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Post by trubble on Mar 20, 2012 21:18:46 GMT
The case of a woman who died at the bottom of a staircase, and her husband who was accused of murdering her. Michael Peterson was put on trial, and this documentary follows the trial and goes behind the scenes with the defence team and the Peterson family. It also talks to the prosecution. It's not retrospective, it reveals the twists and turns as they happen, and it's a story that really twists and turns! If you remember it at the time, or have watched the documentary, what did you think of it all? If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't google, watch the film.watchdocumentary.com/watch/death-on-the-staircase-episode-01-crime-or-accident-video_e2b78bf7c.html - episode one. It's in 8 episodes, each about 45 minutes long, but if that seems a long time to invest, I can only tell you that it's very well made and worth the time. They showed this on BBC4 when it first came out, and I invested 8 weeks in it! Try the first episode and see. I'm not sure that it will stay up much longer, so now's your chance. Sadie, they might like this over at Jen's Tapestry? FYI: Some graphic content from the start (the body/crime scene is shown in the titles) (the crime scene is shown several times in the whole film) (no needless graphics, however; they are shown fleetingly and wisely - and with respect).
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Post by Big Lin on Mar 20, 2012 22:31:25 GMT
Shades of Amy Robsart and the Earl of Leicester, eh?
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Post by trubble on Mar 22, 2012 15:15:42 GMT
I was totally ignorant about this, thanks Lin. Very interesting en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_RobsartYes, shades of that. As no one has said they'll be watching, I'll ignore my original aim of posting no 'spoilers'. Peterson has just been granted a new trial, and released until that happens, after 8 years in prison. I watched the documentary and was shocked and surprised when the verdict of guilty came in. Perhaps that's not surprising as the film followed the defence rather than the prosecution. After the verdict, I resigned myself to thinking I'd got it wrong. Now, I am totally confused! The case raises just about every issue surrounding justice that you can think of, including mis-reporting in the media. Interviews with the jury afterwards showed that jury members took evidence into account that the judge specifically told them to discount. They didn't appear to distinguish between one of the highest experts in the country and an ''expert'' who was shown during his testimony to be committing perjury with utterly faked credentials. There have been several attempts to gain an appeal or re-trial, including new evidence that implies an owl may have attacked her -- as bizarre as that sounds, the dingo theory was also bizarre when it was first raised in the Chamberlain case. In the end, the re-trial has been granted because one of the agents testifying for the prosecution has been found to have mis-represented evidence in at least 30 cases. Agent Deaver insists that the Michael Peterson case is not one of them, but during the trial the defence team discovered that he had not handed over evidence that was potentially helpful to the defence. I know there have been high profile cases that gripped the media/nations - OJ Simpson, for example, or more recently Casey Anthony - but I think this case is the most interesting one by far.
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Post by sadie1263 on Mar 22, 2012 18:45:15 GMT
I'm very familiar with this case.
I will always believe the husband did it. There is no way a person falls down the stairs and scatters blood like that.........and how many people have one person fall down the stairs and die in their life....much less two???
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Post by sadie1263 on Mar 22, 2012 19:07:15 GMT
www.salon.com/2005/04/03/staircase/Michael had four children from his first marriage — two sons by his wife, and two adopted daughters who were the children of friends who had died. But then it was discovered that the girls’ mother, Elizabeth Ratliff, had also been found at the bottom of a staircase in Germany back in 1985, and Peterson had also been the last person to see her alive. Autopsies showed both women had similar injuries to the back of the head. And then there’s the volume of blood on the stairs. If walking up stairs can butcher someone like that, I’m not sure why anyone would risk having a staircase.
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Post by trubble on Mar 22, 2012 21:10:46 GMT
I'm very familiar with this case. I will always believe the husband did it. There is no way a person falls down the stairs and scatters blood like that.........and how many people have one person fall down the stairs and die in their life....much less two??? I am so glad you joined the conversation. I've never seen you say anything that wasn't very sensible. You and skylark are my barometers. I know I've gone totally mad when I start disagreeing with either of you. So now... I am still veering towards innocence. How interesting this all is! -- to me anyway!
