidental fire. Are we supposed to believe that the kids were playing in the shed, he noticed it and then snuck in without the kids noticing and lit on fire some furniture and left the door open but hoped that the chemicals released from the furniture would knock out the kids before they left? That just doesn't strike me as plausible at all.
The door wasn't even closed
Well, maybe. Arson investigation reconstruction gets more difficult the longer the fire goes and in this case there was terrible scene preservation as well. There's conflicting eyewitness accounts as to whether the doors were open or closed, which is to be expected. However, the actions of the fireman with regard to fighting the fire would have been in response to what they were seeing in real time and multiple fireman have testified the specific actions they took while fighting the fire were not what they would have done had the doors been open.
As I said upthread, I think he's probably guilty, but I don't see how on earth "the lurkers support me in email"-quality suborned perjury and a bunch of testimony reliant on thirty-year-old memories -- testimony not brought up at the time and in some cases seems contradictory to the recollection at the time) gets anyone to guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Frankly, given the lack of physical evidence and the screwed-up nature of the eyewitness testimony, I don't see how there's any real way to give Graf a fair trial.
Frankly, given the lack of physical evidence and the screwed-up nature of the eyewitness testimony, I don't see how there's any real way to give Graf a fair trial.
There is, it just leads to acquittal.
44: Are you on crack? See 2. There's no way to reasonably redo a trial with a lot of witness testimony after a three decade lapse.
Don't answer 45.1 until I've checked to see if I can get you a plea bargain.
I think that's the point- if there's no way to reasonably redo the trial, and a bunch of the evidence at the first one was bad, then the fair result is an acquittal.
You're only saying that because she shared her crack.
Nobody ever tried to give me drugs when I was in college. Probably for the best on the crack, but somebody could have given me some pot or something. It was just one beer after another, a little bit of whiskey, and, once, some amaretto. Somebody swore that if you put amaretto in beer, it tasted just like Dr. Pepper. This was not remotely true.
Heebie don't forget to stop at the crack store on your way home, we're running low.
They wisecrack store called, they're running out of Moby.
That was worse than the "Kitten Rays" one.
49: No it totally does if you use the right beer. You just need to experiment with a variety of beers until you find the one it works for.
43: Interesting that the article speculates that the retrial was probably going to convict.
55 - They believed the jailhouse informant -- this is specifically discussed with one juror -- and the weird situation with the previous trial was never fully explained to the jury, so I'm not sure how apparent "you can't rely on people's memories about small details like how many times you saw the neighbor's kids smoking after thirty years or whether a padlock was closed" was. (And then a bunch of other stuff, like more of the defense witnesses having died than prosecution witnesses, etc.)
What E. said. If you can't generate enough evidence to convict, then the fair outcome is to acquit.
Somebody swore that if you put amaretto in beer, it tasted just like Dr. Pepper. This was not remotely true.
In what sort of universe would this be at all true? A better one, to be sure, but what Lovecrafty geometry applies?
The proffered proof was positivist. I don't think there was any causal or ontological backing asserted.
You'd think double-indemnity policies would have been made illegal in 1944 or so.
The proffered proof was positivist
Pompous pageantry prohibited the presentation of purer proof, so people politely pretended the proffered positivist proof was plenty.
How was double-indemnity ever a selling point in the first place? "Oh yeah, if I die on a train, I'll just make out like a bandit!"
It is amazing what evils insurance schemes have been at the heart of. For instance (and potentially relevant to the thinking of a 1980s Texas jury), Ronald O'Bryan the guy who poisoned his son with Halloween candy (and gave poisoned candy to several others) for ~$60K in insurance money in 1974. Also several airplane bombings in the 40s to early 60s, most notoriously Jack Gilbert Graham killing his mother and 43 others on a United flight in 1955.
Also, the guy played by Sonny Bono in the sequel to Airplane.
That said, the O'Bryan insurance evidence for instance was much more compelling than in the is case.
Also, what other reason is there for buying Pixie Sticks.
On a related note, if you give a trick or treater an apple, you may as well just drop in a razor. They'll only be very slightly more angry at you.
At that point just giving them a razor might be the best thing to do.
That might make you popular, though, depending on what kind of kids live in the neighborhood.
