In 2013, Werner Herzog made a documentary about the Routier case called On Death Row. It is far from over and the prosecutor’s misconduct should be condemned until there is redress.
Darlie Lynn Peck was born on January 4, 1970 in Altoona, Pennsylvania. When she was seven, following her parents’ divorce, she moved to Lubbock, Texas with her mother and siblings. Years later, she settled in the suburb of Rowlett with her husband Darin Routier and their three boys.
Darlie and her boys
On June 6, 1996, she was accused of stabbing to death two of her three sons — 5-year-old Damon and 6-year-old Devon — in the family room of their home while her husband and their infant son Drake were sleeping upstairs.
She was prosecuted for the murder of Damon, the younger of the two boys and convicted of murdering him. She was sentenced to death on February 4, 1997, and is currently on death row in Texas awaiting execution by lethal injection.
At the time, the prosecution’s theory was that she had murdered her sons because of financial difficulties. Her husband owned a small tech company that he operated out of their home and he was used to earning a high income. By all accounts, they were living large. They had a huge two-story home, an SUV, a Jaguar and a boat. The prosecutors painted a picture of a pampered and materialistic woman who was in a state of panic because her luxurious lifestyle was evaporating.
The case was high profile and the image portrayed by the prosecution was picked up by the media and it spread among the public like wildfire.
Greg Davis
The prosecutors in her trial were Assistant District Attorney Greg Davis, Toby Shook and Sherri Wallace. She was tried only for the murder of Damon because under Texas law, if convicted, she would be eligible for the death penalty due to his age.
“That she will be sentenced to die, and at some day in the future, she will be executed. That is our goal in this case”, Greg Davis said early in the game. It was his mantra and the search for the truth was not first and foremost in his mind. His goal was to pin her to the death row wall and fast.
Kerr County Courthouse – Kerrville
Darlie’s defense attorney was Doug Parks and at the time, he decided to file a motion to request a change of venue thinking she could not receive a fair trial in Dallas County.
Judge Mark Tolle granted the request and the trial was moved to Kerrville. It turned out to be a big mistake, given that Kerrville was located in one of Texas’s most conservative counties. Parks had played right in the prosecution’s hands.
He also filed a motion to have her bond, which was half a million dollars on each murder charge, drastically reduced but Judge Tolle denied it. The prosecutor wanted to make sure she would remain in custody so he created the perception that she could be a flight risk or even a threat to society.
Doug Moulder
When Doug Mulder succeeded Parks as her counsel, he quickly filed a motion to have the case returned to Dallas County. Judge Tolle denied the motion, much to the delight of the prosecution.
The State’s case was good and ready with the help of the biased media which had spent the previous six months portraying Darlie as a materialistic evil murderess. Sensationalism sells and the truth often does not.
If there is one truth we should all believe, it is that ‘things are rarely as they seem’ and that we must always question the news and investigate before we let the media or the justice system shove their convenient version of the truth down our collective throats.
Darlie the Southern Belle
Not unlike other defendants vilified by the State and the media, Darlie, to fit their blueprint of the crime, became their materialistic Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind.
She was living in her own Tara and had manipulated her poor husband into giving her the good life. And she was not going to go hungry again so she killed her kids instead. Give me a break Greg Davis!
I spent two years working on a regular basis in Dallas and I discovered that the Texas ladies had their own brand of chic. They tend to wear a lot of jewelry, makeup and their clothes can be flashy or high in ‘originality’. I was surprised to see quite a few wig stores in the city. Around here, wigs are a rare staple unless you are undergoing chemotherapy. But in Texas, the ladies like to mix it up.
Mary Kay Ash
After all, Dallas is the city where Mary Kay lived and established her business. She owned a big building in town and was responsible for boosting the local economy. This lady wore wigs, gold bumblebees, makeup galore, high heels and would have never been caught wearing pants.
In fact, all her female employees were forbidden to wear pants at the office. The rule might have changed after she died in 2001, but that is how this business woman wanted it. God first, family second, career third, but in style.
Even if she preached the empowerment of women, all her sales managers were men. And in interviews, she spoke in a gentle, childish voice even though she was managing an empire.
She rewarded the ladies who achieved the status of sales directors by letting them use a pink company Cadillac they drove proudly around town. Empowerment combined with conformity was the dichotomy of the Dallas ladies at the time.
Mary Kay gave a very useful tip to women: You go to bed with your makeup on and get up before your husband so he will not see you ‘au naturel’. We can see clearly that Darlie was no exception. Beauty and grooming were part of her make-up.
While attending conferences in Dallas, I sometimes felt like a Quaker at the masquerade ball. Some of the ladies would try to share with me their makeup routine, which was comprised of three layers of foundation with powder on top, and their tips to ‘volumize’ hair. I had to decline respectfully. I prefer cotton candy at the fair and preferably not on my head. In spite of their effort to try to primp me up, like poor Cinderella’s godmothers at the ball, I stuck to my own brand of retro chic.
Routier’s home
But they were lovely, strong, independent ladies who enjoyed looking their best and put much effort into it. It made them feel successful and like the ‘whole package.’
Darlie also spoke with a soft, feminized voice and liked to wear jewelry while living in a big house. Who could blame her? They were living the American dream that was sold to them.
She and her husband started as a young couple and built the company from the ground up. She was a bright girl who managed the business and took care of three children she undeniably adored. So spare me the fact that she was materialistic and superficial because she was only towing the party line on that one. You can’t judge a book by its cover if you do not read it.
It was not enough for prosecutor Greg Davis to call her materialistic and superficial; he declared on TV that she was a psychopath. A totally unsubstantiated claim not supported by the state forensic psychiatrist who never took the stand in her trial.
‘’She has been evaluated, and no one has said that,” Dallas attorney Stephen Cooper said, negating Davis’ psychopath label. He and others have been fighting to save her life since her conviction in 1997. But the State of Texas is stubborn and would rather send a woman to her death than admit it might have erred. Making that kind of claim publicly should have brought a lawsuit but instead, it increased Davis’s popularity.
Legal ethics expert Ellen Yaroshefsky declared that referring to Routier as a psychopath with no factual basis to confirm it is “outrageous”. “Particularly, a public servant who is a minister of justice should not be characterizing defendants in this manner. It is unethical to do so,’’ she said. So give me a break Greg Davis!
Crime scene
Darlie vehemently denied killing her two boys and her story was that an intruder came in while she was sleeping on the couch and her two boys were sleeping on the floor. They had fallen asleep while watching TV on a hot night.
He stabbed her and the boys and according to Darlie, ran out through the back. Her screams woke up her husband who rushed downstairs while she was calling 911 to get help for the boys.
When the detectives arrived on the scene, they came to another conclusion after 20 minutes. They determined there had been no intruder. Their investigation was aimed at proving her guilt. She was arrested 12 days later.
The trial lasted nearly a month and the proceedings started with the first witness for the State, Dr. Joanie Mclaine, who explained two defense wounds on Damon’s body, in order to prove he had struggled with his attacker.
The Coroner described the difference between the children’s wounds and Darlie’s ‘hesitation’ wounds, to suggest she had stabbed herself; even if the cut to her neck came 2 millimeters from her carotid artery and could have meant certain death in a matter of minutes.
As an adult, it is reasonable to think that she could have fought harder and avoided some of the intensity of the attack.
They also accused her of punching her own arms because the bruising was not as apparent when she was admitted to the hospital. Bruises do not appear right away and how would she have done this while medicated and always surrounded by people? She also had a huge bone deep cut on her arm. According to the prosecution, it was all her own doing.
Officer Waddel, the first policeman on the scene, testified to the carnage and the jury was shown photos of the crime scene. A paramedic testified that he tended to little Damon who was struggling for air with slashed lungs. The next paramedic who tended to Darlie in the ambulance, testified that she did not ask once about the condition of her children.
At a pre-trial hearing four months before the jury trial, Dr. Janis Parchman-Townsend testified to the wounds Darlie had sustained. Davis after inquiring about these injuries, asked, “At the time that you saw Mrs. Routier, did you know whether or not she had breast implants?’’ The bemused doctor replied, “I didn’t know’’. Davis’ goal was to present Darlie in a negative light and he succeeded.
He did the same when her husband took the stand. He tried to bring up the topic of cosmetic surgery once again to make her appear shallow and vain. Not unlike his Arizona counterpart, Juan Death Martinez, he tried to turn breast implants into accessories to murder. Give me a break Greg Davis!
The next part of the trial was spent tearing apart the accused. They discussed the evidence and told the jury that the only fingerprints uncovered at the scene were Darlie’s and her two children’s. They failed to turn up any evidence of an intruder. It was determined that the crime scene was staged.
The blood found on her nightshirt was attributed to her stabbing and slicing gestures. The last witness was FBI special agent, Al Brantley. He gave all his reasons why he was sure there was no intruder and said that the children were killed by someone they knew.
The prosecution’s case included bloodstain pattern analysis by Tom Bevel. The National Academy of Sciences has stated that this approach to crime scene analysis is “more subjective than scientific.”
Tom Bevel, expert of blood pattern analysis
Bevel’s testimony contradicted the physical evidence; he testified that because bloodstains on the right shoulder area of Darlie’s nightshirt contained a mixture of her blood and each of her two children’s (one stain contained her blood mixed with Devon’s and the other contained her blood mixed with Damon’s) it showed that she had to have been bleeding when the boys were stabbed.
This contradicts the state’s case because of a sock that was found about 75 yards down an alley behind the Routier’s residence. The sock was partly saturated with Devon and Damon’s blood.
This means that by the time the sock was deposited there, the children had already been attacked. However, the state never explained how Darlie could have gotten the sock into the alley without leaving a trail of blood leading to or around where it was found.
As evidenced by the crime scene photographs, she bled a great deal from her injuries. This is a major conundrum because blood from each boy was on the sock and Darlie would have had to have been bleeding when she deposited it. And that famous sock had been in an open basket in the utility room where the intruder supposedly entered. So he could have easily grabbed it and dumped it on his way out.
Lloyd Harrel, who was employed with a private investigation firm, and had worked as a private investigator and for the FBI, testified for the defense that the prosecution’s transcript of Darlie’s 911 call was inaccurate.
