Poking a Dung Pile

In a previous post, I considered how Justice Mosk's dissent ( People v. Thomas ) raised important questions about the prosecution's case, challenging its theories about the motive(s) behind the murders.  In this post, I want to take a look at Judge Susan Graber's dissent in Thomas v. Chappell  because she challenges the  arguments Thomas's defense team made during the habeas petitions.  She considered the case against Thomas to be much stronger than the majority did, and she considered case for granting him habeas relief to be considerably weak: "The case against Thomas was stronger than the majority suggests, and the insubstantial testimony of those three witnesses would not have sufficiently corroborated Cercy's testimony or otherwise undermined the State's case. Thomas is therefore not entitled to habeas relief on the basis the district court gave, and I respectfully dissent." ( Thomas v. Chappell , p. 18) The three witness testimonies Judge Graber...

As I was writing the previous post, I noticed something about Vivian Cercy's story I'd previously overlooked.   In Re Ralph International Thomas on Habeas Corpus contains the following report.  ( I believe the details it contains cannot be found in any of the other  court documents . They must be contained in other documents I've not read, such as police reports and the trial transcript.) " About 20 to 30 minutes later, Cercy heard two male voices, one of which sounded white, talking behind her car. The person with the white voice said, ‘Leave her alone; she's got two kids.’ A few seconds later there was a knock on the window of the driver's door and Cercy saw a man wearing a pea coat. He asked her name and where she was staying. [Cercy told the man she was staying with Harry Shorman.] When he asked what color bus Harry owned, Cercy asked the man why he was questioning her. The man said he was going to kill her.  Cercy immediately blanked the man's face ou...

Norman Garstin - "Alethea And Her Mother" (1898) A recent episode of  Dead and Gone (Season Two, Episode 6) finally touches upon a social issue that should've been addressed during the first season but wasn't—i.e. Reagan-era dismantling of social "backstops" and homelessness.  Still, it's been addressed in the second season, and that’s a good thing. Stepping back from the individual cases covered in this second season, one can see how they are similar in some significant ways to the case covered in the first season. In Episode 6, Mike Rooney talks to an associate professor of social work at the University of Buffalo, Elizabeth Bowen, and to a journalist from the San Francisco Chronicle , Kevin Fagan.  What both have to say about homelessness may shed light on the plight of some of those living in Rainbow Village back in '85, including Ralph Thomas and Vivian Cercy.  For example, Fagan makes an important distinction between 'real homelessness'...

I think the "Bo Did It" theory sits on shaky ground.  How might it be put on a solid footing?  I believe there's a way to do this, and in this post I'm going to outline an argument that may help make the theory more plausible.  First I'm going to lay out my version of the theory. The Theory I consider Vivian Cercy's testimony to be the foundation for the "Bo Did It" theory.  During a preliminary hearing held in October and November of1985, Cercy testified that, in the very early hours of August 16, she saw three people standing near the gate to Rainbow Village.   The three people were a tall, blond-haired man, a dark-haired man, and a woman.  She overheard a verbal exchange between the blond man and the woman, after which the woman left the two men and walked in a direction away from Rainbow Village.  The blond man followed her.  About 15 minutes later, Cercy heard three noises that sounded like firecrackers. An hour or so later she saw ...