I'm back and ready for the trial

July 27, 2009 Monday

Hey everyone! I am back after a wonderful vacation in Denver with Luke’s family. They really went all out making sure that I could explore and enjoy Denver. The first night Luke took me to Big River, which is the story of Huckleberry Finn. The other days Luke and I walked through Denver, explored Golden, went to Buffalo Bill Cody’s Grave and the mansion nearby, hiked the Three Sisters, went to a westernaires show, which is a show where kids do tricks on horses, we went to a dinner theatre and watched Annie, swam in Luke’s pool with his little sister Hannah, played dominoes, looked at dogs in an animal shelter, and of course had ice cream!

Here is a picture of Luke, Hannah and I in their pool.

So to catch you up on what is occurring in the office, not much happened this past week, obviously because I was gone. They did have one suicide, and I learned that women rarely shoot themselves in the head when they commit suicide with a gun. I did not know this. They are usually too vain for this type of disfigurement, so instead women normally will shoot themselves in the chest. Men, on the other hand, shoot themselves in the head the majority of the time. Suicides are hard cases to work because the families are very distraught and the scenes tend to be messy, especially when a gun is involved.

So onto this week we are focusing on two very important cases. This past December there was a one vehicle roll over in which two individuals were thrown from the vehicle and killed. Ed and Mark have been subpoenaed to testify as witnesses for the prosecution, meaning the State.
We went to meet with the county attorney today to prepare Mark and Ed for the trial. I am really lucky because since I was not present at this scene I can go to the whole trial if I want to. I believe this is going to be a good learning experience so of course I’ll be in Lander a great deal this week to watch the proceedings. They will start tomorrow at a quarter to 10 when the jury is picked, and then they will begin opening statements. I was given permission to attend, but I had to promise I would not discuss what happens in court with either Ed or Mark.

Now I can’t discuss a lot of the information that I know right now about the case but as the trial progresses the information will slowly make itself public. As the evidence comes out at trial, I can describe more about the case, because once it is presented there the case becomes public information. So stay tuned as we progress through the trial and I reveal more and more information.

Oh, I almost forgot. After we got out of the meeting with the county attorney we went and had lunch and returned for another meeting at the county building with the Sheriff’s office. This was a meeting to discuss a past case that I have already described. It took a turn that I didn’t foresee coming. Yep, the great part about this job is it isn’t predictable. We discussed all the ways that the investigation on this case could go and what information needs to be collected and how it could be done. It is really nice how well the two different entities work with each other to figure out the best way to fight crime. If you haven’t noticed I can’t describe much right now about what is going on because it is a sensitive investigation that can easily go bad if too much is said and the wrong people hear about it, so I have to withhold that information for now. Sorry.