He also talked about the secret wiretapping of the boy’s grave site by the police. In his professional opinion, it was an unlawful act because there was no warrant.
Harrel testified that when he met Bevel, the bloodstain analyst made statements “materially different’’ than the ones he made under oath on the stand. The officer responsible for the wiretap would later plead the fifth — another ground for a new trial. How can the jury trust an officer taking the fifth?
The tape made at the grave site turned out to be the lightning rod of the trial. The prosecution was preoccupied with Darlie’s behavior and wanted to catch her doing something wrong. So they illegally wiretapped the events of June 14, which was Devon’s birthday.
He would have turned seven years old on that day so the Routier family and their friends brought balloons and trinkets to decorate the grave. Darlie’s sister had bought cans of Silly String which Darlie sprayed with gusto while smiling and chewing gum. The local media were there and filmed the gathering.
It was played at trial and the jury, during deliberations, watched the 21 second segment of Darlie chewing gum, laughing and spraying Silly String, 8 or 9 times. If they would have bothered to watch the rest of it, they would have seen a family praying and crying together. But they were fixated on this clip.
Prosecutors would claim that such frivolity was not befitting of a mother in mourning. Darlie was taking medication for anxiety and depression, prompting Davis to pose the question, “Are you trying to blame your behavior, shooting Silly String, laughing and giggling on any medication?” Darlie quite rightly replied, “No, I am not blaming my behavior, I don’t think there is anything to blame”.
The prosecutor said publicly that when he saw the Silly String video on the news, he knew she had committed the crime. He said ‘’it disgusted me, it troubled me, it’s inconceivable.’’ Give me a break Greg Davis!
What I see as a big problem in the prosecution’s case is the kitchen knife used in the attack; when they tested it for DNA, they only found Darlie and Damon’s blood on it. Devon’s blood was not on it.
They tried Darlie for the murder of Damon only, knowing full well that their case would have been in jeopardy with only one bloody knife in the house. It might have meant the intruder left with the other one.
Many other elements of the case are troubling and contradictory. The prosecution contended that Darlie cut her own throat while standing over the sink. But the blood on her pillow and its cover supports that her throat was cut while she was sleeping on the couch. Pictures were entered as evidence at trial.
They also found towels in the living room and hallway confirming that she had wet them in the sink, contrary to the state’s theory. Neighbors even saw a strange car parked near the house which supported the intruder’s theory.
It is interesting that they neglected the testimony of neighbors recalling a similar incident that happened 3 months prior to the Routier’s attack.
The chain of custody for her nightshirt was problematic. It was cut and removed by a paramedic and the bloodstains not preserved. Instead, it was placed in bags and taken to the fire station. We don’t even know if it was mixed with Damon’s clothing or not.
There was blood at the bottom of the bag meaning it could have seeped from one area to the other. It should have been inadmissible because of the possibility of cross-contamination.
They did not contemplate that maybe her husband had hired someone to kill his family. Not probable but surely more plausible than his wife cutting her own throat and being covered with deep bruises from her wrists to her underarms. If she was so vain, would she have disfigured herself this way?
They say she suffered from postpartum depression after her third child and that they had financial troubles and frequent fights. Since when does that constitute evidence?
Darin Routier had tried to get someone to rob his house for the Insurance money and even to have his car stolen. Would it be so far fetched to investigate if he wanted his family gone also to collect the money? Or did they ever consider that Darlie could have had a psychotic episode instead of being a cold blood killer? And if you can’t explain how or why an intruder came in, does that mean it did not happen?
Darin Routier
A perusal of their business accounts flies in the face of the prosecution’s theory that they were in dire financial straits.
As far as not paying the mortgage, June was the only month in arrears because of the trauma of the tragedy. And it remained unpaid afterwards as Darin did not want to go back to that house. It went into foreclosure.
The prosecution said there were no fingerprints from the intruder but a bloody one was found on the glass table. They said it was from one of the boys, but conveniently, they were not fingerprinted and had to be exhumed to try to get them.
You can click here to read about the unidentified prints.
And the biggest blunder of the case is the original trial transcript. They found 33,000 mistakes and they were serious ones. The court reporter eventually lost her license. She had even lied to a Judge about the existence of audiotapes of the trial.
She pretended there was only static on them because she did not want to upset the judge and force another trial due to her mistakes. This should have automatically resulted in a new trial.
Juror convinced of Darlie’s innocence
After Darlie was found guilty and given the death penalty, one juror came forward to say he made a mistake. He declared that he felt pressured by other jurors and could not have voted guilty if he had seen photos of her injuries not shown at trial.
The testimony of some of the nurses who attended to Darlie was also suspect. They gathered in the prosecutor’s office for the usual pretrial meeting and then testified that she was cold and unfeeling.
Instead of using the same expressions written in their notes, like a chorus, they all went with the word ‘whining’ instead of weeping and appeared to try to underplay her emotions.
The notes were written on the spot before they knew that she was accused of murdering her children, so ask yourself which one is the most truthful.
The nurse’s notes kept at the station told a different story; it was written that she was very tearful and weeping continuously. Click to read about their testimony.
So with no expert testimony about Darlie being unlikely to pose a future danger, the jury gave her death instead of a life sentence.
Almost 17 years have passed since Darlie was sentenced to die and there have been no sign of the psychopathy claimed by the then-Dallas Country Assistant District Attorney Greg Davis. And she still claims her innocence.
Every morning on death row, Darlie starts the day with Scripture reading and prayers with other inmates. She tries to help them as much as she can with writing or any other task she can be useful at. She makes the best of a bad situation.
Her family, supporters and defense team soldier on and remain hopeful she will be eventually set free. Her former husband has always believed in her innocence. He hung on for the longest time but finally filed for divorce in 2011 to move on from the ‘limbo’ they were in since her arrest.
Davis was right about one thing; this Southern belle does have a lot in common with Scarlett O’Hara. Resourceful and strong and not unlike the movie character, she has raised herself above adversity. Who could forget the classic old clip of Carol Burnett’s sketch as Scarlett going down the stairs of Tara wearing a curtain dress with the rod on her shoulders and declaring, “I saw it in a window and I just couldn’t resist.’’
Not unlike Scarlett making herself a dress out of curtains during hard times, Darlie has managed, even on death row, to keep her dignity and to take pictures of herself that could pass for glamour shots, while wearing her white prison jumpsuit.
She is allowed to buy basic beauty products at the commissary and every morning, she makes sure to keep her spirits up by doing her hair and makeup. Some would call it vain, I call it survival.
She is a survivor and she will not be ‘Gone with the Wind.’ Let’s hope she eventually gets a chance to hug her son Drake who was diagnosed with leukemia. There was plenty of reasonable doubt in this case and she deserved a fair trial.
And frankly my dear Greg Davis, many of us do give a damn!
Greg Davis was indicted in Collin County by a grand jury in 2010 on a charge of tampering with a governmental record, a state jail felony punishable by up to two years in jail. State District Judge David Brabham granted the motion to quash. Apparently, the indictment wording was too vague. Davis declined to comment. Davis was not retained by District Attorney Greg Willis who took over. He was promoted to First Assistant District Attorney of McLennan County in 2013.
According to Geoffrey Hazard, considered a leading national expert on ethics in the legal profession, “The public should have been shocked at Davis’s courtroom behavior. Hazard said that if Davis had tried such tactics in California where judges have exceptionally high professional standards, he would not have gotten into the second sentence with that.’’
“You’ve got a zoo there,’’ he said, referring to the Routier trial.
Nevertheless, Davis’ tactics went largely unchallenged by the judge – perhaps because at times he may not even have been aware of them. It was detailed in more than 400 pages of copious, handwritten trial notes that Tolle appeared to fall sleep at least 16 times while Routier was on trial.
Drake Routier now in remission
I believed darlie was not guilty from the start. The police and prosecution framed this woman and closed the case. I believe it makes perfect sense that her husband did it.
I think they should have at least explored other possibilities. When an investigation zooms instantly one a suspect, it is doomed to fail.
So he did it, then went back upstairs grom the garage he ran into according to darlie.tell how he did it then got back in bed?
I believe fully in her guilt. She hired her own experts to refute the states experts but didn’t have a single one of them testify on her behalf because her experts came to the same conclusion as the states did, that Darlie did it and staged the scene. Physical evidence does not lie.
You are entitled to your opinion, but she had experts testifying on her behalf. What about Lloyd Harrel? This expert for the defense debunked the prosecution’s theory on many aspects. A physician also testified about the seriousness of her injuries. And the unfairness of the silly string video being played for the jurors speaks for itself. A juror even said if he had seen photos of injuries, he would have voted not guilty. It was a trial by media and a rush to judgement. It is the point of the article.
Lloyd Harrel was a private investigator, not an “expert”. Lol. Obviously, he didn’t ‘debunk’ anything because the jury came back with a unanimous guilty verdict. Three physician’s concurred that Darlie’s injuries were superficial. The boys were stabbed, Darlie was slashed. The juror you cite, Charlie Samford, has since reneged, and is back in the Darlie is guilty camp. Toby Shook showed the bruise photo’s and admitted them into evidence when questioning Dr Santos. All in the transcripts.
You’ll have to do better than re-argue evidence that has already been decided on. The facts were weighed, and Darlie was found guilty. That verdict has survived all challenges for 23 years. As for the silly string tape, wo was it that called the media? It was Darlie. Even though she was read her rights less than a week ago, she decided she was going to not remain silent. She acknowledged her words and actions can be used against her.
”Lloyd Harrel, who was employed with a private investigation firm, and had worked as a private investigator and for the FBI, testified for the defense that the prosecution’s transcript of Darlie’s 911 call was inaccurate.
He also talked about the secret wiretapping of the boy’s grave site by the police. In his professional opinion, it was an unlawful act because there was no warrant.” He testified as such. Not describing him as an expert is your opinion. Even if the cops said it was legal and it was dismissed, in June 1998, Routier’s mother and husband filed a lawsuit accusing the police detectives and a prosecutor of invading their privacy.
