Re: "Nearly 50 years after girl’s slaying, Fairfax police say they’ve solved case"
Posted by:
Needs to see more
()
Date: April 02, 2020 08:45PM
Teen Back Then Wrote:
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> In the summer of 2018, two independent
> acquaintances of Edwards revealed to detectives
> that he had told them he had killed a girl and
> buried her in a field when he was in his teens,
> police said."
>
> Edwards died in 1997 and the witnesses came
> forward in 2018?
> Are the witnesses credible, indeed.
> I hope the police elaborate.
How often when a convict was rotting in jail or was facing a life sentence have we heard of people coming forward and recanting their testimony, confessing to have committed the crime, or confirming the convict was actually innocent? The response to this by police, prosecutors and usually by the courts is always the same. Too Little and Too Late. There is almost always a reason to doubt these post conviction claims or proof of innocence. So long as there is less than irrefutable proof, it isn't good enough.
So lets apply that same standard to this new evidence claim by police. These people did not claim to have witnessed the event. They did not claim to have helped Edwards cover up the evidence of the crime. There is no claim these people had special knowledge of the crime that would not have been known to the general public. That alone means whatever the police have falls far short of irrefutable evidence.
These two people say Edwards confessed to committing the crime and other evidence supports this. Well Edwards was a suspect in the original investigation. We are not told what the police have now beyond the mere confession that makes them so sure. Plus we are told nothing about the people to whom the confession was made, what their relationship was to Edwards both at the time of the crime, the time of the confession and later, whether they were contacted in connection with the original investigation and what they said then, the circumstance of the alleged confession(s) or what motivated two supposedly independent people to come forward in 2018 with reports about a confession supposedly made more than 20 years earlier.
It doesn't take much more than a confession to charge someone with murder. Charging and convicting are two different things. Even a first year law student would have little trouble proving reasonable doubt based on what the police are offering.