STORY: "Prosecutors want NC Supreme Court to review Brad Cooper case," by reporter Anne Blythe, published by the News Observer on September 11, 2013.
GIST: "Attorney General Roy Cooper announced Tuesday that he will petition the state Supreme Court to review the recent N.C. Court of Appeals decision ordering a new trial for Brad Cooper. Brad Cooper, 39, a former Cisco employee, was convicted in May 2011 of murdering his wife, Nancy Cooper, and dumping her body several miles from their Cary home. The evidence in the case was largely circumstantial. Jurors said afterward that prosecutors won with computer evidence that defense lawyers tried to quash. The defense argued that the police investigation of Nancy Cooper’s death in July 2008 was inept. They had hoped to argue before the jury that the crucial computer evidence could have been tampered with and perhaps planted by investigators – arguments that they planned to introduce through their own expert witnesses. Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul Gessner allowed prosecutors to introduce evidence of a Google Maps search of the site where Nancy Cooper’s body had been found. Prosecutors argued that the map search and time stamps associated with it showed that Brad Cooper had searched for a site to dump his wife’s body. The defense team, however, raised questions about the validity of the time stamps on the laptop files. Gessner ruled against the defense’s attempt to classify two witnesses as forensics experts to raise questions about the computer evidence. In their ruling last week, the appeals court judges noted that the “sole physical evidence linking” Brad Cooper to the homicide was the Google Maps search. “Absent this evidence, the evidence connecting Defendant to this crime was primarily potential motive, opportunity, and testimony of suspicious behavior,” the ruling said. Further, the appeals court panel added that “whether the error was constitutional or not,” failure to let Brad Cooper use his experts at trial was a key error that warranted a new trial. “(T)here is a reasonable possibility that, had the error in question not been committed, a different result would have been reached at the trial out of which the appeal arises,” the ruling stated."
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.newsobserver.com/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.
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