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Post by trubble on Mar 22, 2012 21:16:02 GMT
www.salon.com/2005/04/03/staircase/Michael had four children from his first marriage — two sons by his wife, and two adopted daughters who were the children of friends who had died. But then it was discovered that the girls’ mother, Elizabeth Ratliff, had also been found at the bottom of a staircase in Germany back in 1985, and Peterson had also been the last person to see her alive. Autopsies showed both women had similar injuries to the back of the head. And then there’s the volume of blood on the stairs. If walking up stairs can butcher someone like that, I’m not sure why anyone would risk having a staircase. Yes, two women at the bottom of the stairs - it's almost too much to be asked to believe. Yet, I think the defence made some points that are worth considering, I'll look for them. Another oddity that doesn't quite seem to fit Peterson's ''innocent good guy" character is the lies about his war history. I will look that out too.
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Post by sadie1263 on Mar 22, 2012 22:54:45 GMT
I am so glad you joined the conversation. I've never seen you say anything that wasn't very sensible. You and skylark are my barometers. I know I've gone totally mad when I start disagreeing with either of you. So now... I am still veering towards innocence. How interesting this all is! -- to me anyway! Thank you so much. What a lovely compliment. But I will have to show your first sentence to my husband........he often doubts my mental abilities.....lol ;D ;D ;D It is a fascinating case.....but the blood evidence and the damage to her skull are very compelling.....and I said that wrong before....supposedly she was going UP the stairs......she would have had to bounce around like a ping pong ball...... Crime cases are very fascinating to me.......so I would love to discuss practically any of them with you!!!
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Post by trubble on Mar 23, 2012 14:43:53 GMT
;D He's just teasing you!
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Post by trubble on Mar 23, 2012 15:16:37 GMT
Blood evidence & Duane Deaver Duane Deaver was the main witness for the prosecution regarding blood evidence. He has since been fired from the SBI for mis-representing evidence in at least 30 cases. Peterson's re-trial has been granted on this basis. I find Deaver's record utterly underwhelming. I've only copied extracts from this article, for the full article, click on the headline. [/url] Former SBI agent Duane Deaver misrepresented agency policy and exaggerated his training and experience under oath when he was certified as an expert witness in the Michael Peterson trial, according to SBI records and the SBI internal affairs director.
Peterson is challenging his 2003 conviction for the murder of his wife, Kathleen Peterson, on the grounds that Deaver, a key expert witness in the case, had a pattern and practice throughout his career of fabricating evidence of guilt and hiding evidence of innocence.
Deaver testified in the Peterson trial that he was an experienced expert in the science of bloodstain pattern analysis, and could interpret the bloody staircase in the Peterson household where Kathleen Peterson was found dead.
Under oath in 2003, Deaver said he had worked 500 bloodstain cases, written 200 reports, and testified in 60 cases, testimony that was contradicted Tuesday by SBI Assistant Director Eric Hooks, head of internal investigations.
Hooks was asked how many bloodstain reports Deaver wrote in his entire career, from 1986 to 2010.
"Forty-seven," Hooks said.
"Not two hundred?" asked David Rudolf, Peterson's lawyer.
"No, forty seven," Hooks said.
***********************************************
As an expert witness at the trial, Deaver was charged with interpreting facts in an unbiased and scientific fashion that favored neither the prosecution nor the defense.
Jurors have said his testimony was essential to their deliberations and verdict, and in particular, his opinion that a bloodstain in the crotch of Peterson's shorts could only have landed there during an assault.
**************************************************
Deaver's record
But over the past two years, a stream of damaging information has emerged about Deaver.
A Wake County man was exonerated based in large part on the discrediting of Deaver's work in the case. An audit by former senior FBI officials singled out Deaver's lab reports as especially misleading. A bloodstain analysis team that Deaver trained and led was suspended and disbanded. A federal judge found that Deaver gave misleading testimony in a 1993 murder case.
Deaver testified at the Peterson trial that he was a veteran bloodstain analyst with experience in conducting tests and experiments to unravel how blood was deposited at a crime scene. He spent days at the trial testifying about experiments he conducted in a model of the Peterson's staircase.
Deaver actually had scant experience in such recreations, conducting four such experiments during his career, Hooks testified Tuesday.
The first occurred in a 1989 Greene County capital murder case where the victim had been bludgeoned with a two-by-four. Deaver tried to recreate the blood spatter using pumpkins as skulls, Kinston attorney Bill Gerrans testified Tuesday. "I didn't understand how that had anything to do with a human skull being hit by a two-by-four," Gerrans said.
The second was a Wake County case in 1993. [now discredited, see above]
The third was the Peterson case.