It has nothing to do with the interview they gave to KXAS-TV (NBC5) who recorded the celebration and interviewed the couple, who said they had nothing to hide. The jurors played only the silly string part over and over. It shows how moronic they were. The part where they were mourning and crying was ignored and taped by the cops. When a police officer pleads the fifth, you know there is something rotten happening.
San Antonio chief medical examiner Vincent DiMaio testified that the wound to Routier’s neck came within two millimiters
of her carotid artery and that it was not consistent with the self-inflicted wounds he had seen in the past. That differed from the assertions of her treating physicians, who had told police officials that the wounds might have been self-inflicted
And if you really want to LOL about a death penalty case, check Bevel’s reputation and how ridiculous his findings were.
The juror was Charlie Sanford. He signed an affidavit. Do you have his new affidavit? And I do not really care about what the jurors had to say anyway after realizing that they were swayed by the media and silly string. It is not like they were paying attention to the case anyway.
You seem to ignore the rest of the blog, and it was written years ago. A lot has happened since to make it even more doubtful. I do not understand why some people are so against a retrial or looking at the evidence and circumstances through more impartial eyes.
The signed partnership with the Innocence Project means that Routier’s defense efforts have doubled and there is now financial backing for those efforts. The appellate team lawyers, who have worked pro bono on the case for years, have struggled to raise the money needed for all of the DNA testing they won the right to do.
We shall see.
There is zero evidence of an intruder. She hired Terry Labor (DNA Blood Spatter Expert) & Bart Epstein (Trace Evidence Analyst) to refute the States finding but they could not, so he team never called them to the stand. The scene was definitely staged, the evidence and experts proved that, she stayed on the phone rinsing blood in the sink and wiping the cabinets, the luminol proved that. Her changing her stories so much along with the letters from jail that she wrote saying she knew who did it and it would all come out. There is just far too much evidence against her, in my opinion, for me to think her innocent.
As I said in earlier comment, you are absolutely entitled to your opinion. My article is about the trial and not experts that were not called or letters that came afterward. It focuses on the facts of the case and the trial. There is plenty to suggest an intruder and the blood spatters and evidence were strongly contested at trial. Darlie needs a fair trial. Every American Citizen should be entitled to due process. You can’t have jurors listen to silly string tapes to decide the fate of a defendant.
Anon says
February 22, 2015 at 5:28 pm
There is zero evidence of an intruder. She hired Terry Labor (DNA Blood Spatter Expert) & Bart Epstein (Trace Evidence Analyst) to refute the States finding but they could not, so he team never called them to the stand. The scene was definitely staged, the evidence and experts proved that, she stayed on the phone rinsing blood in the sink and wiping the cabinets, the luminol proved that. Her changing her stories so much along with the letters from jail that she wrote saying she knew who did it and it would all come out. There is just far too much evidence against her, in my opinion, for me to think her innocent
______
The first attorney representing Darlie , I think his name was Parks, was the one who hired Labor and Epstein….Unfortunately, at that same time. her family was convinced that a private atty named Mulder was the best approach to take her case….When Mulder met with Labor and Epstein, they told him about their findings and that they were looking at Darin too, according to blood splatter and forensic evidence. Mulder had recently met with Darin briefly who had requested that they would hire Mulder as long as he would keep Darin out of the case to avoid all of the circus. Therefore, Mulder fired Labor and Epstein, stating he could handle the evidence himself….plus, Mulder, Darlie’s Mom, and Darin had violated a Gag Order when they met together. Oh well, didn’t matter, Darin still got his way, and was left out of the suspect list as promised by Mulder per Darin’s request. As for the sink, she was running back and forth getting towels for the boys’ stab wounds AS REQUESTED BY DARIN. IT’S ON THE 911 TAPE, YOU CAN HEAR HIM IN THE BACKGROUND REPEATEDLY TELLING HER TO GET MORE TOWELS. He has even stated this fact in every interview….in fact, because of that, Officer Waddell, who was the first Officer to arrive, lied about a lot of things for the Prosecution including when he testified that Darlie did nothing for her children, and that she remained in one spot except to show him to the utility room.
I accidentally copied and pasted Anon’s comment before mine. It won’t look right. My reply begins with “The first atty representing Darlie
Laber and Epstein could debunk the state but were not called in by Mulder to save money.
https://hcnews.com/pages/justice_for_all/forensics-expert-disagrees-with-states-version-of-events-in-routier-case/
There was zero evidence of an intruder yet there was evidence and testimony that there was an attempted breakin within 5 miles of the Routier home the same night.
She didn’t change her story. Staged scene? You know that how?
Juror # 8 is a sad lonely old spinster with her 15 minutes of fame and this trial is surely the most exciting thing to ever happen in her sad life.
Who spends 2 k on implants? Lots of women. Who wears 10 rings? Um lots of women. Flashy clothes? Again lots of women. “I would never” well lady one look at your picture on social media clearly shows you’ve never picked up an eyeliner or compact.
I fully believe in her guilt however I would love for her to have another trial to put all of this to bed.
I know your comment is directed at Marilyn, but allow me to say that they would show you a video proving Darlie’s innocence and you would still say she is guilty and would never put this to bed. You are obsessed my dear Jez. You are all over social media trying to make her look and sound guilty. You twist everything to arrive at your own conclusions. If you could not see how unfair her trial was and how sadistic Greg Davis was in his pursuit of this young mother, you are in his league. As I told you before, a mother who would murder her kids this way, would be an individual with mental health problems and not a death row candidate. Any which way you look at this case, Davis was wrong.
“All of this” are rumors, innuendos and flat out lies. Everything factual was covered at trial and nothing has ever been presented in her appeals that would even remotely point to actual innocence.
Rumors, innuendos and flat out lies just about describe as much of the trial.
Love the way you worded this 😁 true that !
Lloyd Harrell didn’t testify for the defense at trial. He was disqualified because he sat in the courtroom, knowing that he was on the witness list. He was that stupid.
Transcript of trial testimony of Lloyd Harrell: https://darliefacts.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/65_lloyd-harrell.pdf
This is a fantastic article. I lived in Dallas when these murders occurred and remember the media frenzy surrounding the trial. I personally believe a gross miscarriage of justice has occurred here. No matter how people feel about Darlie Routier’s guilt or innocence, surely everyone can agree that a new trial or, at the very least, new testing and evaluation of key evidence is warranted in this case.
Thank you Sharyl. I couldn’t agree with you more. It was a miscarriage of justice rendered possible by the media and a very ambitious and twisted prosecutor. A remedy should be granted.
My comment was in response to your comment at the bottom. I just said I too would like her to get a new trial tho I think she’s guilty so why the negative comment to me? I can’t win for losing with her fans, can I?
I am not a fan. I write about court cases and the trouble with justice. I also believe in restorative justice. You wrote several comments on this site through the years, and on All things crime blog and they are all against Routier. So excuse me for doubting that a verdict of not guilty rendered through a new trial would satisfy your need for bashing this poor girl over and over again.
I want justice for Damon and Devon to see their murderer put to death. I believe they died knowing it was their mother killing them. I won’t apologize for that. Carry on. I won’t post here again.
I am so tired of this mantra. It is not for the victims. It is to exert your own brand of revenge on a woman you don’t even know and who happened to be their loving mother. Anyone thinking that putting their mother to death, whatever the circumstances were, would be justice, has a warped sense of values. They were not your boys, they were hers. Maybe you should concern yourself with your own family troubles.
I’m pleased that Jez has decided to discontinue her vendetta on this site. There are so many sites out there that love to revel in the imagery of state-sanctioned/state funded murder. The gorier the better. Ahhh the nostalgia of the Roman arenas!!
It is disquieting to me to hear people go on and on about wanting death for another person, using the guise of “justice” for the victims. It feels like a disturbed person that wants to live out their violent fantasies vicariously through the death penalty.
I often wonder how much energy these vengeance obsessed individuals put out in their daily lives helping and supporting people who are at risk of being the victims they claim to care so much about. Do they care at all about these people while they are alive? Or are they only of interest once they are dead and imbued with the lofty ‘victim’ title?
Maybe these lovers of the death penalty should spend more time caring about other people while they are still breathing, possibly mentoring abused children, volunteering in homeless shelters, working with victims of trafficking… the possibilities of averting someone from becoming a victim are endless.
Again Lise, thank you for your humanity. I hope it is contagious!!
When you pay a traffic fine do you feel like the court is making you pay that fine out of revenge or some twisted, sick excuse to take your money? Or do you think that your payment of the fine is simply the court enforcing a law and is holding you accountable and responsible for your actions? I don’t feel an urge to get revenge, don’t feel anger or hatred towards her, or anything close. The death penalty isn’t about revenge or hatred at all. Its about paying your fine. The fines go up in proportion to the severity of the law that you broke. You learn this when you learn to drive and get your first ticket. $65 for no turn signal in a turn lane even! But speeding in a school zone will get you a huge fine! Do you know that if youre speeding more than 20 mph over the speed limit that its a mandatory 5 days in jail?! Assault will get you jail time. So will murder. Murder of children will get you some serious time. Its all about paying your fine, being responsible and accountable for your actions.
You are joking, right? So Darlie needs to pay a fine for exceeding the speed limit? She denies killing her children so there is no fine to have. Criminal cases is not traffic court where you can easily prove if people followed the law or not. And even then, you can contest your ticket.
If you look at the justice system carefully, you realize that people cop a plea for murder or get very different sentencing for the same crimes. It depends on so many factors. Plus, mitigation factors are important. Fortunately for traffic violators, the media does not post their picture and ask for their head on a platter; except in cases of drunk driving that become high profile.
The death penalty has been abolished in most civilized countries for a reason. The error margin is too high and it is uncivilized. You can’t even remotely compare traffic and murder cases.
Uncivilized? The way she murdered the boys was uncivilized. Traffic tickets was an example of how any person needs to take responsibility and accountability for their actions. I used the example for the short thinkers in the group. Responsibility and accountability are your key words here. As simple as it sounds and you can still take it out of context. The death penalty is not for revenge. She knew what the penalty was for killing children. The evidence was more than enough to prove her guilt. She needs to pay her fine for the cold blooded murder of two innocent children.
Uncivilized: not considered to be socially, culturally, or morally advanced. Society has time to reflect on their system and it reflects how advanced they are.
