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Julie Harper on trial — take 2
It was stated about me above that it is "obvious once again that you think this woman has done no wrong." So let me just say what I actually believe and why I am so interested in this case. Whether Julie Harper has done wrong is a moral issue between her and her maker. Whether she deserves 40 years of punishment is the legal question for the court to decide, and the standard of evidence there is whether it convinces "beyond a reasonable doubt." I believe there is a ton of reasonable doubt about her supposed guilt. The "background evidence" leads to lots of doubtful speculations. The same with how she looked on the day she was arrested. Those who would convict say her use of drugs, prescribed by doctors for painful conditions, suggests it put her in a state of mind to murder. But the drug abuse may just as well have been brought to a head by her enduring the spousal abuse for which there was convincing direct evidence in the first trial. She may well have put a gun under her pillow out of fear of what her husband might do to her after learning of her divorce filing. What she did in the hours after the incident does seem irrational to an outsider, but what kind of mental state was she going through and how clearly was she thinking? And what she did in 2014, two years after she shot her husband, strikes me as totally irrelevant. So reasonable doubt!! It's an extremely important safeguard to anybody accused of crime, and we know how many people are wrongfully accused. Reasonable doubt is worth fighting for. That's why I was so obnoxious.— September 13, 2015 5:55 p.m.
Julie Harper on trial — take 2
I take seriously a complaint about the term "lynch mob," especially from someone like you, Visduh, who offers some actual reasoning for your opinions. But a lot of what I read presents no reasoning whatsoever. So that's where I'm coming from, though I guess I expressed it too strongly. And of course, as it is your right to express your views, so also is it mine to express my views. Anyway, I notice that you take issue with a lot what the judge has ruled out of court. Trained in the law as he is, don't you think he might have good cause for his decisions. What's he thinking? Do you actually believe he simply has taken sides arbitrarily? He is a former prosecutor, is he not?— September 13, 2015 11:31 a.m.
Julie Harper on trial — take 2
Megan Gill cites one juror's opinion to prove Julie Harper's guilt. How many jurors does she think there were? Quite a few more than one apparently took the opposite point of view. And one other juror, interviewed after the trial, said the shooting was a clear case of self-defense. So how does somebody in their armchair at home, far from the courtroom, declare that the jurors were idiots. That's an insult to all people who give their time to serve on juries. We should be happy that we have the jury system so we don't have to rely on hysterical lynch mobs. At least one commenter, shirleyberan, does have a good sense of irony however.— September 13, 2015 9:58 a.m.
Julie Harper on trial — take 2
To call her a "fugitive" for 24 hours is a distortion pure and simple. Couldn't she have escaped at least as far as another county? What kind of fugitive makes it only as far as her father's San Diego house? And there she waited for the police to come after her attorney called them to report the shooting on the same day it occurred. Also, any remaining argument about where the single bullet entered Jason Harper's body is the result of sloppy statements right in the beginning of the case that he was shot in the back, as though she sneaked up on him from behind. The medical examiner's evidence showed the bullet entered his side and ricocheted off a rib to his heart. This business about the bullet traveling from "back to front" is more distortion to save the original lie that he was shot in the back. But then journalists are often would-be prosecutors, and members of the public writing on a web site think they're smarter than juries. The lynch mob is frothing again.— September 13, 2015 9:34 a.m.
Yay! Got the cash and pills
Comments to the U-T' story today about Julie Harper's in vitro fertilization focus again on the "evil" defense attorney. Pfingst is doing what defense attorneys in our legal system are supposed to do. Prosecutors would like nothing so much as to walk into court, point the finger at the person "they claim" is guilty and have the jury rubber stamp it. But what prosecutors claim is often mixed up with career ambitions. How nice to be able to tell the world that I deserve a promotion because I sent some person who looks "deteriorated" in photos off to the big house for the rest of her life. But a good defense attorney won't let crap like that happen. So far, in the first trial, the defense blew away the the notion that the 6' ft 8" inch Jason Harper was a "gentle giant" with tape recordings of him raging at his wife like a madman. So now, what some people think is that Julie Harper's desire to have a child after her first three children were taken from her is evidence that she murdered her husband rather than defended herself from him. If, in the next trial, Pfingst argues that her desire to have another child is hardly evidence that she murdered anybody, he's is not only doing his job, he's right.— May 2, 2015 11:28 a.m.
