05-07-2012, 04:39 PM
(05-07-2012, 01:47 PM)Jezreel Wrote: .... I felt somewhat bad for [Rafferty's mother], thrust into this mess by the action (or inactions) of her son. You could tell she couldn’t walk anywhere as she was surrounded. She did say "he's not guilty and it hurts like hell. It hurts."
... I did ultimately feel for her at that point, regardless of whether she thinks her son is guilty or not, her life has been turned upside down...
I think that very often relatives of murderers are victims themselves (there was a thread on that subject here recently). And it's sometimes hard to blame relatives for continuing to believe in the accused. I know it would take some pretty strong evidence to convince me if any of my brothers, my husband, or sons were accused of doing something like this.
I remember a case where a man was accused of killing his mother-in-law. His niece (about 10 years old) was sleeping on the living room couch at her grandmother's the night of the murder and identified her uncle as the perp. He was convicted and went to prison. It seemed pretty straightforward - eyewitness testimony from someone who knew her uncle well. The guy's wife (the daughter of the murdered woman) continued to believe in him (the rest of the family turned against her) and hired detectives and eventually proved it wasn't her husband.
Anyway, back to Rafferty...I hope the prosecution points out that Rafferty's actions while TLM was getting Tori from school are not those of a person innocently picking up a child from school, but someone consciously staying out of the scene. He lets TLM take all the risks here. And once he raped Tori, can anyone believe he planned to let Tori go home?