Criminals are often the product of their upbringing or the result of their mental, social or emotional flaws. They often do not have the opportunity to reflect on their actions.
What was done to the boys was horrible, but we cannot tell for sure who did it and why. If it was their mother, it would certainly not mean that she was uncivilized. It would mean that she was ill and snapped, which appears impossible in this case considering that you could not find one soul to say that she was nothing but a loving and dedicated mom. She showed signs of postpartum depression and her journals indicated some low points where she considered harming herself, but never her family. She was on the mend. So either way, the monster theory, does not fit.
” It would mean that she was ill and snapped, which appears impossible in this case considering that you could not find one soul to say that she was nothing but a loving and dedicated mom”… Yes, there was more than one soul that said she WAS less than loving and dedicated. Her good friend Mercedes Adams just to start. You should do some serious reading on this case. Then I could discuss rather than have to educate you on the case. Your defense of her makes no sense.
I have had enough of your ridiculous and vengeful comments that sound like you were schooled at the Bryan St-John’s Hate Academy. Talking about educating yourself; Mercedes never testified at trial for a reason: she never said those comments. I read her comments and saw screen shots. She says that Darlie was a great mother and friend and that the comments contained in the Barb Davis book were pure fiction. The author now believes in Darlie’s innocence so it’s a moot point. The only thing she said publicly that could be perceived in a negative light is that Darlie’s attorneys were kind of trying to influence her about what happened on the couch with the intruder, as reported to her by Darlie. That’s it.
If you had bothered reading my blog, you would realize that I did some serious objective research on the case and I continue to do so. Instead of sticking with the media garbage going around, try to see this case for what it is: a complicated one that is not black and white. I never feel the need to proclaim the innocence or the guilt of a defendant, especially when the prosecution and media played dirty and as demonstrated in your comments, most readers are uninformed or try to spin what they hear because of their hatred for a stranger (under the guise of justice for the poor victims). It must be toxic to live this way.
I will not post any of your other comments. This is a restorative justice site. Not a mean girls Club.
No, I wasn’t joking. I was just saying that if you commit a crime, you need to pay for it. Whatever the penalty that has been set. Such as a traffic ticket. Just using that as an example because of “short thinkers”. You have to take responsibility for your actions, you have to be held accountable. The death penalty is for heinous killings, such as killing a child. The evidence was more than enough to convict her. She knew the punishment for capital murder in Texas is death. Everybody in Texas and 99% of the rest of America knows that. She needs to be held accountable. She needs to be responsible for her actions.
I get what you are saying, but the penalty set in her case is the most drastic that exists on this planet and Darlie maintains her innocence.
Nobody is denying that people who commit crimes have to answer to the justice system that represents society and the need to keep us safe.
The death penalty should not even be on the table, but unfortunately, some states maintains this barbaric practice. Not that life without parole is any better but this is another subject.
I do not believe that Darlie received a fair trial. The media campaign and rush to judgement clouded the case. How would you punish a loving mother who allegedly murdered her own boys? That makes no sense. The entire justice system is screwed up. She is in prison since a long time and if you believe her to be guilty, that should be more than enough and she should be released. She did pay the piper.
I happen to believe (like so many others) that there is plenty of reasonable doubt and that she should get another trial. There is nothing easy or simple about this case or any other criminal case and the system should not be revenge based, but aimed at rehabilitation.
I do not get the glee that some people feel at seeing others being punished and suffer.
No rational person can say with the level of certainty that her opponents do, that she is guilty. For those who aparently don’t understand, even supporters of the death penalty do not advocate using it in cases in which there is so much ambiguity as to guilt or innocence as there is here. I have come to the conclusion, from reading comments here and elsewhere, that opponents of Darlie are exclusively unthinking people, impossible to reason with, who do not understand the basics of civility and decency that common people take for granted.
The widespread misconduct in this case seems to be about much more than one overly-zealous prosecutor, and the absence of a plausible explanation as to why so many individuals in the process would assist in covering up the truth is perhaps why some are willing to accept her guilt. The most likely explanation is that the crime was perpetrated by members of a little-known, underground network of Satanists which has key individuals in law enforcement and other powerful areas of society. This sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, but in fact, this network was investigated and exposed by the late Ted Gunderson, former FBI agent and head of the Los Angeles FBI division. After retiring, he exposed this network when researching cases in which other Satanists and pedophiles abducted and abused children, sometimes sacrificing them in rituals, and were subsequently protected from prosecution by law enforcement. Vietnam war hero and former senator John DeCamp also exposed this network in his book “The Franklin Coverup,” as did investigative journalist Nick Bryant, who has formerly written articles for The New York Times, in his book “The Franklin Scandal.” It is no mere coincidence that Darlie Routier’s children were killed on June 6th, 1996 (that is, on 6/6/96).
Many cases don’t have proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In this instance, the media, the police and Davis worked together to tip the scales in their favor. The defense also failed in some way because one of the jurors said that he would have voted not guilty, had he seen some of the photos of Darlie’s injuries not introduced at trial. The change of venue was also a big mistake.
It was a huge FAIL and rush to judgment. When you think that the jury watched the silly string video clip many times and based their decision on that, you realize how tainted they were to begin with.
I have never heard of the Satanist theory, but unless they show evidence of it being related to the case, it is going nowhere.
She has a chance with DNA testing or simply based on prosecutorial misconduct. I am suprised this case was not thrown out. It is Texas so we cannot expect them to admit any kind of error.
Darlie is guilty. There was no intruder, there were no satanists, LOL. All the evidence in that home points to only one person Darlie. You don’t get your boys’ blood on the shoulders and the back of the garment you are wearing unless you held the knife in your hands. Not one other blood spatter analyst has refuted these findings in 19 years. A fibre and rubber dust from the screen found on her own bread knife, oops Darlie forgot to rinse that. The DNA tests to date prove there is only Darlie’s blood, Damon’s blood and Devon’s blood. Nothing from any intruder. If he left blood fingerprints, how’d he get out of that house without leaving a drop of blood outside anywhere? She’s guilty, she’s been tried and found guilty by a jury of her peers. All the photos of her injuries were not only given to the jury but were discussed at trial, they were the focus of her defense. Mulder is an excellent attorney but when you have a guilty as sin client, there is not much you can do. Don’t waste your time on Darlie, she’s guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and she’s paying for it.
How do you explain the broken glass, but no cuts on her feet? She claims she ran through that area after the intruder. How do you explain a person sleeping through an attack that leaves that many bruises to their arms? How do you defend yourself like that, when you are asleep. She said she woke up and saw the intruder leaving, never saw his face….then in another statement said she fought with him. What is true, and what is a lie? I ask these questions and never get an explanation from her supporters. These unexplained truths result in my opinion of guilt. Unless you can explain these things, it remains guilty.
CNN had Death Row Stories this week and they took on the Routier’s case. And there is an older link of experts disagreeing with the crime scene evidence. Photos are clearly different and you can see that the ‘experts’ on the scene displaced objects, glass, etc. https://hcnews.com/pages/justice_for_all/forensics-expert-disagrees-with-states-version-of-events-in-routier-case/
I have to say that my gut feeling is that she is a psychopath ad they are very difficult to identify, there are patterns in her life that make me very suspicious of her having a lack of conscience. Does it make her guilty? No, but it is something that strongly jumped out at me in reading numerous things and could well explain a motive.
Greg Davis also had a gut feeling and liked to call her a psychopath in the media, but she was never diagnosed as such. She was tested and to this day, there is nothing official or scientific to indicate that she is.
Psychopaths usually exhibit antisocial behavior at a young age and Darlie never did. She was not angry and didn’t show a lack of empathy. She was depressed after her third child, but nothing else.
What matters most is evidence and this case is very shaky. She needs a new trial.
We dont need crime scene photos to prove her guilt. Photos weren’t the “smoking gun” in this case. The absence of cuts on her feet from the broken glass, her changing story i.e. the intruder was on top of her, the intruder was walking away and she ran after him, no recollection of a fight, then she said she fought with him but never saw his face, no explanation for the bruises oh wait I did fight with him, she slept through an intruder slicing her neck and killing her sons but awakens when an infant turns over in his crib, the list goes on and on. Not one supporter to this day can explain away the broken glass and no cuts on Darlies feet, not one. The lies about her taking a polygraph by her mother, to keep it quiet in case it didn’t pan out like they thought…all of this and no evidence of an intruder. None of the questionable prints EXCLUDES Darlie. But the real question I always ask, Why hasn’t she pleaded for the capture of the killer/killers (she cant make up her mind how many)? Not even a family member has expressed outrage that an alleged child killer is on the loose, nobody….Her children were never first and foremost, from her 911 call all the way to her cell, she has always put her own welfare first. She’s at peace she claims. How could a mother of two murdered children be at peace? I pray for her, that she confesses her sins to God and accepts Him very soon.
You obviously didn’t read the link I posted or researched the case to come up with such comments. Photos of the crime scene showing that investigators moved the knife and other important pieces of evidence means that we cannot rely on what we see. The evidence is the smoking gun. The fact that she was confused about the intruder and said intruders on the 911 call was explained countless times and not perceived as unusual considering the trauma.
She had no cuts because she didn’t walk on the glass. It was moved and not broken on the ground. The same thing happened with the vacuum cleaner. They presented unreliable evidence of the crime scene at trial. The blood spatter expert was a joke and screwed up in several other cases.
Darlie and her mother had no time to concentrate on finding the killer. She was in the hospital, buried her boys and then arrested. They had to pull all their resources to cover her defense. They did express their desire to find the guilty party countless times. They have expressed outrage.
She yells on the 911 call that her boys are dying and is begging for help. The bloody print on the living room table excludes Darlie.
She’s at peace because she claims her innocence. She’s not at peace with losing her boys. She is also very worried about her boy who has cancer.
There was reasonable doubt. She had an unfair trial and she deserves a new one. Greg Davis wanted a notch on his death penalty belt. Davis’ own brother has doubts about Darlie’s guilt and knows his brother just wanted to win and played dirty.
I am interested in due process and facts and it obviously was a rush to judgement. I am leaving God out of this one and would like to hear what experts have to say about the real evidence, and not Greg Davis’ fantasies. Your mind is obviously made up. I want her to get a fair shot.
