Julie Rea: Guilty Until Proven Innocent
Early in the morning on October 13, 1997, an Illinois Ph.D. student named Julie Rea woke up to the horrifying sound of her son, Joel Kirkpatrick, screaming. When she went into Joel’s room, she survived an attack by the intruder, who then dropped the knife he had taken from Rea’s kitchen and used to kill her son, and left.
Three years after the murder of her son, Julie Rea was charged with capital murder. Similar to the prosecution in the trial of Darlie Routier, the prosecution in Rea’s case presented sexist evidence, much of which was not really relevant, to sway the jury to ultimately make the decision, largely based on their emotions inspired by the prosecution’s arguments, that Rea was guilty of killing her son. Julie Rea was sentenced to 65 years in prison, despite the fact that she did not have a motive, and there was not much physical evidence. (Prosecutors had decided not to seek the death penalty, so Rea was not able to be defended by two attorneys qualified to defend people in death penalty cases.)
When criminal defense investigator Bill Clutter heard Rea’s description of the killer, however, he thought it sounded similar to child serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells, who had just been arrested for murdering a young girl in Texas. Sells ultimately confessed to 22 murders, including the murder of Joel Kirkpatrick, to which he admitted in 2004. A new trial was ordered for Julie Rea, and she was finally found not guilty and freed in 2006.
Julie Rea’s case is very similar to Darlie Routier’s case; however, another suspect has not been identified in the place of Routier, illustrating how the innate desire of people to want to “catch the bad guy” may stand in the way of justice. Julie Rea was proven innocent only after she had spent part of her life in prison. There are others who spend much longer in prison, are executed, or die waiting to be executed for crimes they did not commit, and this fact illustrates the potential for human nature to desire answers to unexplainably horrific crimes to prevent a just verdict from being reached based on the facts.
Further, the terrifying cold-blooded murders (and other atrocious crimes) committed by Tommy Lynn Sells prove that sometimes, atrocious tragedies occur unexpectedly- even in small, unsuspecting communities like Lawrenceville, where the murder of Joel Kirkpatrick took place, and the many other towns throughout the entire country where Sells brutally murdered innocent victims. While many people just wanted to see someone be punished for the Routier murders (which occurred around the same time as Sells was murdering both children and adults all throughout the country), those believing Darlie was guilty certainly could have let the real killer run free- after all, Tommy Lynn Sells was not arrested until about twenty years after his first murder.
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Looking at this makes me wonder why the police would accuse someone if the evidence does not make sense, especially in the case of Darlie Routier. Do you think there should be a penalty to the judge who sentenced the person to jail of they are found to be not proven guilty after a couple of years?
ReplyDeleteI think it's very interesting that there was a case that was so similar to Darlie's around the same time as hers that ended so differently. I think this shows the power of humans need to feel safe and the way they use this in criminal cases because both women were found guilty but Julie was set free once the real killer was found. I think the same thing could happen with Darlie's case, they just need to find the guilty person.
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