Yay! Got the cash and pills
It’s been a while since I last looked at this forum, and it’s surprising that some people still think of the charge against Julie Harper as drug abuse rather than murder. Let’s get real; the early mug shots of an overweight and disheveled woman disposed many in the public to immediately declare her guilty. But the jury in the first trial rightly had enough reasonable doubt about her guilt to acquit. After all, the only evidence against her was circumstantial. The reasonable doubt was heightened by the tape recording of Jason Harper violently screaming obscenities at his wife. It showed, at the very least, that the initial attempt to paint him as a “gentle giant” was ridiculous. Instead, it strongly suggested dangerous rages that any wife would naturally try to defend herself against. Then there’s the issue that emerges in comments about a supposedly biased judge. It must be common for people who have decided from afar how a trial should come out to believe the judge will favor the other side. That’s probably what the defendant felt too. But Judge Bowman was a career prosecutor before he became a judge. He worked as a deputy district attorney under both Pfingst and Dumanis. According to Ed Miller, Dumanis and the rest of that gang, all of Pfingst’s employees hated him and that was one big reason why Dumanis was able to win her election against him. This hardly suggests Bowman would “hamstring” prosecutor Watanabe in the Julie Harper case. Having been one himself, the judge might even be inclined to grease the wheels for a prosecutor. That may in fact have happened recently, when the judge refused to sanction or reprimand Watanabe for disclosing in his most recent (March) motion Harper’s pregnancy. What’s especially troubling about the release is the disclosure to the public of doctor/patient privileged information not only about the pregnancy but about its having resulted from in vitro fertilization. The judge had ordered both sides not to disclose either fact outside of chambers or a court hearing. But Watanabe put it front and center in the March motion, thus allowing the press to again run with an issue that inflames the public before what to make of it is rationally deliberated in the courtroom setting. Meanwhile, we’ve been treated to Watanabe’s wild guess that it is manipulation of the court. Given that the judge has now looked the other way this first time, Watanabe, if it’s to his advantage, will likely spill further forbidden beans he can spin, as this case goes forward. It rather looks like the only place he thinks he can win on a second try is in the press, hardly the best venue for detecting guilt or innocence.— April 26, 2015 4:33 p.m.
Still, fewer pages than Hillary
Forgive my ignorance. Who pays for retrieving, copying all these emails? Or do they just turn up on a web site for the public to view?— April 25, 2015 10:20 a.m.
Her husband, the rapist
In response to Ponzi's request that I provide my source. Here it is, the same one being quoted in the previous comment. I'll include the full paragraph from Eva Knott's article, "A Derringer for My Daughter:" "During cross-examination by Pfingst, Cihak did confirm that 20 years ago he had given his daughter an two-shot derringer. He said, “I believe I gave it to Julie for her defense, for her protection” while she was going to the University of Southern California, in the early 1990s."— September 27, 2014 2:21 p.m.
Her husband, the rapist
Isn't the point of the "burden not shifting to the defense" the time honored principle that one is innocent until proven guilty? That proof must come from the prosecutor. Watanabe cannot prove his theory that anger, bitterness and spite were Julie Harper's motives. So he just throw's it out there, hoping it will stick. This seems to be what Pfingst is getting at. Watanabe also used the old horse laugh as a substitute for coming right out and claiming that Jason Harper could not have come at his wife with his arms raised. But why not? Watanabe knows very well that could have happened, so his laugh is an effort simply to ridicule the defendant, make fun of her and tie the ridicule to the character assassination he's been trotting out there in place of a real argument for months now. Pfingst is right; Watanabe has no proof. When you don't have a real argument, it's easy to laugh and score psychological rather than logical points with the jury.— September 27, 2014 10:49 a.m.
Her husband, the rapist
Just wonder if Ponzi has been paying attention. Harper's father purchased the gun for his daughter sometime around 1990 while she was a student at USC in Los Angeles. The neighborhood around the university was going through a lot of turmoil and many people considered it to be a dangerous area, especially for a woman walking by herself.— September 27, 2014 10:24 a.m.