If you read the trial transcripts all the way through you will see that there is no doubt of her guilt. Darley supporters here are all hung up on Greg Davis saying she was a psychopath. Right or wrong that statement is not what convicted her and the silly string video is not what convicted her either. The Darlie supporters base that opinion on one YouTube posted interview with one of 12 jurors that felt the silly string video was the deciding factor. The other 11 jurors have stated that there was no evidence shown by the defense of an intruder and they could not show that she didn’t do this. The prosecution had the “burden of proof” and they were able to just that. They proved Darlie did this beyond reasonable doubt. It’s an open and shut case. For the past 19 years neither she nor her family and other supporters have been able to prove anything to the contrary to warrant her innocence or sufficient cause for a retrial. Texas needs to proceed forward and carry out the death penalty on her. Justice for those poor children needs to be finally served.
This article is about the trial and due process. I will not talk on behalf of Darlie’s supporters, but in support of the blog I wrote after researching the case.
Let’s talk about the original trial transcript – it contained 33,000 errors. Not minor ones. In some instances, a yes should have been a no. One of the questions was: Was the door to the garage locked? The transcript said, yes when it should have said, no.
When 12 jurors watch a silly string video 8 times and decide on the character of a defendant, it matters. The opinion of one juror matters when he’s saying he was pressured by the others and if he had seen photos of her injuries where she’s covered with bruises, it would have changed his mind.
The other 11 jurors bought the media campaign and believed Greg Davis, that’s a fact. The defense didn’t have to demonstrate that there was an intruder. They didn’t have to do anything. The defense didn’t have to show that Darlie didn’t do it. The prosecution had the burden of proof and they didn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she did it. How could they?
The police, the detectives and the crime scene specialists quickly started to make a case against her.
Greg Davis and the media lynched her.
Being called a sociopath on TV by a crooked prosecutor matters. There is plenty to revisit in this case. She deserves a new trial. I have outlined in my blog all the inconsistencies and it’s enough to require a do-over
I am against the death penalty. Even if I agreed, I would never put this woman to death. She had no priors and from all accounts, was a good mother. Justice would not be served this way.
You should Watch the Herzog documentary about the case. The link is at the top of the blog.
I am on the fence about her guilt. I believe she does deserve a new trial. That being said, some things that do bother me are: why did she follow the intruder? What was she going to do? Why didn’t she scream out for her husband instead of getting up and follow the intruder? Why pick up the knife just to lay it on the counter? Why?? I listened to the 911 tape. What really bothered me is how her voiced changed when she was talking to her husband. She went from sounding very emotional to downright sharp and nasty when she told Darin” Someone came in here and did this Daren!” What did he say to her to make her say that?
These are just a few of the questions that bother me.
She was tried on her character, not on evidence. She was tried on her emotions or lack of, not on facts.
I would never want this women to be put to death based on the evidence presented at her trial. There is reasonable doubt. Could have been her husband or someone he hired.
She, in my opinion, had accepted their MURDERS, entirely to quickly & rapidly. There was no stages of norm of logical stages of coming to terms with what happen. She was gleeful, happy, snapping on that chewing gum, as if her child was ALIVE, and present at his birthday party. i have two kids, if anything like this happened to them when they were little, i would have to be put away, i would not want to live without them. I’m not sure how i would be able to go on, especially if they had been murdered! I can not wrap my head around why someone would want to come in , use a knife from the house inside, walk past an adult and start stabbing little children?? stabbing them right in the chest where they would surely die, why didn’t they stab her in the chest to ensure, HER death? And HOW, could she, SLEEP, through the, ENTIRE, attack, including her own, but awakes when her son, taps her on the shoulder, just defies all logic, as we know it to be and why are there so many times where she is smiling or laughing & seemingly without a care in the world? that is not the behavior of mother or woman destroyed by the MURDERS of her two young children & an near “alleged” left for dead, attack on herself. Where is the motive to kill two sleeping babies??? The only time I’ve seen her show any type of crushed emotion, is in her mug shot, she’s showing emotion, then. Darlie, exhibited she was ready to move on with her life…go one her scheduled vacations/trips, they had planned, bc her children were up there having the best party or time of their lives, or Whatever she said at the interview at the gravesite. i AM NOT convinced of her innocence.
You don’t have to be convinced of her innocence to agree that she had an unfair trial. She didn’t accept the murders quickly. We know now that the silly string video shown to the jury was much longer and showed her crying and mourning. Her demeanor could be explained by the meds she was on. The gum was because of the dry mouth caused by the anti-anxiety pills she was taking. It is very difficult to judge someone going through this kind of tragedy. You might react differently, but it does not represent evidence of guilt.
The psychiatrist said she might simply have blocked some of the events. The sleeping part is not definite. Once again, hard to imagine that all of a sudden, she got up and stabbed her boys and herself. And if she did, it would not constitute first degree murder, but snapping. And the court never even considered the possibility. Her husband, his parents and her own family who knew her well could never imagine she would attack her beloved boys. It’s not because it’s improbable that a stranger did this that we have to find her guilty. Nothing is impossible.
We cannot fall into the trap of going by emotions. This case has to be tried on evidence alone.
Why so much resistance to retrying someone who is sentenced to death with so little factual evidence and so many clear examples of misconduct by the prosecution? I am referring to some of the comments left on this blog… it seems no matter how many times the author reiterates that the subject at hand is not guilt or innocence but the right of all people to receive a fair trial, this is being missed by some readers.
Human beings are complex. What constitutes ‘normal’ emotions? We see what we want to see to when it comes to other people’s reactions. I imagine that if Darlie had completely shut down into a catatonic state after losing her children some would have interpreted that as clear evidence of a guilty conscience.
So some would call her a psychopath. Who cares? Psychopaths don’t kill any more often than people without this label.
Since the comments are moderated and Lise has clearly stated she won’t publish hateful ones I can only shudder at the image of the ones that don’t make it. Thank you for sparing us. The entire internet would benefit from your example. Free speech is one thing, and I strongly support it, hate and bullying are another thing entirely. I do not have any fear at all of what a fair trial would mean to Darlie. Innocent or guilty she is entitled to one and has yet to be allowed it.
Thank you for this comment Lori. I am shocked when I get comments asking for examples of misconduct and unfair trial. Didn’t they read the article before commenting? People like to throw the term psychopath around these days. She is in jail for years and was never assessed as one. That’s good enough for me. This is not the point. Everyone deserves a fair trial, even the ones with personality disorders.
I’ve went back and forth with this case for years. That in itself expresses reasonable doubt on my part and a definite discomfort with her death sentence. I do think the trial wasn’t fair and her representation lacking in their efforts, or at least they made big mistakes. Lately I’ve come to believe it’s quite possible she did not do this. She has a troubling personality to outsiders-those who don’t know her personally that is. She does appear to be vain. However, that does not make her a killer, it simply makes her vain and too much has been made of this trait which is pretty common on the whole for many females. The grave video is hard to understand for those of us who have children, but again, it isn’t the decider of guilt (or it shouldn’t have been).
As I’ve gotten older and studied true crime, I have come to adjust my younger idealistic image of the justice system. There was a tendency for me to believe the media’s presentation of things and to think the justice system was always honest. Unfortunately, that’s just all wrong. Neither of those things are always or even often the case. Nowadays when I look at cases wherein a person is arrested in a very short period after a crime (without some kind of ‘smoking gun irrefutable evidence’ for all to see), I realize that it means they in no way had time to run down other scenarios or suspects. How could they? It means they had tunnel vision and that it’s very possible that they are backing into a conclusion instead of following the evidence to a conclusion. They are shaping the evidence to fit their scenario rather than the other way around.
This case has to be an example of that when it’s admitted that the crime scene investigator made up his mind in 20 minutes. He went into it with the intent of interpreting the evidence in such a way to point to Darlie Routier. We were presented with a theory of a crime, nothing more. The theory is plausible and was made more plausible by interpreting the evidence to support the theory. When this happens and when there are no other plausible countering theories presented, a person is naturally inclined to believe it. Often in such scenarios evidence that thwarts the theory is disregarded or dismissed as insignificant, or even hidden or suppressed, known in the industry as “bad evidence”. That such a phrase is coined should trouble anyone truly interested in fair justice. People don’t seem to care about it when it’s happening to another person who has been painted to appear very guilty, not realizing that this could happen to anyone. We all live in a home with others, have friends, co workers, etc. If something happens to someone in your home, your work, or at a home you were visiting and you were there at some point, this could happen to you. And how well will you hold up if you don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars for an expensive defense team and when they start aiming a microscope at your life past and present? Are there things that might look bad to others, things that could be misinterpreted, misunderstood or things you are ashamed you said or did in the whole of your life? Will you act “guilty” when accused? How do you appear “innocent” to others? How do you sound ‘innocent’? Is there a guidebook?
