Author Topic: You've been accused of murder...  (Read 383 times)

Offline gofaster

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You've been accused of murder...
« on: December 05, 2002, 03:49:05 PM »
... and the detectives find a copy of "Aces High" on your system, and trace your Internet URLs to this BBS.  Can this be used against you?  You betcha.

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Questions persist as Michael Crowe maintains his innocence

By Harriet Ryan

Prosecutors dropped the murder charges against Michael Crowe three years ago and the sheriff took the unusual step of declaring him innocent last spring, but many in San Diego continue to believe he is responsible for his sister's stabbing death.

In the next year, those suspicions are expected to become loud and very public allegations. In two cases stemming from Stephanie Crowe's 1998 killing — one criminal and one civil — the defendants plan to point the finger of guilt directly at her brother and argue that investigators' first instinct was the right one.

 
Stephanie Crowe, 12, was stabbed to death in her bedroom in 1998.

A lawyer for Richard Tuite, the drifter investigators now say killed Stephanie, says his primary defense will be an offense: proving Crowe and two teenage buddies are the true killers, not his client.

And in federal court, where the Crowe family is seeking millions in damages from police and prosecutors for allegedly violating Michael's civil rights during interrogations, the story is similar. Law enforcement agencies targeted by the suit are expected to defend themselves by presenting evidence implicating Crowe. Meanwhile, across town, their colleagues will be helping to convict Tuite.

"Bizarre. The whole thing is like bizarro world," said Mary Ellen Attridge, a veteran defense lawyer who represented one of Michael Crowe's friends, Joshua Treadway, and will likely testify for the prosecution at Tuite's trial. "Everything is reversed."

The trials will rehash one of the most investigated crimes in San Diego's history. Stephanie Crowe, 12, was found stabbed to death nine times on the floor of her Escondido, Calif., bedroom the morning of Jan. 21, 1998. The five family members in the home that night, Stephanie's parents, grandmother, sister and brother, told police they heard no signs of struggle.

Detectives zeroed in on her older brother, then 14, and his two friends who they believed killed Stephanie because of their video game-fueled bloodlust and Michael's sense of sibling rivalry. After a long interrogation, Crowe confessed. But he and the other boys, who had also given incriminating statements to police, soon recanted and said they felt forced into the statements by relentless police questioning.

On the eve of trial, DNA tests ordered by Attridge, Treadway's lawyer, found Stephanie's blood on clothes worn by Tuite, a 33-year-old mentally ill homeless man seen wandering in the neighborhood that night.   Didn't I just recently post a thread about whether being homeless should be a crime?

The prosecutor dropped charges against the teenagers and eventually handed the matter over to the state attorney general's office for review, saying the case needed "fresh eyes." Sheriff's officers replaced the Escondido police in investigating the crime, and in May 2002, Tuite was charged with the killing.

Prosecutors from the attorney general's office are expected to lay out their case against Tuite in a preliminary hearing beginning Jan. 6. The case turns on the DNA evidence and the testimony of neighbors who said the drifter was in the Crowe's section of Escondido on the night of the murder, knocking on doors in search of a friend named Tracy.

Tuite's attorney, Brad Patton, says he plans to counter the DNA evidence by suggesting police contamination transferred blood — perhaps when the same camera tripod was used to photograph the crime scene and then the drifter's clothes.

The contamination argument is hotly disputed with Attridge and others saying the spots are visible in photos taken before the tripod was used and form a splatter rather than transfer pattern on the material.

The bulk of Tuite's case, Patton said, will be the evidence the police assembled against the teenagers shortly after Stephanie's murder. The lawyer said he will use video tapes of the teens' interrogations in which they describe parts of the murder and discuss Michael's motivation.

Also potentially testifying for Tuite are criminologists initially consulted by police. Patton said two experts contend the crime was an inside job involving one person to hold the victim still while the other stabbed her.

 
Richard Raymond Tuite, a mentally ill homeless man, faces murder charges in the slaying of Stephanie Crowe, 12.

"We're going to show motive and opportunity," Patton says. "The crime scene speaks for itself and they even confessed."

The evidence marshaled in the federal civil suit by the Escondido police and the San Diego district attorney's office is expected to be similar, said Milton Silverman, the Crowe's attorney.

"The message they sent was the boys did it and we'll prove it at trial," he said.

Silverman said that when the case gets underway in April, he will present evidence against Tuite and asks jurors to do "simple arithmetic."

"If Tuite is the killer, then Michael's confession had to be coerced," he said.  Unless Michael and Tuite were in it together! The Escondido police may still have a case after all! :p

Crowe's legal team had conducted 50 depositions in advance of the trial and Silverman said many in law enforcement are unwavering in their belief that Crowe is the killer. He said he expects some investigators to say as much when they are called to testify.

Silverman, who said the family could recover millions in damages, said Michael Crowe is aware that he will forever be linked to his sister's death. Perhaps, the lawyer said, next year's trials will be an opportunity for the truth to come out.

"There's never really been a full battle where all the evidence has come out," said Silverman.