62 -- accidental deaths and murders are rare, so the policies are cheap, and it's a nice way of ensuring that your kids and family have money if something really crazy happens like you die on a train.
Also, isn't double indemnity something that usually doesn't cost much more? The odds are low enough that it comes out to an extra couple of bucks? I don't know if it makes sense to think of the double indemnity as a meaningful purchase to be explained separately from the insurance policy.
Murdering your kids for money is horrible, especially when Florida taught us how to do it by self-mutilation.
70: For an adult, sure. But why on a kid? You'd be better off spending that money on term life for you and your spouse.
My insurance agent mentioned that he took out term life insurance on his kids as a savings plan. He did the kind where you get back your payments at the end. The payout at the end of the term isn't taxable, so he set it for eighteen years and always marked it in his mind as college money.
(He did not kill his kids and did pay for their college.)
I'm with gswift on this one. That insurance policy (the amount, and the timing) looks very suspicious. Also the fact that he had embezzled money that he had to pay back.
It was just an option he never exercised.
Thus discussion is such a lovely illustration of reasonable doubt, and just before mock trial begins again! Perfect timing.
71:
LOST
Florida man.
One foot, one eye, smells bad from the krokodil. Answers to "Lucky"
I was a juror for a law school moot court. One guy (working the defense side) got mad at me when I admitted that there was nothing he could have said that would have convinced me that it wasn't premeditated murder if a guy shoots a woman who broke up with him on the day after the breakup at her place of work with his own gun that he brought with him.
Well maybe he just always carried a loaded gun around with him! Why do you hate America!?
Important news for anyone who might have eaten tuna at some point within the last, um, five years.
The fact that someone filed a class action lawsuit against Starkist because he claimed the 5 oz tins of tuna had slightly less than 5 ounces of tuna in them is hilarious to me, and that they ended up settling doesn't make it less hilarious.. But what I really love is that claimants can choose between an award of $25 or $50 worth of tuna.
I'll ruin it for you right now though: they just mean vouchers for tuna that are worth $50. You won't get a box containing $50 worth of tuna in the mail.
Also apparently the law firm will not be receiving their piece of the settlement in the form of tuna either, though I really think the judge should insist on that.
The Bureau of Weights and Measures really fell down on their job there. Thanks, Obama!
I wonder if they had to pay a lot for that domain name.
I'd take $50 of tuna if it was fresh but I'm guessing it's more canned shit. The food is terrible and the portions are too small.
85: What is wrong with you? Canned albacore is great and is up there with hamburgers as "food I could eat every day with relish until I die".
82 -- it's a sign of how warped the profession has made me that I find that 100% normal. It took me a while to realize that you weren't pointing to anything other than the class settlement. Of course somebody would file a class action over that.
I used to eat so much tuna before I stopped eating so much mac and cheese.
87: We've done salaries and test scores, the obvious choice for a new thread is how our jobs have warped us.
The desolation plus the Smokey The Bear hat probably turned Teo into a serial killer. Alaska, lots of places to dump a body.
Damn, that was some twist ending. I literally shrieked on my couch.
It seemed me like absolutely everyone involved in the case on a personal level, and not from Graf's side--the friends of the kids, the mom, the neighborhood volunteer firefighters--was deeply convinced of his guilt and determined to make sure he got convicted the second time around. I got a very strong "Murder on the Oriental Express' vibe.
The scientific evidence (as presented in the article; most of it was still proof by authority as far the writer presented it) all pointed to the idea that it was possible he wasn't guilty--i.e. that the gasoline/lock scenario (which would have essentially been proof of guilt) was not empirically plausible. So then the question is--are all these personally involved witnesses independently sure of his guilt b/c they each, separately, always knew he was a really bad deeply violent dude? Or are they all sure of it b/c 30 years ago the prosecution convinced them of it, and they can't live with the idea that the he's been in jail all this time and they turned their back on him?
