Lacrosse ugliness at U.Va.

But it seems to me that the anger can cut both ways. If you're the prosecution, the savagery is irrefutable proof that he was trying to kill her. If you're the defense, it's irrefutable proof that he was just in a blind rage and didn't know his own strength.

 

I'm not a lawyer, I don't play one on TV, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but...

I have to think that kicked in door makes it easier for me as a prosecutor to get a murder conviction. It certainly eliminates any possibility of this being some sort of accidental death. And it makes the leap from intent to harm to intent to kill a much smaller one.

 

You think he actually meant to kill her? I guess only one person knows for sure. I'm just having a hard time getting my head around the idea that a kid with everything going for him, knowing he was going to get caught and probably spend the next few decades in jail, would purposely take someone's life that way. It's chilling. Maybe I just don't want to believe it.

 

Not to think like a defense lawyer or anything, but if drinking were involved...... one could argue that the brain is more vulnerable when it's bathed in alcohol.

I did a story once about two kids who got into a fight. They were shitfaced beyond belief. One hit the other, and he fell and hit his head on the ground. 24 hours later he was dead. The kid who took the swing was charged with negligent homicide. He eventually got out of it, though, because there was medical evidence that if the kid who died hadn't been drunk beyond any and all belief, he probably would have survived a bang to the head.

I'm not saying that's what happened here, I'm just thinking like a lawyer defending a murder charge might think.....

 

He wanted to beat her to withen an inch of her life but he accidentally killed her.

 

Luggy, the kid is cooked. Just wait, me thinks, until cyberspace uncovers the emails.

 

BIG difference between one swing and repeatedly bashing her head into the wall.
Many of the the inmates on death row were drunk, high or a combination of both when they committed their crimes.

 

Two guys fighting while drunk is a lot different than one guy killing a girl in a drunken rage.

 

Guys, guys... I agree with you. I'm just wondering how this little shit is going to try to get out of a murder charge. It seems like he will have the best defenders money can buy... and I'm trying to think of what this asshole's possible defense will be.

It's one of the hazards of growing up around defense lawyers.

 

I'm talking about her brain, not his.

 

We'll have to wait to see, but starting to sound like this kid may have been obsessed with her, and when he could no longer have his obsession, maybe he didn't see a future that had everything going for him.

 

I'm not sure he can, based on what we know to date. Maybe he can get it dropped down from 1st degree, but beyond that, I don't know.

I'm also thinking he must have done a lot of talking to the cops when they interogated him--when his right to remain silent would have served him a lot better.