Judge can't say jury would have reached same verdict without hearsay evidence
A jury convicted Fitzpatrick, 42, in May of first-degree murder in the death of his wife,
On
Two days later, an employee who had worked with
A co-worker also found an email that
Those messages turned the accident investigation into a homicide investigation. Police went on to discover: There was
All of that coupled with the police's inability to reconstruct the crash the way
The acquittal came largely on Renn's opinion that the day planner note and the email were inadmissible as hearsay.
However, the case first had been assigned to Judge
In his acquittal opinion, Renn explained that
Renn further explained that Annemarie's "belief as to (Joseph's) motives is not relevant to prove any degree of guilt..."
Renn wrote that "the only person's state of mind that is relevant is the defendant's, since it is the defendant who must have the requisite malice and the specific intent to kill."
Renn commented that the "erroneous admission" of the note and email was "hardly harmless."
"(T)he evidence presented by the commonwealth that the death of (
"From the first few sentences of it's opening statement all the way through its closing argument, the commonwealth relied heavily on the handwritten note... arguing that the victim was speaking from her grave and pointing the finger at the defendant."
Renn noted that in a post-conviction appeal hearing, he asked the prosecution how Fitzpatrick actually killed his wife.
"After a period of rather telling silence, and for the first time, the commonwealth suggested the defendant somehow got his wife into the creek, forcibly drowned her, and then staged an ATV accident," Renn recalled. "The commonwealth was unable to articulate how the defendant got his wife into the water or how he drowned her.
"Quite frankly," Renn stated, "we think the only logical conclusion is that this jury based its verdict off of a mere suspicion that something untoward happened down at that creek."
Renn stated the reason for the acquittal rested on him being unable to "say, beyond a reasonable doubt, that had the note and email not been admitted that the jury's verdict would have been the same."
Contact
___
(c)2015 York Daily Record (York, Pa.)
Visit York Daily Record (York, Pa.) at www.ydr.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Vero, Sebastian elections set; Fellsmere candidates are unopposed
Needy Minnesotans scramble after state cancels health benefits
Advisor News
Annuity News
Health/Employee Benefits News
Life Insurance News