Justice Denied - Kathy Stobaugh And The 2nd Circuit Court Of Appeals

(Several days ago the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the Stobaugh verdict, thus denying justice to Kathy and her family.  I had at first dashed off a fiery commentary, but now, with a little time intervening, I have a more calm and reasoned blog to offer...)

 

The Second District Court of Appeals in Fort Worth, Texas has seen fit to overturn the verdict in the Kathy Stobaugh murder trial, tossing out the suspect’s conviction for murdering his wife.  The short story is that the Court ruled there was insufficient evidence presented at trial for the jury to have reached a guilty verdict.  All the evidence presented was circumstantial according to the Court, and that was true enough, but the last time I checked, this trial was held before a jury of twelve people.  These twelve people all heard the requirements necessary for the state to prove its case, and they all heard the evidence that the state used to meet those requirements.  This jury then reached a unanimous verdict.  There was not a hung jury, and not two or three weeks of deliberation before finally reaching a verdict.  The jury heard the evidence and rendered its verdict, guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

It should be a very sobering and somber moment when a court sets aside a jury’s verdict.  There are, of course, some occasions where a jury’s verdict should be set aside, such as when an accused was clearly guilty of a crime, the evidence proved it, but the jury found the person innocent.  But these sorts of verdicts are rare, and hark back to the pre-1964 era of “jury nullification.”  In the Stobaugh case, the prosecutors were fighting an uphill battle from the start because there was no physical evidence against the suspect, but the victim could not be located.  No body has been found to this date.  But there was plenty of evidence to indicate that Kathy Stobaugh was dead.   The biggest indication was that no one had seen her from the date of her disappearance to the conclusion of the trial.  Second, Kathy had not been in touch with her children, her family, her divorce lawyer, or even her estranged husband since her disappearance and right up to the end of the trial.  Third, Kathy never again accessed her bank accounts or used her credit or debit cards, right up to the end of the trial.  Fourth, Kathy never again returned to her job, or called her employer to resign or ask for a leave of absence.  Finally, all the inconsistencies between Stobaugh’s statements to police and the actual facts as proven by phone records demonstrated that the police were not getting the whole story from this man.  Taken singly, no one item is conclusive, but taken in totality, these circumstances certainly add up to one reasonable conclusion…that which was reached by the jury at the original trial.

The prosecution had an uphill battle to prove that Kathy was dead and that her death was by murder.  The suspect and his attorney went out of their way to thwart the investigation at every turn.  The prosecution had to examine different possibilities and eliminate each possibility, other than murder, beyond a reasonable doubt, and the jury believed that the prosecution had done so.   The jury believed that the only reasonable explanation was that Kathy was dead and that the suspect had killed her.  Was the prosecution able to prove “beyond a SHADOW OF A DOUBT” that the suspect had killed her and concealed her body?  This is not Perry Mason.  Texas law only requires that guilt be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.  This proof was given in the Stobaugh trial. 

In the time since this verdict was handed down, the suspect’s attorneys set about to get an appeal paid for by you and me, the taxpayers, in that they petitioned the court to provide a free trial transcript, which would cost anyone else $10,000 or so.  The court rightly agreed with prosecutors that the suspect was NOT INDIGENT when he had over $500,000 dollars’ worth of assets at his disposal.  Indigent?  Right…  But there was a lot at stake with the Stobaugh verdict, and other parties were interested in seeing that an appeal was filed.  I do not know, nor will I speculate, whether third parties such as Project Innocence provided any financial support for an appeal.  I will just say that it was in the best interests of defense attorneys all over the United States that this verdict is appealed AND THROWN OUT.  Unfortunately the 2^nd Circuit Court of Appeals did just that. 

There was little doubt, in fact NO REASONABLE doubt, that Kathy was dead, based on the fact of her complete and total disappearance off the face of this earth, and the confirmation of this disappearance by total lack of electronic financial activity, no appearance back at her job, no request for her pension, no message of any kind for her family or children.  The suspect’s lies regarding his phone calls to Kathy AFTER her disappearance, the fact that Kathy’s vehicle and personal property were still on the Stobaugh farm, and the suspect’s subsequent total withdrawal of cooperation with law enforcement, while circumstantial, pointed to his involvement at a level much deeper than he was telling officers.

Was there reasonable doubt that the suspect, and ONLY the suspect, murdered Kathy?  After several years of gathering evidence, prosecutors brought the suspect to trial, and the jury indeed believed there was no reasonable doubt that the suspect had killed Kathy.  Since the case was based on circumstantial evidence, I personally believed (although I fervently hoped I was wrong!) that the trial would end at best in a hung jury; at worst an outright acquittal.  But in fact twelve different people heard the prosecutor’s case, and the defense arguments as well, and in the end convicted Charles Stobaugh of murder.

The 2^nd Circuit Court of Appeals, made up of former defense lawyers, perhaps was under some deal of pressure not to let this verdict stand.  Appeals attorneys that these judges regularly associate with both at court and in social circumstances were watching the outcome of this appeal very closely.  No doubt calls were made from high-powered attorneys as well as from various lawyers’ organizations, just to remind these judges of the great impact their ruling would have on similar cases in the future.  Basically, if there was no body, there was no murder.  That has been the general rule in the United States since colonial days.  But in current times, with electronic financial and employment trails, with fuel purchases and shopping sprees recorded with each swipe of a debit card, it was a simple matter to pinpoint the very date Kathy’s life stopped.  Still, there was no body.  That point was pounded home by the suspect’s attorney, who apparently is very persuasive.  This same attorney sold to one jury the very asinine idea that a Dallas area teenager was not responsible for killing four people with his automobile because his very affluent parents had been “too busy” to teach this “child” right from wrong.  (Now HERE is a verdict that should definitely be thrown out on appeal!!)

The Stobaugh verdict was thrown out by the 2^nd Court Appeals, which in effect meant that they, the appeals court, being much smarter than the local jury, reviewed a few pages of the hundreds of pages of transcript and concluded that the jury could not have reached the verdict beyond a reasonable doubt, that the suspect had killed Kathy Stobaugh.  So the verdict was thrown out, and a suspected murderer will be turned out of prison, possibly rewarded for the thorough way in which he disposed of Kathy’s body.  Will prosecutors retry this case?  That is a tough question.  Not because they would have trouble proving their case to a second jury, but because they would run the risk of the 2^nd Circuit Court of Appeals second-guessing that jury if another guilty verdict were rendered.  It all comes down to this.  If prosecutors proved beyond a reasonable doubt that a person is dead, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt that a particular person committed the crime, but produced no body, it is a slam dunk for the defense to win their case by simply asking “where’s the body?”  The defense lawyers do not want to lose this great advantage, and the 2^nd Circuit Court of Appeals does not want to be the body that sets such precedence.  Justice for Kathy is secondary to “justice” for this suspect.