[Alpha_Q]

I don’t have the legal knowledge or verbal finesse to counter MBate’s “sexy” points (DiontheDman), nor do I want to, because I agree with them. I’m quite aware of the need for defence counsel to insure that our legal system is fair, ordered and working properly, and while acknowledging the importance of lawyers such as Mr. Ross and Ms. Sanders, I do not envy them. Their work is much derided, but very important.

It became quite evident as this trial went along that the defence’s plan from the get-go was an appeal with the goal of a retrial. During the trial itself there was little to no rebuttal of the prosecution’s evidence, and at best the defence was only interested in ensuring that the investigating officers crossed their proverbial t’s.

At the heart of this appeal is evidence that the defence feels should not have been included in the original trial. Sanders recently stated that there was not enough of a link between Garland and the victims to warrant the initial search of the Garland farm – a spurious assertion if there ever was one. This search – which does not require a warrant - was an attempt to find a hidden or hiding 5-year-old, and the officers were directed not to search anywhere a child could not reasonably be found alive. A single officer who, noticing a medical-type bag that looked too clean to be in the place it was found, spread it open with his fingers and viewed inside handcuffs, a leather billy-club, knives…

The defence feels this bag was a key piece of evidence that lead to the proper search warrant that eventually found evidence that would come to incriminate and imprison Garland. Yet without this bag, there is still substantial evidence to issue a warrant, including Garland’s truck in the area of the victims’ house the morning after the murders – a truck on multiple video cameras entering the neighborhood empty, circling the house, leaving hours later in broad daylight with a tarped load, then returning again later that morning. Not to mention the link between Garland and the victims, their history, the statements made by Garland’s sister, brother-in-law, parents… I could go on.

Garland is guilty of a triple murder. He is a child-killer. He tortured, murdered, burnt and reduced three people to material the entirety of which you could fit on the end of your index finger. He knows that he is a murderer but he plead innocent so that he could have his trial in front of the Liknes family and he continues this appeal because it twists the knife further into them. That is his only motive at this point as it is the only way he can continue to impose upon them himself and his deluded sense of revenge and control. His counsel also knows that he is a murderer, but I don’t know what to do about that, about continuing with an appeal. Is there any scenario or situation where the defence counsel can say “No, Douglas. You’re guilty.”

As for the O’Brien and Liknes families not being put “through the whole process again” (blankall), I assure you, they are being put through this again. As a juror in this case - and in fear of turning this into a woe-is-me post – I can tell you that when I woke up this morning to Garland’s face on my phone, I was instantly taken back to the details of this trial and the associated nightmares. I was immediately anxious, nauseous and in the words of my wife “visibly upset.”

One detail of the case involved Nathan O’Brien’s hand print in his grandmother’s blood on a blanket, with a spatter of his own blood in drips around it – imagine a child putting his weight on his blood-covered hand while he leans over, bleeding profusely from somewhere on his head. I can’t look at my son’s hand to this day without a flash of that image. Other triggers like this slowed down and eventually stopped after a few months, but today… today I met a man named Kim. Kim Ross – Garland – bloody hand – murdered child. I saw an advertisement for a television show created by Mike Judge. Judge Gates – Garland – bloody hand – murdered child.

I don’t really have a point to all this, but I can’t even begin to imagine what the O’Brien and Liknes families have endured and are enduring again right now.