The final recreation was a Davie County case where Deaver and one of his trainees tried to duplicate what prosecutors contended was a knife stain on a shirt. After the second try produced the desired results, Deaver is heard on the video exclaiming "Oh, even better, holy cow, that was a good one. Beautiful. That's a wrap, baby." The SBI cited that remark as a reason for firing Deaver in January.
Deaver also testified at the Peterson trial that, in addition to two classes in bloodstain analysis in the 1980s, he was mentored by SBI agent David Spittle, who was more experienced in bloodstain analysis.
"I was assigned to an expert, I was trained by him, I continued to work with him," Deaver testified of Spittle.
In an interview during the SBI's internal investigation, Spittle said he could not recall training or mentoring Deaver.
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Post by sadie1263 on Mar 23, 2012 16:19:20 GMT
Duane Deaver is definitely a problem for the prosecution. I don't understand these type of people. I think maybe they really want to help......tell a lie...and then have to keep building on it.......but lies that are so easy to discredit.....sheesh.......
I hate the owl attack theory........I could see getting attacked by one out in the open......but are they saying this owl attacked her right outside her house....then inside and she didn't yell or scream and attract the attention of her husband???
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Post by trubble on Mar 23, 2012 16:43:47 GMT
Of course, even if Deaver got it all wrong, Peterson may still have killed his wife. But we have testimony from Henry Lee about what the blood & blood patterns indicate, and Lee says they are more consistent with a fall than a beating. Henry Lee's credentials outweigh Deaver's -- by miles! -- but perhaps that means virtually nothing. Perhaps blood evidence is just a poor or heavily flawed science.Here are some things that interest me: Jurors on the OJ Simpson case said they found Lee to be a very credible witness, - remember that evidence for the defence? ''Something's wrong'' said Lee. Barry Scheck (of OJ simpson fame) (and from The Innocence Project) says that in cases where subsequent DNA evidence has exonerated the falsely accused, 50% of the cases had been convicted on false/faulty forensic evidence. David Rudolf, the Peterson lawyer, is currently working for Scheck. Dr Werner Spitz worked with the defence team on the Peterson case, he also testified in the Casey Anthony case (defence), and has worked with Lee and Scheck on numerous projects including OJ Simpson. Dr Spitz didn't testify for the defence in the Simpson case, despite being invited in by Shapiro, he testified for the civil prosecution that Goldman brought. Did he testify for Peterson?? Re Dr Spitz - he seems terribly credible to me, but in the Anthony trial he showed some vulnerabilities. I don't know why these things interest me. I think I am wondering about the entire system, and the energy that many people put into ensuring that it doesn't convict someone on shaky grounds. And perhaps the fight to monitor that system sometimes ignores individual cases where justice is needed not just for the potentially falsely accused but for the dead and their families. I think, as a group of people interested in justice, civilised nations have tried very hard to create a system that is fair, and forensics is something that we all like because forensic evidence offers us the chance to be sure of our decisions. However, as time goes on, forensics is proving to be a difficulty. It appears to be only as good as the person who interprets it, and their interpretation is only as good as their ability to explain it to juries; forensics is also only as good as the method used to gather data. But most importantly, we have developed a need for it, and we are losing our ability to convict, defend, or judge without it. I think that means that justice fails many people. Unless a case is very obvious, forget it. Peterson remarks, in the Staircase film, that his money is buying him the expertise needed to prove his innocence. What do people do when they don't have money? he asks. Of course, he has no money left anymore so I guess he will find out. Current rumor is that prosecutors won't go forward with a new trial. Peterson will plead guilty to second degree murder and walk away with time served. That is a dreadful prospect. Justice for Kathleen's death does not mean a mere 8 years behind bars--it should be there for life. And the prosecutors should do everything they can to insure that happens. - Diane Fanning, true crime author.
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Post by trubble on Mar 23, 2012 16:48:18 GMT
I hate the owl attack theory........I could see getting attacked by one out in the open......but are they saying this owl attacked her right outside her house....then inside and she didn't yell or scream and attract the attention of her husband??? I think the Owl theory is the work of people who have over analysed everything. They found a microscopic feather in the hair that Kathleen Peterson held clutched in her hand. It was her own hair. A few strands that had been pulled from her scalp. Apparently there were also pine needles. It's possible that this means nothing.