Though the scenario that says Darlie is guilty sounds convincing, aren’t there other scenarios that could work as well? Can we make evidence support them if we really want to? For example, Darlie says she was attacked on the couch. We were told there was no blood there, but if you probe into the case this is an outright lie. There was blood there and blood on a pillow, plus a great deal of this blood was obviously absorbed into her nightshirt. It is said she told a couple of different stories, first that she woke up fighting a man and another that Damon woke her and she saw a man running. Because of this it’s assumed she’s lying, that only one could be true. But here’s a scenario I can come up with (and I’m not even a highly paid attorney) to make both true. Let’s say someone has broken in to the Routier home after seeing Darlie lying on the couch sleeping from windows. There were reports of other break ins and plenty of rapes in history that happened just this way. He did not see children sleeping on the floor, or perhaps didn’t care. He grabs a sock for either his hand or to use as a gag from the basket in the kitchen. In fact there were reports in the area at the relative time period of a suspect doing this. There is also a rape/murder where a man used victims socks and a knife from the home to kill a young girl in her sleep years before in Ft. Worth. This is a different case and suspect than the person eventually arrested in the sock rapes. The point is it is not an unprecendented behavior. He approaches quietly and crawls atop her, placing his socked hand or the sock in his hand over her mouth and nose and places the knife he also grabbed against her throat. She fights him when she awakes causing him to cut her throat in this jagged, interrupted manner. This fight causes the bruises and her knife wounds. He smothers her out. Her cries are muffled as he has the sock covering her mouth and nose until she loses consciousness. It’s said her mouth was sore and she had lacerations in her mouth (from the pressure from her own teeth). He removes her panties, maybe he attempts to rape her, maybe he does rape her. The rape kit wasn’t tested as far as I know. The kids (or just Damon) wake while this is happening. This panics him, he gets off of her and stabs Damon (he has defense wounds, maybe Devon did not wake but he stabs him anyway, or he woke but didn’t move. Result the same, perp stabs him to death). Something no one has considered is that his attack on the children could be general panic, or it could mean that the children knew him in some capacity, in which case he felt he had to kill them. The fact that he failed to kill Darlie doesn’t mean he didn’t intend to do so or think he may have. Or he just felt he lost control and it was best to flee at that point. The killing I mentioned above in Ft. Worth turned out to be a 17 year old next door neighbor that shocked a lot of people. Eventually, Darlie wakes from unconsciousness when Damon is touching her and calling out to her. She sees him in the process of fleeing after this murder of children. Her memory is very foggy because she had been choked or smothered unconscious, plus she has been losing blood. It makes sense her memory would be affected and she may have vague recollections of both incidents. She did awake twice, once when being attacked from sleep, secondly after losing consciousness. After surgery and anesthesia, she has lost more memory of events. That the kids were stabbed after her fits evidence even according to the prosecution. Perhaps the killer wielding the knife during the children’s attack sprayed blood on Darlie from them, perhaps the drops of blood are from his knife as he walks away or moves about the crime scene. He could have even wiped blood on her night shirt at some point. We don’t know if she was on her back, her side or stomach to understand if the knife threw cast off (while the man or just after the man stabbed the boys) onto Darlie’s night shirt.
The killer could have knocked over the vacuum. Darlie or first responders could have knocked it over in the chaos and not recall. It could have been knocked over somewhere else and someone moved it-Darlie, Darin, first responders, the killer–we simply don’t know the order in all the chaos. We know evidence was moved by first responders so we can’t completely rely on where it sits later. A person who was on the side of Darlie but has now changed his position (largely due to personal conflict with supporters as it appears to me) did an experiment with the sock. He parked in this turnaround area where they think someone would park. He goes to the car, places the sock on the car, gets in the car to speed away. The sock is forgotten and it falls off right in the place that it was found. He claims to have done this experiment several times and the sock lands in that spot every time. The sock messes up the prosecutions’ argument because there was not enough time to place it there and do everything Darlie is said to have done in their theory. Again, since it doesn’t work, rather than throwing out the theory, they just act like it doesn’t matter. It does matter, because the timing of how long Damon had to live after being stabbed is finite and we have definitive timelines to understand this because he was still alive when the first responder arrived, and we absolutely know what time she made the call. This is perhaps one of the most important pieces of “bad evidence” regarding the theory of Darlie’s guilt. To ignore this is showing a prejudicial bias towards believing a favored person is guilty rather than finding the truth of who did this…who could have done this. The only way this makes sense is if Darin took the sock to the alley or if an intruder did the deed.
This is too long already, so I’ll stop even though I’ve more to say. My point is that if we take my scenario, we can make it just as plausible if we try. Is there evidence that definitively says it couldn’t have happened this way? That should be done, but often people refute claims by stating subjective opinions on evidence rather than objectively analyzing said evidence. There are multiple interpretations to certain evidence and people forget that. Just because the prosecution says so doesn’t make it gospel. It’s their opinion (particularly with blood drop, spatter and so forth), and further it’s their opinion with a conclusion already in mind which warps their opinion from the get-go. For example, how the blood got on the back of Darlie’s nightgown has more than one possibility, but how long Damon could possibly live after his wounds is scientific and fixed within a minute or two. Darlie was convicted on a theory, not facts, and that is not considered fair by the ideal standards of justice. Idealism is an abstract concept, and simply isn’t realistic and often the judicial system strays far from it. If only people could actually toss out their tainted belief that Darlie did it, and go back to square one. Look at other theories and see how plausible you can make them and where they lead. Try to make yourself believe an intruder did it. Can you? Not do you want to, but can you make it possible? Because that is exactly what has made Darlie appear so guilty…just a plausible scenario that supports a conclusion already decided upon from the beginning and retro-fitted interpretation of crime scene evidence, and that is just wrong.
Your scenario can be halted at this sentence “Let’s say someone has broken in to the Routier home after seeing Darlie lying on the couch sleeping from windows” That peeping tom would have to have been inside the back yard where the gate was broken and he would have to outwith the motion sensor lights that stayed on for 18 minutes when the police tested them……but carry on
Bry, Peggy clearly explained that several scenarios could have been proposed. This is one of them. Even if the peeping Tom might not have seen her through the window, it does not erase other possibilities. I understood where she was going with this. Her comment is one of the smartest ones I received.
We only have to think of the Michael Morton’s case to know that reality is stranger than fiction. And she has an excellent point about not focusing on one person right away. It is their job to explore all avenues. Instead, they focused on Darlie and obsessed on silly string and whatever the DA’s office tried to spin.
I simply cannot fathom how anyone can look at this case and think Darlie is innocent.
It truly boggles the mind.
I do not find it surprising. Many think she is innocent and others think she’s guilty. But a lot of people simply think there is enough reasonable doubt to require a new trial. She certainly did not get a fair one. Not proving a case does not mean someone is innocent or guilty. It means you did not have enough evidence to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Greg Davis was a huge liability and the constant character assassination campaign in the media is another factor.
One of the jurors regrets voting guilty. When the case was recently presented on CNN, it had the same effect on people. The case was not the slam dunk they tried to sell to the media.
Thank you for this very interesting comment Peggy. I agree that they took a plausible scenario that supported their conclusions and ran with it with the help of the media and Greg Davis.
She was convicted on a theory and the facts could easily have applied to another scenario. But people dislike her more than they like the truth.
Lise if the police wanted to explore an intruder where would they begin?? With a Black car NO Plates and different makes and models reported?? If you can see the field notes you would know that RPD followed up on Many calls IE Angela Rickels who reported 6 months after the crime that someone tried to get in her house that night….. it was unfounded though because of the time lapse and the fact that Rickles described the two men getting away in a car that was determined to be her neighbors
Lise “We know now that the silly string video shown to the jury was much longer and showed her crying and mourning.” The silly string video and the police surveillance video are two different tapes The Police vid is 14 hours long The silly string video is shown in its entirety..it was the defense who would not proceed with the police tape They were encouraged to show it by the prosecution and to date I see NO Tape that shows Darlie greiving during that service….the meds were .25 mgms of Xanax…….. No meds erase grief…….
I agree with Jeff Blackburn from the Innocent Project of Texas when he says ”The system is completely rigged against somebody who has been convicted, the view of the system is to never question the conviction, and to stand behind it at all cost.”
They arrested her almost right away so how could they do a fair investigation? And the media led by Davis and the DA’s office started a hate campaign against her.
Darlie was on meds during the visit at the graveyard. And yes, I saw tears and people grieving before the silly string. You cannot judge someone by her reaction after a traumatic event. The gum chewing was also because of the meds causing dry mouth. The cops had no right anyway to videotape the event. No meds erase grief? Who says she was not grieving? This is right from the mouth of Greg Davis.
Lise Greg Davis never made the statement that DK Claims he made ” That shes a psychopath nor did he say If darlie is really innocent that just means Im a damn good lawyer these are made up and there is no proof of them there was no prosecutorial misconduct in this case and Greg Davis does NOT have a bad record at all
https://hcnews.com/pages/justice_for_all/prosecutors-accused-rowlett-homemaker-of-being-a-psychopath/
Did you watch Herzog’s documentary and heard what Davis said? And yes, he has a bad record. Even his own brother who was in the courtroom is appalled by what he did. Herzog exposes him without having to do much. You simply have to listen to the man and read his record of abuse to know what he is all about.
I suggest you write your own blog Bry. Use all that information and expose your vision of the story. Mine is pretty clear and I will not go around in circles with the same old BS.
Kathy Cruz LOL Really ???
This is a comment section Bry and I can post whatever I want. Cruz is not the only person to have reported this. This is a site for restorative justice and due process. How is it that anyone who is trying to get to the heart of the matter is called a stupid Darlie supporter?
In certain cases, it takes years to determine what really happened. And sometimes, it is impossible to not know for sure. There are so many other options to explore.
But you are so convinced of her guilt that it serves no purpose other than being hateful. Even if Routier had committed the crimes, and it is only for the sake of argument, it would have never been a death penalty case because a mother doing this to herself and her boys would have been a case of temporary insanity. No one in their right mind would do this. In some countries, post partum is a defense for a few years after the birth of a child. And there are other options like her husband or total strangers.
Maybe you don’t care about reasonable doubt or the way inmates are treated in some American prisons, but I do.
Herzog was not convinced of her guilt as you said. But he tries, not unlike me, to expose what he sees as the truth and he introduced clips from both sides. Hearing Greg Davis is very telling. No other commentaries are necessary. The man would not know justice even if it hit him over the head with a scale.
You say you would welcome a new trial. Well good and let’s hope it happens. In the meantime, try to develop some empathy for a woman sitting on death row.
Shame on you for trying to slant the truth and the facts in this case to try to make it appear as if your friend is not guilty. Shame on you for caring more about covering up for a convicted child killer than for standing up for the truth in memory of two little boys who did not deserve to be so brutally murdered by their own mother.
Shame on you Brenda for not reading the blog and not realizing that it is about the trial and its lack of due process. I do not know Darlie Routier and I am not covering up anything. I do not care if she moved several times as a child or who her mom was married to or not.
And I don’t care if her husband’s business was in the garage or in his basement or if he had a warehouse. I do not care about the details of their finances. I care about the trial and what was presented. I care about a rotten prosecutor saying that silly string proves guilt.
If you think that showing up at a crime scene and making up your mind after a few minutes is fair, then you are no better than them.
I have always felt uncomfortable with this case. With so much ambiguity towards the States evidence I cannot understand why there has not been a retrial. The consequences of an incorrect verdict mean the execution of a possibly innocent Woman. Hugely concerned with careers being made on such cases.
