Former Boulder DA: Mary Lacy Has "Been Had"

Dunleavy:

Never before have I ever heard a prosecutor exhort so passionately the need to consider a nasty insect to be presumed innocent. "It tells me the case is going south," said local attorney Larry Posner, referring to statements made by District Attorney Mary Lacy.

Trip Demuth, a former Boulder DA, said tersely: "I think she has been had."

On Thursday, DA Lacy appropriately remained tight-lipped about details of the case, but reminded everyone umpteen times that John Mark Karr is presumed innocent.

Bob Grant, a former DA of adjoining Adams County and a friend of Lacy, said: "I do think it's time for healthy skepticism. Mary is a great prosecutor and although she had every probable cause for extradition, I think her words have shown she has a lack of complete confidence in her case."

I think this case is going south, too, but I'm annoyed at the media's need of finding a villain in every story.

John Karr "married" an underage girl and took another underage girl across state lines for the purposes of "marrying" her. He was caught with kiddie-porn. He confessed to the crime, offering great details about them. (True, these details were probably gleaned from his obssessive sexual interest in the case, reading every word written about JonBenet; but still, enough detail to give some credence to his confession.)

And of course he made the confession while in a country notorious for child prostitution. And further, being in another country, the US had no control over him. What if he fled Thailand, for example?

The DA in this case acted perfectly properly-- when a known pedophile confesses to an unsolved 10 year old murder of a six year old girl while on foreign soil, you arrest him, you bring him back to the US, and you investigate him while you can keep him from fleeing.

And she's acting perfectly properly now by stressing he is "innocent until proven guilty" (although "innocent" is used in highly specific fashion here), and remaining otherwise quiet about it.

I know the media, which loves to voice its not-so-secret belief that they are smarter than everyone in the world and could do everyone else's job better, if they felt like it, is going to play the "Mary Lacy is a dumb duped dummy" meme constantly if this goes south, but they really ought to get over themselves, and stop pandering to an audience that also needs a "villain" or at least an incompetent somewhere in the "story."

She made the right call. She's making the right call now. She will probably make the right call when the evidence is in.

End of "story."

posted by Ace at 11:56 AM

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