One of the biggest contributing factors to wrongful convictions is police tunnel vision. This occurs in a fairly high percentage of the cases that have been studied – post DNA exonerations. It occurs when police narrow in on a suspect from the very beginning and then fail to consider other possibilities, suspects or scenarios. They…
I’ve been thinking about what Ann Peterson said during oral arguments, how the defense was thwarted again and again at trial and how no one seemed interested in getting to the Truth. I thought it might be interesting to create a list of all the obstacles faced along the way, beginning long before the trial…
For those who didn’t follow this case, Brad Cooper was convicted of 1st degree murder for the death of his wife, Nancy Cooper in May, 2011. Although the State presented a lot of circumstantial evidence, the defense team was able to address every item and there was no evidence remaining to connect Brad in any…
This was another misleading part of the trial – Nancy’s running shoes. The prosecutors presented two pairs of her running shoes found in the home: an old pair of Asics and a newer pair of Sauconys. They wanted the jurors to believe that since her old and new pair of shoes were in the house,…
On the morning of July 12th, Brad made two trips to the Harris Teeter store. Trip one was made to buy milk for Katie, his two year old daughter. A second trip at 6:40AM was made to pick up laundry detergent. During the second trip, Brad received a phone call on his cell phone from…
As many of you are aware, the State computer experts’ testimony wasn’t videotaped, so we were unable to hear it live. This was disappointing because it’s some of the most important testimony of the trial. Now that I’ve had an opportunity to read that portion of the transcript, I would like to share some of…
Brad’s cell phone is another subject worth discussing. Throughout the trial, prosecutors tried to suggest that Brad placed a 32 digit pass code on his cell phone and that he, or someone close to him deleted most of the data from the phone. They did this with full knowledge that it was Brad’s employer, Cisco…