Well Lisa there is one thing I agree with you on…we are all intitled to our own opinion. I read your article and the only thing you did is nitpick the prosecution’s stragity. Darlie Routier had a very good paid defense team but the evidence is what the evidence is. Another court reporter listened to the entire trial and fixed all the errors. So all of the transcription errors… that’s solved. Why didn’t her defense team talk about what she, Darlie Routier did to help save her dying children’s lives? Ill tell you why, because she did zero, notning to help them. What…? Lay a wet towel on gaping stab wounds? And she didn’t even do that…she lied about that. You really think the prosecution went after her because of her big hair and expensive taste? Nah, they went where the evidence lead. Right straight to Darlie Routier. I’d like to hear a supporter or her family talk about her faild polygraph. Id like to hear her family explain the retested DNA evidence that came back June 17 2015 that re-affirms the state’s case against her. You know what you would hear if you asked her family or her new defense those questions?…Crickets…thats what you would hear. Forensic evidence is the silent witness. Darlie is on death row because she killed her kids. No other reason. So here’s the thing, Darlie isn’t getting a new trial, she is going to executed for killing those two little angels.
Nitpicking: to criticize by focusing on inconsequential details
If you qualify what I have described in the blog as inconsequential details, it is because you ignore the law and the concepts of due process and presumption of innocence. Do not forget that some of what you call inconsequential details were brought up in court by the prosecutor who by law, is supposed to be in a quest for the truth, but acted like he was at a public lynching by going to the media to accuse Routier of being a sociopath and of declaring her guilty because her sister brought silly string to the cemetery where they were celebrating one of the boys’ birthday.
His disgraceful behavior was strongly criticized by mental health and legal professionals.
When Routier was found guilty in 1997, her lawyers filed for appeal. It took stenographer Sandra Halsey over a year to finish the 15,000 pages document, which contained loads of mistakes and missing information.
The court reporter’s procrastination and shoddy transcripts held the appeal process up for over 3 years. Not to mention that the judge was lied to about tapes of the trial being in existence to avoid a mistrial.
Inconsequential? No way.
Routier called 911 to save her boys. When you listen to the taped conversation, she is asking for help for the boys. When they arrive, you can hear them tell her to sit down. She was bleeding and injured. Her husband tried. She got the towels but was told not to move.
Davis is the one who criticized her for being materialistic and based his strategy on it; he said she wanted to get rid of her children because she was running out of money. He mentioned her breast implants several times during witness interrogations. Talk about meaningless details. In his presentation, he lied about their real financial situation. It was all about the way she looked and her lifestyle.
You should criticize him for that. I am simply stating the obvious.
You are savvy enough to know that polygraphs are a joke. People who are traumatized and nervous or on medication cannot be tested. The results will be faulty. We also know that it depends on the person who administers the test. No wonder they are usually not admissible in court.
The DNA testing didn’t prove it was Routier or her husband. It proved nothing.
If forensic evidence is the silent witness, the sock found outside the house is screaming that they jumped to conclusions.
The investigation was lousy. The guy who testified about the blood was proven to be a disaster in several other cases. They mixed the blood in the clothing bag for goodness sake.
There was no blood on the knife from the other boy. That speaks volume.
I removed the last sentence of your comment because of its cruelty. This is a restorative justice site.
Frankly Jade, if you are convinced that their mother killed them and proceeded to slash her own throat, how could you wish her demise? To me, it would be a case of a woman on the brink of insanity.
Someone willing to die and kill her own children would have to suffer from depression and maybe postpartum. She would not deserve the death penalty. Some countries consider a few years from the birth of a child to judge a woman who commits an insane act against them. Darlie had a young baby and two little boys.
I am not agreeing that this is what happened, but if it was the case, where is the humanity?
By the way, they were her little angels, not ours. By all accounts, she was a good mom.
The death penalty is a disaster they need to get rid of in the US, especially because they use it like a lottery or when there is a high profile case like this one. It sure is not meant for a young mother. They share this practice with a handful of countries like North Korea. Time to join the civilized world.
You know when I first heard about this case I believed Darlie was innocent. Then I read every bit of the trial transcripts. Lisa it’s the prosecutions job to present its case to the best of their ability. Same for the defense. Both sides did their job. One did better than the other. There were a plethora of other prosecution witnesses that nobody can dispute. Let’s talk about the letters she wrote from prison to people saying “I know Glenn did it, I saw him” (but Darlie had traumatic amnesia and can’t remember anything)…”We believe we know who did it” “The FBI guy is working on it” “I know who did it and it’s driving me crazy that he is out there running free” “We know who did it, Glenn did it”. When “Glenn” was brought into the court room Darlie had no clue who he was. But “Glenn did it, I saw him”. Darlies lies show consciousness of guilt. Darlie is a lier. Luminol showed blood had been wiped off the counter on the sides of the sink, blood wiped off the taps and the spout of the sink. Luminol used on the floor showed someone wiped up bloody footprints. Darlie did it. She called 911 to report the atrocity that happened but she didn’t help her boys. Not one bit. Not even God could have stopped me from trying to save my babies lives let alone a cop telling me to sit down. Those cops would have had to pry me away from my children or shoot me. She did nothing but hold a towel to her own wounds. Greg Davis’s strategy was about who did this and why she did it. All he did was state the obvious about Darlie. Polygraphs are a joke? Well she took one. She failed it. And they are admissible in court. That’s why the defense set it up without telling the prosecution. Oh I get it…it’s the person who administered the lie detector test…they did a bad job…? The defense hired him not Greg Davis. No, nervousness does does not affect the test. Nervousness is constant. You don’t turn nervousness on and off for certain questions. Lie detector tests don’t lie people do. Polygraph examiners are trained to evaluate a nervous reaction vs a reaction caused by a deceptive answer. Polygraphs are highly accurate. Anyone who wants to go into law enforcement takes one i.e.: police, FBI, CIA, Homeland Security as well as other big corporate jobs. The DNA proved nobody other than Darlie, Darin and those boys were in that house. Absolutely zero male intruder DNA. No sign of an intruder entering or exiting 5801 Eagle Dr. June 6 1996. Darlie did it. Do I think postpartum depression played a part in it? You betcha. I believe that. Her own family are the ones that said she wasn’t depressed. I don’t think she deserved the death penalty. I believe in humanity. I believe if she had humbled herself and admitted what she did those jurors would have had sympathy for her and she would not be on death row today. The thing is she takes no accountability whatsoever because she wasn’t about to admit to what she did. I wish Darin’s spineless ass was in a cell next to her for helping cover up the crime. You see there is no such thing as a flawless courtroom trial. That’s why they call it “practicing” law and that’s why they do it in front of a judge. It is clearly established in this case the appellant Darlie Routier is guilty as charged.
Personally, I never thought of Darlie as guilty or innocent and many people feel like I do. We want another trial because there was not enough to determine guilt or innocence.
The conundrum of the 9 minutes timeline and the sock found 75 yards away makes it impossible to think she could have done it.
They packed bloody items together. The glass was photographed on top of blood drops but was seen in another position on video.
The knife didn’t have the blood of the 2 boys.
Her injuries being way too severe to be self inflicted unless she wanted to risk dying.
The menial life insurance of $10,000 when the funeral did cost $14,000
The polygraph is a joke. You may want to watch the video I posted about it on my site. http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-polygraph-has-been-lying-for-80-years
And even if it was administered by her side, the results were never published.
The court reporter lost her licence and the judge fell asleep countless times during important testimony.
I really didn’t care about the letters Darlie wrote and that were introduced at trial. It meant that she was totally confused and naming different people. Psychologically, it can easily be explained away. It sure did not sound like a woman with a plan. I didn’t see it either as consciousness of guilt. Just confusion and desperate attempts at explaining away and getting out of this hell hole.
Davis didn’t present a better case. He played dirty and used the media to inflame the court of public opinion.
I will agree that Darlie had a good attorney but she was not well represented. Her trial should have not happened in this small forsaken town. One juror regretted his guilty decision after seeing some photos and feeling pressured in the jury room. The silly string video was recorded illegally. So, no, this trial was not fair.
Her attorney did present good arguments and experts: Vincent DiMaio, the chief medical examiner in San Antonio and the editor-in-chief of the prestigious Journal of Forensic Medicine Pathology, testified that her injuries were not at all consistent with the self-inflicted wounds he had seen in the past; he said that the cut across her throat, in particular, was hardly “superficial,” as the prosecutors alleged. Mulder produced notes taken by the nurses at the hospital that said Darlie was “tearful,” “frightened,” “crying,” “visibly upset,” and “very emotional” on the night she was brought in. Finally Darlie herself took the stand, explaining that she had stood at the kitchen sink to wet towels and place them on her children’s wounds and that the Silly String scene was her heartfelt way of wishing a happy birthday to Devon, who she hoped was watching from heaven.
Maybe you would have acted differently if your children were attacked, but we never know.
For a woman who had supposedly planned this horror show, there were no signs of a cover up.
This case has been a puzzler even for lawyers, judges and mental health professionals. So it deserves a do over.
Darin should have been a person of interest and it is regrettable that he was not offered as an alternative. I have no clue if his burglary planning could have played a role, but it should have been mentioned.
The team hired by the defense that found many irregularities in the state’s case was not invited to testify. Huge mistake by the defense to save money.
But the state is supposed to prove its case, not the defense. Davis did no such thing. And if you don’t mind his outlaw ways, wait till it happens to a loved one. It might change your mind about due process.
I think Darlie Routier is probably guilty. But is she guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? I just don’t know. In other words, I’m conflicted & would like to see a new trial.
I don’t see how anyone can explain away Darlies blood on the inside of the cabinet door under the kitchen sink. Or the luminol revealing cleanup of blood around the sink. Cleanup of any kind in any amount at a crime scene literally shouts guilty, in my opinion. I cant understand how anyone would believe that a person who just attacked three people would stop long enough to shut a gate behind them on the way out. The fence was too tall to jump. The gate was broken and had to be shut and opened by lifting up on it as Darin and Darlie have both claimed. The security light when triggered stays on a certain amount of time. From the time Darlie placed the 911 call until the time when she said the cops got there, that time frame was noted. The security light was off when the first arriving cops got there. They triggered the light themselves. That time frame doesn’t add up with the amount of time that the light stays on. The killer would have triggered it when leaving and should have still been on when the cops got there. I think the blood cleanup at the sink is the strongest evidence. Without a doubt.
