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"Disconnection in the Courtroom"
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by Delilah | November 18, 2009 at 12:04 pm
206 views | 4 Recommendations | 2 comments
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Continuing this week on Courtside television is the live trial of Juan Mendez whom on July 24, 2006 was charged with second degree murder in the deaths of his wife Whitney Mendez, 19 and mother-in-law Lorena Stone.
After a year, "friends" finally came forward with information and testimony to the abuse that Whitney endured during her relationship with Juan. How good can circumstantial evidence be after a year? And why did they wait so long? According to the friends, they were afraid of Juan.
As I watched Juan Mendez all decked out in a crisp white shirt, suit, and tie his body language told the story of many abusers in a court of law sitting pretty and smug hoping to get away with murder.
Smug seems to be the demeanor of a lot of abusers these days. They all, for some reason, think they have committed the perfect crime. They think that all their years of manipulation, abuse and lies will be all that is needed to gain their freedom. But to kill a woman and her mother!!
When a prosecutor is unable to connect the facts of a case on behalf of crime victims a disconnect is likely to happen with the jurors. I hope for the lives of these women forever silenced, I am wrong.
So we must look also at the prosecutors and the investigators. What are they bringing to the trial? Did any of them have extensive training on domestic violence related homicides? It looks like the jury won't have all the information they need to come to a decision about Juan Mendez. He has been able to shift the blame before, why not again? Now that his life is on the line, I'm sure he is pulling out all the stops to save his own neck.
Too bad for Whitney Mendez and her mother, Lorena Stone. If this trial does not end favorably for the prosecution, they will be two more names to set in stone on a memorial and be forgotten. Two more women who died at the hands of somone who was court ordered to keep away.
Get up to the minute coverage HERE and follow the case and the outcome on Twitter HERE
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (2)
at 12:17 on November 18th, 2009
Here in the UK, we've seen over the years so many times when women and/or children have been murdered by ex-partners with injunctions against them. How about....where there is a need for an injunction - lock them up and throw the key away. I'll follow this on Twitter and hope to see a correct conclusion result.
at 12:28 on November 18th, 2009
I agree with you, there is nothing an order of protection is going to do to really protect these victims. You see it time and time again. It's become only a paper trail to document further abuse in most cases.
Along with that comes the fact that the investigating officers and prosecutor really don't know how to present evidence from a domestic violence standpoint because there just isn't enough valid training for them. They are getting the same old stuff when there is so much new technology to learn. There just is no priority to keeping these victims alive, sadly.