By Daivd Peel
As you know, I only do death and accident cases so I have zero experience with criminal law. And I intend to keep it that way. There are some fine criminal lawyers out there, but I’ll never be one of them.
That being said, like many of you, I have a real interest in following trials, true crime, podcast, and All Things murder.
I tend to see what I call the “smart criminal defense “used when they have a little else to argue.
For instance, the ex-boyfriend who is caught on camera using a credit card, just 2 miles from the murder scene some 200 miles from where he normally lives, within an hour of the murder, is pretty suspicious.
You can count on the attorney, saying he wouldn’t have done that if he was involved in a murder because clearly it would leave evidence using a credit card and being on a camera. So effectively what he’s saying is my client is smarter than to commit a murder, and a dumb way.
If you’re like me that strikes you a little hollow. I’ve never thought of murderers, especially the jealous, angry type, as being overly intelligent. I would expect them to make ridiculous errors, while fueled with passion, consumed with panic, feeling paranoid, and maybe even guilty.
One might suppose that the most intelligent, murderers out there got away with it, because it was never even suspected to be a murder.
One couple almost pulled off a pretty clever murder. He was some type of gamer, and he trained his girlfriend to sit at his house with his car out front and play the game as if she was him. Even texting multiple ones of his friends saying things he would say.
Meanwhile, he took her cell phone and her car and drove to another state to kill his ex lover.
On paper, he was sitting in his house, hundreds of miles from the murder scene when it happened. But he forgot about a tollbooth camera. The tollbooth camera caught a guy that looked just like him at a different car. Then they traced the car and the plates. And it was his girlfriend, —the new one He had after the murder. Then they got Warrant for her phone and it was a play-by-play of the entire murder— point by point.
Ultimately, these criminals continue to live out the Bible verse that most of us were taught: “your sins will find you out”
