Prosecution, defense present opening statements in Pinyon Pines triple murder case
After starts, stops, delays, and over ten years since the alleged killings, the case of the 2006 deaths of Becky Friedli, her mother Vicki and Vicki’s boyfriend, Jon Hayward, takes a first step toward solution.
The defendants, Cristin Smith and Robert Pape, face three first-degree murder charges each. If convicted, they could face life in prison without parole.The presentation of new evidence and the review of old took center stage today and the prosecution opened with a clearly intentioned tone.
“For 12 years, Robert Pape and Cristin Smith have had a secret,” started the prosecution. “It’s taken 12 years. 12 years of patience and persistence to find out what happened in 2006. These two men murdered three innocent people that night.”
One of the pieces of evidence re-examined was a business card allegedly found at the scene of the murders in 2006, a card which, so the prosecution claims, links Cristin Smith to the scene.
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{“url”:”https://twitter.com/ZakDahlheimer/status/985944581496758272″,”author_name”:”Zak Dahlheimer KESQ”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/ZakDahlheimer”,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;Prosecutors: Two fingerprints on card from Pro-Life Ministries. In 2006, determined prints were poor quality, no result. Same as 2007. In 2017, fingerprints were sent to California DOJ for testing. Both fingerprints identified as Cristin Smith’s.&#lt;/p&#gt;– Zak Dahlheimer KESQ (@ZakDahlheimer) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/ZakDahlheimer/status/985944581496758272?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;April 16, 2018&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;n”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″}
The defense countered the claimed crucial evidence, calling into question the validity of its usage.
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“This is serious business,” said John Patrick Dolan, Cristin Smith’s attorney in opening. Then, he took aim at the prosecution’s evidence, ” It simply is not here. This is not an exercise in unveiling secrets.”
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Noticias en español: Telemundo 15
