FAT SEXY said:
aggiehawg.. on a slam dunk scale of 1-10, where would you rank this case for the prosecution?
Jury trial? Juries are always so unpredictable it is folly to predict this far out since there will be so many pre-trial motions to exclude evidence and we have only seen a drop in a bucket of evidence collected thus far and much more to come.
The biggest problem I see immediately will be empaneling a jury pool. And then voir dire will be a beast with such a high profile case in such a small state population.
But I have been impressed thus far with the Latah County Prosecutor. He looks like Santa Claus but is not a showboater at all. Very facts oriented. The Public Defender appointed has been a criminal defense attorney for nearly 25 years and is one of the few defense attorneys authorized to handle a death penalty case. Having said that, Idaho does not have a large number of death penalty cases where the sentence was death and hardly any actual executions going back several decades, so "experience" with death penalty cases will be on the low end.
The biggest issue will be the admissibility of touch DNA on the button of the knife sheath. All of the stalking behavior is good but have to actually place him inside the house. The survivor roommate, DM, cannot give a positive ID.
They also do not have the murder weapon and cannot connect that with BK as far as we know now. It could be his social media posts might contain a picture of him with a KA-Bar, we'll see how that works out at some point. His past use of FB, reddit, etc. could be a treasure trove of evidence for the prosecution.
Do they have a slam dunk? No. They are about 65% there, again depends on admissibility questions that will be argued and ruled upon by the judge pre-trial.
Now if they find blood DNA or trace evidence of any of the victims in his car, that goes up to 95%.