Darlie Routier: is an innocent person paying with her life?
On the early mornings of June 6th, 1996, Darlie Routier made a frantic 911 call saying that someone had broken in and stabbed her 2 kids and herself badly. Initially the Detective ruled out the possibility that someone had broken in because the soil right below where the mesh was cut was undisturbed. Despite this there was not dirt until 6 feet after the window and Darin walked out of the window easily without putting his foot into the soil. I just think detective Cron rushed to a untimely conclusion and did not have an open mind like a detective should. There was some evidence of bad police work in this case and it later came out that the lead detective had screwed up evidence before that resulted in 3 wrongful convictions. The evidence of bad police work comes from when they collected all of the blood ridden evidence in one bag... That can cause cross contamination of the evidence and that is not reliable evidence in my opinion. Next, the prosecution was trying to paint Darlie as a materialistic, flashy mom who just does not care about her family, she only cares about her belongings. This strategy only worked because the jury was naturally biased against rich people since they were poor and working class in rural Texas. First, the prosecutions witness Tom Bevel was called to make a video on how the blood ended up on the back of Darlie's shirt. This theory made no sense but a lawyer does not know about blood spatter, Doug Mulder did not call a expert witness to counter this because he just thought that he could grill him on the stand. In my opinion that was the deciding factor in why Darlie got convicted because there was not any other evidence that made sense. Secondly, the 911 call made from Darlie's house sounds like she was someone who legitimately cared about her kids after they were brutally attacked. It does not sound like a acting job..... I also suspect some prosecution misconduct with the Baylor university nurses, Darlie was crying and the nurses blew this out of proportion saying she was "whining" because Greg Davis handed them a picture of bloody kids. Lastly, is the video of the funeral where Darlie was playing rap music and blowing bubbles. The funeral was fun and emotional and the jury only got to see the part when Darlie was blowing bubbles not when she was sobbing at the beginning of the funeral. In my opinion Darlie is 100% INNOCENT, mark my words within 5 years from today Darlie will be walking as a exonerated death row inmate.
I agree with all of this. In the entire documentary, there was nothing that made me think that Darlie would have killed her children. I agree with the part that the nurses were blowing everything way out of proportion to make things seem worse than they already were. I also think that this happened because of the bad police work. The police seemed unprofessional and because they have never seen a case like this it makes it more believable that they are not doing their job correctly.
ReplyDeleteI also believe Darlie is innocent and was unjustly sentenced to death for a crime she did not commit, based on the evidence provided in the documentary (much of which was unfortunately not utilized in the trial). I think the fact that the trial was moved to Kerrville, a very rural and conservative part of Texas with conviction rates over 95% and a high level of trust in the police and the state, was a major part of the reason Darlie is now on death row. Kerrville did not truly enable her to face a jury of her peers in court but rather a jury of people with conflicting perspectives from hers; the jurors were bound to let their judgments of Darlie, as someone whose background differed from theirs, cloud their ability to come to the most just decision possible based on the real evidence. While I do think Darlie should be able to appeal and should have a truly fair chance to prove her innocence, I do not think it is very likely that she will be exonerated within five years, as it has already been 21 years, and her appellate attorneys have not yet been able to effectively provide grounds for an appeal. Although the confirmation bias of police officers, detectives, and jurors appeared to stand in the way of justice, Darlie's team will need not only to prove that something about the trial prevented a fair sentence from being given but also to get past the people fighting against any attempts to appeal in order to protect their own reputations. Unfortunately, this task has proven to be extremely difficult, and over two decades of failure to appeal has revealed disheartening shortcomings of the American justice system.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you on everything besides the fact that she won't be exonerated in 5 years. I just think that because some judge is going to bite on her appeals. I think there are other attorneys out there that can get it done. I also agree with the fact that she was never given a fair trial.
DeleteI agree with the fact that the police involved did not do their job well because there were many little mistakes, like the contaminated evidence that all added up to end up making Darlie look guilty. I also think that she should not have been put on death row and declared guilty because the prosecution didn't have hard evidence to prove her guilt, instead they broke her down as a person and mother for the jury. Ultimately, the jury made their decision based on the silly string video, which does not prove her guilt.
DeleteI really don't think that Darlie did it. But I also believe that the prosecution did a great job of establishing reasonable doubt. This case is the other side of the coin as OJ Simpson's case. OJ's prosecution was able to establish a lack of reasonable doubt in the eyes of a jury, although a lot of the public believes that he didn't do it. While news made it seem like Darlie did it at the time, many people now believe that she didn't do it. In this case, the prosecution established reasonable doubt where there initially wasn't a lot of reasonable doubt.
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