The unsuccessful search of Big Run Park south of Clime Road was the latest effort by Columbus police to find 29-year-old Claudia Lopez Escobar.

Escobar was last seen on March 30, when she told a friend that she was going to meet a former boyfriend at his apartment. She later called the friend again from the apartment but hasn’t been heard from since.

Police believe that Escobar visited Sar I, 41, of 1774 Pheasant Run W. His apartment complex abuts the southern edge of Big Run Park.

Escobar was reported missing to police on April 5, after she failed to show up for work. Her Jeep Cherokee and I also have not been found. He has been charged with murder, kidnapping and gross abuse of a corpse.

Homicide detective Jay Fulton said police found blood and other evidence in I’s apartment that leads them to believe Escobar is dead.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/05/15/search-for-missing-woman.html

Source Article from http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/south_bay&id=8663869
Search for LaMar marks two-month anniversary – abc7news.com

Source Article from http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/04/sierra-lamars-twitter-is-hacked-as-search-for-teen-continutes-.html
Missing teen Sierra LaMar’s Twitter account is hacked – Los Angeles Times

Common is the popular complaint that a jury ‘didn’t do its job’ when an accused criminal is acquitted. However, the duty of all criminal court jurors is to judge defendants based on admissible testimony and evidence presented before them according to the criteria for reasonable doubt, not to to pass judgment to satisfy the whims of outside observers. Perhaps it can be argued that the verdict was incorrect, or even that judgment ought to be weighed by experts instead of laymen. Nevertheless the fact remains that jury members are specifically instructed to judge the veracity of the prosecution’s case, for it is only the prosecution that bears the burden of proof.

Regardless, people often seem to feel juries should be given license to deliver verdicts based on judgments beyond the facts of the cases presented before them. With regard to the Anthony trial, this was made especially by certain commentators who exclaimed that the jury should have ‘connected the dots’ concerning the supposedly suspicious nature of the accused. However, following this mentality would not only violate juries’ aforementioned mandate to limit their considerations to the facts of the case, but would also derail juries’ critical thinking in favor of speculation. In short, this call for speculative judgment goes precisely counter to what juries are lawfully charged to do.

Conviction Rates

Given the unique complexities of each state’s laws and conviction statistics, it at first appears to be a challenge to evaluate the generalization that prosecutors lose too many criminal cases. This perspective, however, falsely assumes that conviction rates are a relevant measurement of prosecutor performance in the first place. Whereas it is the duty of defense attorneys to cast as much doubt as possible upon the arguments of prosecutors, the duty of the prosecution is to bring forth evidence against the accused within the bounds of the law, not do whatever they can to ensure a conviction. The court is meant as a medium in which the jury may soundly come to a fair and legal verdict, not a circus of accusation and unregulated inquisition. To assess the adversarial system of trial on verdict outcomes alone would be disingenuous to the pursuit of justice. At best, such measurements reveal trends without explaining how they occur.

To be fair toward advocates of judicial reform, conviction rates can sometimes suggest an underlying systematic problem. Clearly, consistent rates of extremely high or low conviction do warrant some amount of inquiry. However, there seems to be little out of the ordinary in that regard in Florida, where the Casey Anthony case was tried. According to official state sources the past ten years have been relatively successful for Floridian prosecutors as the vast majority of violent crime trials resulted in either convictions or plea bargains. If anything, this fact suggests that Anthony’s acquittal wasn’t a matter of incompetent or ineffectual prosecution.

Even on the national level, the notion that prosecutors aren’t obtaining enough convictions does’nt hold up against the data. The National Center for State Courts, a non-profit judicial research center, estimates that conviction rates can be as high as 60 percent for murder cases across the country, while lesser violent offenses tend to have a higher chance of acquittal. One can hardly call this a sign of a conviction shortage, especially in light of the recent drop in crime rates in the United States.

As sensationally as political pundits may play up the acquittal of Casey Anthony, the trial should not be regarded as a symptom of a judicial breakdown. Upon level-headed consideration of the relevant information, it should be clear that criminal courts by and large suffer from no lack of convictions and perform within reasonable expectations. Furthermore, even if it is true that the criminal justice system needs reform, there is little reason to tamper with the role of juries as impartial judges of the adversarial arena. Therefore, instead of vilifying jurors, defense attorneys, and prosecutors for performing their proper duties under the law, maybe commentators should discuss better ways to report on legal proceedings and give the public a clearer understanding of our judicial process.

In any case, I am just testing the waters this evening as Princess has invited me to be a contributing writer here on the BeaconHell blog and I am honored and humbled to accept her invite.  Knowing Princess as I do and how well she blogs and writes I obviously have a lot to live up to.

So with that said, I hope in the near future I will somehow find the inspiration needed to post something that you will all find not only interesting enough to read, but to perhaps even comment (or shit) on…

More later.

Percy