I forget what was the famous renactment stabbing scene in the bed in the Courtroom case anyway.? I'm getting old.

By the way, Kelly is a friend and I consider this reinactment some of the best courtroom technique I have ever heard of. Lest anyone think I am slamming her, it is quite the opposite.

Judge upholds courtroom reenactment of man's stabbing death

Susan Wright is serving a 25-year sentence for fatally stabbing her husband nearly 200 times.

By Emanuella Grinberg
Court TV

An in-court reenactment of a brutal stabbing featuring a Texas prosecutor straddled atop a colleague on a bloody mattress did not unfairly prejudice the jury in the first-degree murder trial of housewife Susan Wright, an appeals court said Thursday.

In a written opinion, 14th Court of Appeals Justice Wanda McKee Fowler sided with the trial court's decision to let Harris County prosecutor Kelly Siegler demonstrate the state's theory of how Susan Wright stabbed her husband Jeff Wright almost 200 times in the 2004 trial.

Against defense objections, Siegler brought in the same bloodstained mattress that Jeff Wright died on and mounted colleague Paul Doyle, who was approximately the same size as Jeff Wright. The prosecutor then pantomimed stabbing actions.

In an appeal filed in October 2004, lawyers for Susan Wright characterized the reenactment as "a real-time production of the most violent part of the blockbuster 'Basic Instinct'" that lacked a factual basis and played to jurors' emotions.

"The very nature of the staged in-court reenactment had an emotional impact that suggests that the jury's decision be made on an emotional basis and not the basis of other relevant evidence introduced at trial," an appeal brief says.

Susan Wright's attorney, Brian Wice, said he was disappointed with the justice's refusal to consider a DVD clip of the reenactment � provided by Court TV, which aired the trial � as part of the appellate record.

"How can you determine how inherently and unfairly prejudicial the demonstration was by reading a cold court transcript?" Wice told Courttv.com, adding that his client took the news better than he did, reacting with "resolution and resolve."

"The jury saw what was on the DVD, and sometimes the visual gets lost in translation to paper," Wice said.

Citing testimony from the medical examiner and the police investigator who discovered Jeff Wright's body, Fowler concluded that the demonstration was supported by facts in evidence.

"Police often have to reconstruct crimes they did not witness. They do this by inferring the cause of an event they did not witness from facts and evidence they do know," Fowler wrote.

"There is no dispute that Jeff Wright was stabbed on the bed and that he was somehow restrained with ligatures," Fowler said. "At the crux of the case is when he was restrained and how he came to be stabbed."

Prosecutors contended that Wright lured her husband to bed with the promise of kinky sex and tied him to the bedposts, citing evidence of candle wax found on the victim's inner thigh and the presence of wrist and ankle ligatures when the family dog dug him up in the backyard five days after his death.

Susan Wright, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence after her conviction in March 2004, testified that she acted in self-defense after her husband, a habitual drug user and philanderer who gave her herpes, came home glassy-eyed the evening of Jan. 13, 2003, and physically assaulted her and her son.

Wright claimed that after Jeff Wright raped her in their bed, he was about to attack her with a knife when she summoned the strength to overpower the 220-pound man and wrestle the knife from him before stabbing him nearly 200 times all over his body.

"I stabbed him in his penis for all the times that he made me have sex and I didn't want to," a sobbing Wright testified when asked where she stabbed him. "And I couldn't stop because he was going to kill me and I couldn't stop."

In a separate issue, Fowler said comments the prosecutor made in her closing about the Jeff Wright's children and parents did not invite the jury to speculate on matters outside of evidence.

Harris County appellate attorney Dan McCrory said Jeff Wright's family was "happy" with the decision, but reacted emotionally to the news Thursday morning.

"[Jeff Wright] left behind two small children, so their foremost concern is for the children and how all this will affect them," McCrory told Courttv.com.

"Apparently, they're doing very well, and the family does not want anything to interfere with that," he said.

How could you have left out:

A picture of AP playing the banjo, a line of freshly noodled catfish around his waist, a bottle of sherry and applicaion device at his feet, slightly off centered on a background of the Polunsky with a banner reading.....



Exit Only

For a slideshow of the courtroom re-enactment case, click here.

quote:

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Originally posted by Stacey L. Brownlee:
How could you have left out:

A picture of AP playing the banjo, a line of freshly noodled catfish around his waist, a bottle of sherry and applicaion device at his feet, slightly off centered on a background of the Polunsky with a banner reading.....
Exit Only

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Well my friend, I'm trying not to pick on AP and his banjo related heritage too much this week. But I certainly should have found a way to incorporate a bottle of vintage sherry and the acoutriments necessary to...well, never mind. I'll include that Stacey, just for you on version 2.0.

Of course then it gets complicated, and a little too weird. Perhaps better to have a photo of JB holding the Perfect Plea together with AP holding a copy of Future Dangerousness (which, for all those who care, was the second runner up name for AP and the Lesser Includeds).

But yeah, the exit only banner would be good to have at the Polunsky.

[This message was edited by Greg Gilleland on 11-07-07 at .]

[This message was edited by Greg Gilleland on 11-07-07 at .]

[This message was edited by Greg Gilleland on 11-07-07 at .]

1) I have never noodled, except those times when a pot of boiling water and a handful of pasta were involved.

2) "Exit Only" means just that -- like I said 4 or 5 years ago, ask my doctor, he'll vouch for my timidity and fear of entry, or in Nasa terms, "re-entry."

3) I have good photos of Sara and her band of brothers with the banjo player pretending to be involved, but I don't know how to upload them, because I am me.

4) I have an autographed copy of "The Perfect Plea."

5) I am not a future dangerousness expert, but I have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express a time or two.

Show off.

That photo of the noodler really resembles JB more than AP. Is there something you need to tell us, JB? Is that a freudian posting? If so, your new nickname could be "Catfish".

quote:

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Originally posted by A.P. Merillat:
2) "Exit Only" means just that -- like I said 4 or 5 years ago, ask my doctor, he'll vouch for my timidity and fear of entry, or in Nasa terms, "re-entry."

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WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION!

History please.

Picture is hilarious and I am from originally well not the SOUTH.

Begin by reading this thread.

Then you may ask follow-up questions.

And then you need to read this thread...so you will completely understand the mindset of the noodler.

https://tdcaa.infopop.net/eve/forums?q=Y&a=tpc&s=347098965&f=157098965&m=195100513&p=1

quote:

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Originally posted by kmh:
History please.

Picture is hilarious and I am from originally well not the SOUTH.

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You can just come next door, KMH, and ask me all about noodling. I can get our investigator to take us to deep East Texas where some of my more countrifricated relatives "allegedly" noodle. Maybe some of his relatives do as well, since we have kin in the same parts.

GG, I prefer to remain in denial, ( about you our co-workers and your relatives) after reading
JB's thread. UMMM well, we use fishing poles up there NOT IN THE SOUTH.