If the former, than yeah, I think he's probably guilty (it seems quite physically plausible he got the boys to go to the back, set fire to something near the furniture he didn't think they would notice quickly, obstructed their path out, but didn't actually close and lock the door on purpose. It would certainly be extremely devious of him, but physically possible.) If the latter, however, I'm going to have to guess he's innocent---the mixed testimony about his actions during and after the fire, the fact that the best friend was a defense witnesses at the original trial, and that the direct neighbors were convinced of his innocence all seem circumstantially against guilt. He was clearly very absuive, but his abuse sounds like the explosive rage of a compulsive person who couldn't deal with deviations from plans and routine, not the the kind of cold pitiless anger that would be required to build up to this sort of plan and the deviousness of the open door scenario.
My only real big picture takeaway was that the majority of people have no idea about the statistical nature of empirical evidence, and that many years of science demonstrations as a genre of explanation have really backfired, b/c most people really think ("a plausible and conceptually attractive/memorable story" + "a single demonstration consistent with that") = science, which is exactly the kind of thinking that would lead you astray in something as complex and messy as forensic science. Whenever *I* think about forensics, it boggles my mind that we are able to figure out anything at all and I am always amazed at the empirical, statistically significant evidence that does exist--but also amazed at how little research seems to be happening along those lines.
it's a sign of how warped the profession has made me that I find that 100% normal.
90: Hey now, I didn't even bring my Smokey Bear hat to Alaska. And I'm in probably the least desolate part of the whole state.
teo's nowhere near the strategic corpse reserve.
None of the US's strategic corpse reserves are located in Alaska.
My insurance agent mentioned that he took out term life insurance on his kids as a savings plan. He did the kind where you get back your payments at the end. The payout at the end of the term isn't taxable, so he set it for eighteen years and always marked it in his mind as college money.
It is/was pretty common in the UK, and I think even more so in continental Europe, to take out life insurance policies on children as a kind of trust fund. I know several of my contemporaries got windfalls when they turned 18 (yay class system perpetuation!). No idea on the double indemnity side of things. And life insurance also used to be common as means of saving up to repay an interest only mortgage.
97 -- sounds like the best one is right near Heebie, and it's turning lemons into lemonade. "The vultures that originally created problems for the location of the research facility have provided a new area of study on the effect of vulture scavenging on human decomposition."
Although that doesn't really seem like the hardest problem in all of science, thinking about it. The effect of vulture scavenging on human decomposition is that bits of human go into a vulture's belly. The end.
Yep. My friend studies undocumented workers who die in the desert trying to get here, and she uses that facility a lot.
That must be a tough consent form.
49 - Flaming Dr Pepper uses a shot of Jagermeister lit on fire and dropped into a glass of beer. Has a Dr Pepperish flavor. My boss had the great idea during a business gathering thingy to hold a contest to see who could down one the fastest. One on one paring until the last man or woman stood or became recumbent or whatever. There were side matches and jumping into the pool while drinking. Hilarity ensued and the the ice weasels came.
I'm genuinely unsure about whether to choose the cash or the tuna. We certainly eat tuna, but $50 worth of it would last a long time.
Cash>voucher, but
2X voucher>cash, right?
I'm genuinely unsure about whether to choose the cash or the tuna.
Mousever Landfall?
Is the voucher really twice the value? I didn't read the details, but if the voucher is based on the manufacturer's suggested retail price, I'd think that twice is an over estimate since you'd stock up when a sale hits.
My job has inured me to people complaining their institution is getting seven digits less than they expected. My inward response is "Jesus Christ, you should be able to handle this kind of thing by now." (And the institutions are genuinely deserving.)
From the FAQ:
You may submit a claim for either:
a cash payment of $25, or
$50 in product vouchers redeemable for StarKist tuna products.
So presumably you get 50 $1 coupons, or similar, and as you say, wait for a sale to stock up. So you could get $75 worth of regularly priced tuna.
I wonder if I could get them to give me a $25 bourbon voucher, and I'd just wait for the $30 bottle to go on steep discount.
Maybe try to sell the vouchers for cash at the stores that were busted for food stamp fraud.
I do find it incredibly annoying when the radius of a container is unchanged, but they take an increasingly large divot out of the bottom, to deliver less product at the same price. Especially if it actually interferes with getting the product out of the remaining ring around the bottom of the inside.
In the future, all Pittsburgh will be a prison and tuna vouchers will be the currency. I'm embroidering "Snake" on a leather jacket right now to prepare.