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Post by sadie1263 on Mar 23, 2012 18:59:52 GMT
I guess the thing that bothers me about his defense team is the money aspect. Nothing like buying a good defense. I think many of them could make the Pope look like a liar and with many of them there is NOTHING they won't do to win.
The whole problem is...the prosecution is going to put a sinister twist on everything.....the defense is going to find a reasonable explanation....or even an owl explanation......
From one report.
Peterson later maintained that Kathleen must have fallen down the stairs after consuming alcohol and valium. Toxicology results showed that his wife's blood alcohol content was 0.07 percent. The autopsy report concluded that the 48 year old victim sustained a matrix of severe injuries, including a fracture of the thyroid neck cartilage and seven lacerations to the top and back of her head consistent with blows from a blunt object and had died from blood loss one and a half to two hours after sustaining the injuries. ************
The staircase area was not that large.......if you can find pics of it....the blood at the bottom was remarkable.....and I just don't understand how it could happen like that.......supposedly going up the stairs....and have all that damage to the back of her head......
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Post by trubble on Apr 8, 2012 12:31:29 GMT
I've been looking back at the trial, the case, the man. It's a mystery to me. I have become even more confused! ;D
The amount of blood does seem remarkable.
And yet...
If she died over a period of an hour to two hours that's a lot of time to bleed, one would expect there to be a lot of blood, no? And one or more episodes of coming in and out of consciousness (and trying to get up) could explain the spread of blood.
My great aunt's death happened when she was alone and she haemorraged and left a trail of blood as she apparently tried to reach the phone. The amount/coverage was enough to make my parents hesitantly describe it as looking as if she'd been murdered, but the police (first on the scene) & autopsy reports viewed it unequivocally as a natural death. My point is: it's surprising how blood looks, how much there may be or seem to be.
A well-financed defence is indeed an added complication when trying to work out the truth. With Barry Sheck and the like, their main interest is removing the possibility of an unfair conviction from the legal system - so their client is not only the accused but the system itself, and it's hard for the onlooker to separate the two.
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Post by trubble on Apr 8, 2012 12:33:43 GMT
Oscar-winning director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade (Murder on a Sunday Morning) is making a follow-up to his acclaimed 2004 doc series The Staircase for French net Canal+, realscreen can reveal, with the project already attracting interest in Cannes from international broadcasters including the BBC and VPRO.
The news comes after explosive developments recently saw the convicted subject of The Staircase, Michael Peterson, released from jail after serving eight years of a life sentence, pending a retrial.
Canal+ is aiming to air the as-yet-untitled follow-up as a 120-minute special in October, according to the project’s distributor Cat & Docs, which is also offering the sequel in a 2 x 60-minute version.
Talking to realscreen in Cannes, Cat & Docs founder and president Catherine Le Clef said de Lestrade had already completed most of the filming for the project, which will feature interviews with Peterson, his lawyer, and other key players from the original trial.
“He needs to go and shoot a bit more, but the film will be broadcast on Canal+ in October,” said Le Clef.
Read more: realscreen.com/2012/04/03/exclusive-de-lestrade-making-sequel-to-the-staircase/#ixzz1rRyWuf2W
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Post by sadie1263 on Apr 8, 2012 12:47:23 GMT
Don't know that I trust De Lestrade's version.......seems like he is getting carried away with making a "good movie" more than really discovering the truth.......I don't know......I went back and forth on this a lot when I first heard the story.......while there are a lot of good reasons to have reasonable doubt......there just seems to be a "lot" of things you have to believe to go that route.......
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Post by trubble on Apr 8, 2012 20:35:41 GMT
I'm interested that he wants to go back to it. I wonder if he is also mystified about the case. The prosecution should talk to him more and let him film them more. He's a film maker - of course he is looking for a good film but I like that in a film maker ;D. ...more than really discovering the truth....... Yes - he will definitely be following/telling a story, and it's not going to be an investigative report. But.. well, if that's what he's doing then the documentary will probably only promise that, no more no less, and that's fine by me. I don't trust the various books written by self professed experts claiming to know the truth. I think the truth lies in 2 places: Peterson's head and the forensics. Everything else is speculations. So unless a documentary can examine all the forensics in detail, or get inside Peterson's head, we won't get the truth; and I've already said that I think the forensic science isn't up to the job and can only give best guesses now. True. Peterson is a hard man to read too. I think I've talked myself into being resigned to never know the truth.
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