Criminal
Sep. 8, 2012
Lois Goodman: safe or out?
Respected tennis referee Lois Goodman is charged with murdering her husband of 50 years with a coffee mug.
Louis J. Shapiro
Email: LouisJShapiro@Gmail.com
Louis, a former Los Angeles County Public Defender, is a criminal defense attorney and State Bar-certified criminal law specialist out of Century City. He is also a legal analyst, board member of the California Innocence Project and Project For The Innocence at Loyola Law School, CACJ and LACBA'S Criminal Justice Executive Committee.
Attachments
This one is going to be interesting. Respected tennis referee Lois Goodman is charged with murdering her husband of 50 years with a coffee mug.
This is case is going to boil down to two issues: motive and evidence.
The alleged motive is that Goodman was having an online relationship with a man. The defense will argue that even if there was an online relationship, there are much easier ways to sever a relationship than committing murder. Also, it is a quantum leap to go from a clean record for 70 years to suddenly becoming a killer. Undoubtedly, Goodman's grieving or lack thereof immediately following the death will play into this issue.
Under a first degree murder theory, the prosecution is going to have to argue that she planned out the murder. The defense will counter that Goodman was the only one present, blood was all over the house, and coffee mug fragments were on her husband's skull and on the floor. It is peculiar that Goodman would do such a terrible job of planning, considering that she spends most of her life making calculated decisions in split seconds.
Praise is being given to the coroner's investigator, who on the eve of Goodman's husband's cremation, happened to discover multiple cuts on Goodman's ears and head. The obvious question is how could such an obvious observation be missed by various police investigators and coroner staff? Everyone loves a hero, but jurors don't tend to convict on unsolved mysteries. The prosecution will need to answer this question.
It fairs very well for the defense that the police accepted Goodman's account of the events to be true. Remember that this was a homicide investigation, so there was no shortage of interrogations and scrutiny at the scene. Despite all that Goodman was deemed to be credible, and that is powerful.
Pursuant to the investigator's epiphany, the police then searched the Goodman's home again and found blood in places that they deemed to be inconsistent with an accidental death. Apparently, the evidence suggests that the victim was moving around after being stabbed and called out for help.
The defense can argue that the mere fact that blood was found in more than one place does not by any means rule out an accidental theory. The victim could have fallen down the stairs with a coffee cup which broke on impact and injured him. He then tried to get up and unsuccessfully cried for help.
The jury instruction on circumstantial evidence, CALCRIM 224, provides in part, "If you can draw two or more reasonable conclusions from the circumstantial evidence, and one of those reasonable conclusions points to innocence and another to guilt, you must accept the one that points to innocence." Expect the defense to argue this instruction until they turn blue in the face.
While there is more information yet to be disclosed, this case is surely shaping up to be an attractive trial. The prosecution knows they have their work cut out for them. Because right now, there are a lot more questions than there are answers.
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