112: Maybe "Shark" would be more appropriate.
This isn't working for shit. I think I should embroider a patch and then add that to the jacket.
I'm meeting a lot of people here who have spent serious time in Pittsburgh and they all love it.
Who knew it was so hard to stick a needle through leather.
113: Standpipe wanted me to show you this.
115: AIMHMHOB, I've met a few people from here (or educated here) who worked in your part of the world but were back drinking in the usual place.
I'm missing something at the website- I'm sure I bought some tuna in the relevant period, as I eat a dozen or so cans per year, but of course I have no proof of this, and I did not receive any sort of claim form because WHY IS SOMEONE TRACKING THE PERSONAL INFORMATION OF WHO BUYS TUNA? Anyway, can you just represent that you bought a can in the relevant period?
For 1/3rd of the vouchers, I'll represent your tuna purchasing.
How many vouchers do I need to pay to experience this?
I'm not sure but you'll also want a couple of vouchers for some soy sauce.
121: Has to be Starkist, 5 ounce size, and if you sign the form you risk being prosecuted for perjury, but it's the honor system. You don't even have to say how many. I'm kind of relieved that there isn't any government agency that knows how many cans of tuna I bought.
They will cut the payout if too many people sign up, so don't tell any about it.
And we're all wondering why anybody wants that much aerosol cheese.
Oh, I assumed you had to provide receipts!
If somebody could sue Hellman's please. I'd like to get the whole of a sandwich innard.
If you're wondering who's gong to be prosecuted for perjury, it's the guy who files 20 different claims using variations of his middle name and initials, and his children's names, and different apartment numbers at the same street address, which isn't an apartment building.
I'm in the class action business. This happens with some frequency.
"My lawyer advises me to use lots of different addresses, not just pretend this house is a bunch of apartments."
129: It's coming (but not Hellman's).
'Just Mayo' Is Anything But, Class Action Says
Share us on: By Carolina Bolado
Law360, Miami (March 17, 2015, 5:23 PM ET) -- A putative class action filed in Florida state court claims startup Hampton Creek Inc. falsely advertised and labeled its Just Mayo vegan spread, which is made entirely of plant products, as mayonnaise.
Plaintiff Leah Davis says in the Friday complaint that she bought Hampton Creek's Just Mayo believing that it was real mayonnaise and would never have bought it had she known that it was not.
"Despite its name, Just Mayo does not contain mayonnaise and is not mayonnaise at all," Davis said in the complaint. "Hampton Creek knew and purposely misrepresented and failed to disclose this fact to consumers."
Beyond the misleading name, the label also features a "giant image of an egg," according to the suit. The product does not perform like real mayonnaise when it is heated, because it lacks the same emulsifying ingredients, so when it is heated, its oils separate, unlike real mayonnaise, Davis said.
"The name Just Mayo is literally false because it expressly communicates that Just Mayo is mayonnaise, containing the ingredients consumers expect to be found in mayonnaise, when, in fact, it is not," Davis said.
Hampton Creek, which just announced $90 million in venture funding in December, was founded in 2011 in San Francisco and has won the support of technology executive including Bill Gates and Yahoo's former CEO Jerry Yang with its eggless, plant-based foods.
"We started this because we believe it should be easier for folks to eat better food, and 11 million people and the largest companies in the world agree," Hampton Creek CEO Josh Tetrick said. "Just this year, we'll eliminate the need for 4B quarts of water. That's not a talking point. That is a fact. And we believe that good people like Leah, similar to Unilever, feel that too."
130 is useful information because I was in fact curious about what they could possibly do to prove that, e.g., you didn't buy any tuna within that time period and also knew that you didn't. But if someone is trying to scam it then that would make total sense.
I'm still confused about who would be getting the written notices though. I mean, I assume they didn't just go "hey, who buys canned tuna once every couple years?" and send out a letter to practically every person in the united states, because I didn't get one. But the website seems to indicate that some people got them. So what kind of list were they using? (Friends and family of the guy who filed the suit?)
If suits like this are common enough that none of the lawyers here even blinked at the idea I should probably spend more time keeping my eye out for things like this. Is there any way to do this other than noticing that some joke someone made about it and then doing a google search to find the site? I guess probably not.