I don’t perceive this case ‘without a doubt’. It is so full of statements that are contradicted and of missing pieces that I would never say without a doubt. The police did not do a great investigating job and who knows what an intruder would do?
The towels would explain the blood and wiping. So it is not the smoking gun as some would like to say.
“Towels in the hallway
The presence of towels at the crime scene supported Darin and Darlie’s claims regarding activity in the kitchen. At the bond hearing Darin testified that upon hearing glass break and Darlie screaming, he ran down the stairs and spotted Devon laying on the floor. He stated Darlie “grabbed the phone and then she was by the sink”. Prosecutor Greg Davis asked Darin what he did next and he responded that he went over to Devon.
Davis asked, “When you came into this Roman room and you went to Devon, did your wife follow you over to Devon?” The Roman room is what the family called the living room where Darlie and the boys were sleeping the night of the murders.
Darin responded to Davis by saying, “Not at that point.” Davis started to ask something when Darin added, “She went straight to the phone — she went straight to the sink to get towels.” The phone was cordless. Darin and Greg Davis discussed the matter further:
Davis: All right. Where was your wife during the time that you were with Devon?
Darin: She was in the kitchen getting kitchen towels out of the thing. I could hear the water running, and then she took them over — and brought towels over to Damon.
Davis: So, you actually — is it your testimony today, that you actually saw her go to the kitchen sink?
Darin: Yeah.
Davis challenged Darin regarding the information, claiming he had not disclosed the above details to the police. Darin stated he had told the police Darlie went to the sink two or three times. He described spending approximately three or four minutes trying to give Devon CPR. In trial testimony he described Darlie attempting to hold Devon’s wounds together while he performed CPR. He then told Davis that Darlie put a towel on Damon’s back (something the police and paramedic would later say was not observed on Damon):
Davis: Well, at what point did she start to do something different?
Darin: Well, I don’t really know. I mean everything I was seeing was when I was coming up, after I was giving, you know, trying to give CPR to Devon.
Davis: Well, you just told me that in the beginning that she was walking between the end of the kitchen bar and the kitchen sink, and I’m trying to understand at what point did that activity end?
Darin: Probably about the time that she came over to Damon and gave him — you know, put a towel on him, she was pretty much at his feet, of me looking up and seeing him — you know, seeing her, seeing Damon laying on the floor, and me trying to work on Devon, you can’t really put it all in perspective, it’s just a lot of different things happening all at the same time.
Davis: Well, is it your testimony that she went over to Damon, and actually put a towel on his back?
Darin: She laid a towel on his back.
Davis: Did she leave that towel on his back?
Darin: I would assume so, yes, sir.
Darlie’s testimony at trial matched Darin’s claims about her going to the kitchen and getting towels. She also testified that she wet the towels.
Lead investigator James Patterson testified to seeing towels in the hallway as well”
We can’t support a guilty verdict with the fact that a light was off when cops arrived. It means nothing. The time frame is only as strong as the investigation. If we go with the alleged time frame, Darlie would not have had time to plant the bloody sock.
I cannot imagine and have never heard of a killer or a victim stopping to clean up after an attack. No way around that one. I want to challenge anyone to show me when its happened before….
Its just occurred to me. This is exactly how her supporters ignore the facts. There was a clean up at the sink. A criminal didn’t do it. No matter that darlie did, it still doesn’t explain when and why she would stop and clean up around the sink. Luminol proved a definite attempt to wipe away blood. You have two kids on the floor stabbed to death and you stop to wipe up blood from around the sink, on the faucet, knobs and backsplash. I’ve read the court testimony and the statements given about the towels. My point has nothing to do with the towels. I will ask again as plainly as I can. Who stops to clean up blood from around a kitchen sink when your kids are in the living room dying?
See, Darlie wetting the towels makes sense to me and could explain “clean-up” marks.
What doesn’t make sense is that an actual clean-up was attempted at all whether she was the killer or not.
The whole scene, with blood everywhere, and the killer does a half ass job of cleaning up the blood at the sink? I don’t think so.
You are 100% right. Darlie Routier is 100% guilty with out a doubt. And all the brilliant legal minds that sit on the court of appeals believe Darlie is a killer. I side with the brilliant legal minds
I think that you are confusing the role of a court of appeal. Appellate judges do not like to disturb the findings of a trial judge. Appeal judges like to maintain status quo.
If you wish to change the Court of Appeal’s mind, you need something special.
If you are at the first level of appeal, you’d have to sprint up a 45-degree incline, in 5% of the time you’d spent arguing at the trial court.
If you are at the second – and final – tier of appeal, confronted by 3 or 5 judges, the incline is 85 degrees. Time is cut in half. Nothing save a serious issue of law will help.
Darlie is limited in her appeal. She needs a new trial.
Have you seen what it takes to get a new trial or a wrongly convicted person released?? Once you are in their clutches, it is an uphill battle. And it is Texas.
I do not know what happened in this case. What I know is that her trial and the media influence were unfair. She has been on death row far too long.
Give her a new trial. There are too many clear mistakes in the first one.
I have not read the transcripts so I can’t comment on the clean up at the sink and the luminol. Never mind, here I am commenting about them— when was the luminol sprayed? While the responding officers and paramedics were there? Doubtful. So later? How many people used that sink after the boys were taken away? Was it a clean up or just diluted blood from towels being re-wet to change out on wounds?
A new trial may be expensive but it will never cost as much as the whole process to execute someone. Why the resistance to reexamine the case and make sure the verdict of guilt is correct?
you need to read up on it. I’m here to discuss the case, not educate you on it. That’s the problem with a lot of commenters. You don’t know diddly about the case yet can sit there and proclaim innocence or guilt with the crack of your whip. I’m glad as hell you wont be on a jury of MY peers. Educate yourself. Don’t read a blog. Read the trial transcripts.
Dear Karen, mind your manners. Lori read the blog which is pretty thorough. You are the one proclaiming guilt with the crack of a whip. I would rather have Lori on any jury than a know it all like you who thinks that her own interpretation of a case means facts. Why do you think that so many people have doubts about the case? Because it is not black and white. And the point of this blog is the TRIAL, and that includes the transcripts. We know enough about Greg Davis and what he did with the cooperation of the media to know that she needed another trial.
I don’t proclaim guilt or innocence and Lori doesn’t either. We are saying enough is enough. How ridiculous to keep people in prisons for that long or to even have a death row for a mother who might or might not have killed her two sons. And if she did, it certainly would not have been in her right mind. Do you think that a cold sociopath is going to cut her own throat and arm and kill her children when she could have got out the door? Come on.
Karen, you are right. That is absolutely a fair statement. It is not your job to educate me on this case.
You did, however, miss my point. When there are so many instances of misconduct and incompetence during a trial, why would the defendant not be given a new one? This is a matter of life and death. Seems like high stakes to me.
Reading the trial transcripts sounds enlightening. 33,000 mistakes. This is the basis of your knowledge of the case?
You would be incredibly lucky to have someone like me on your jury. I can think for myself and not assume guilt based on an arrest. I believe in due process. Like Lise keeps saying, this isn’t about claiming Darlie is innocent, it is about her right to be given a fair trial. She wasn’t.
Personally, I think if a mistrial is ever ordered it should be thrown out on the basis of double jeopardy. She has served her time, guilty or innocent.
I challenge you to find that media coverage and prove it. No one has to date, no one who claims Davis called Darlie a psychopath can prove it.
He incontestably said it. This is why he was so highly criticized publicly by a mental health specialist, and even his own brother. He is a clown. But find it yourself like I did during my research.
Watch Werner Herzog ”On Death Row.” Listen to Davis call the woman evil, depraved, etc. and discuss the silly string incident in such an immoral way, the life insurance fallacy, the financial problems that were thoroughly explained by Darin on the stand.
But I will give you a little bonus. Watch him being ridiculed about the boys’ life insurances being a motive.
https://youtu.be/eJbldXOVsAI
So long!
Quote for readers: Legal ethics expert Ellen Yaroshefsky said that Davis referring to Routier as a psychopath with no factual basis to back it up is “outrageous.” Yaroshefsky is a professor at the Cardozo Law School in New York, and director of the Jacob Burns Center for Ethics in the Practice of Law. She has assisted the Innocence Project, of which her Cardozo colleague, Barry Scheck, is co-director.
“Particularly, a public servant who is a minister of justice should not be characterizing defendants in this manner. It is unethical to do so,” Yaroshefsky said. Cooper said there was no prior history with Routier to indicate the presence of mental or emotional disorders, and there has been no indication since. There are “specific DSM criteria” for psychopathy, he said, referring to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. To fit the state’s claims, Routier would have had to have experienced a brief, unprecedented psychotic break that left her children butchered.
“Psychopaths don’t just turn over one day, and they’re all better now,” Cooper
said.
Yaroshefky said that making such a claim against a defendant when there is “nothing in the record” is “prohibited by the disciplinary rules of every jurisdiction.” She said the former Dallas prosecutor should have been brought before a disciplinary committee.
If that’s not an unfair trial, what is?
KAREN FITZPATRICK posted: The security light when triggered stays on a certain amount of time. From the time Darlie placed the 911 call until the time when she said the cops got there, that time frame was noted. The security light was off when the first arriving cops got there. They triggered the light themselves. That time frame doesn’t add up with the amount of time that the light stays on. The killer would have triggered it when leaving and should have still been on when the cops got there.>>>
This is not correct. The trial transcripts themselves say it’s not correct.
C.C.R. Vol 43 4165-66 Testimony of Patterson questioned by Mulder regarding Officer Nabors report:
15 Q. Okay. Have you reviewed that report?
16 A. I didn’t review the whole page, just
17 what is highlighted.
18 Q. Okay. Do you recognize that as having
19 seen it before?
20 A. Um-hum. (Witness nodding head
21 affirmatively.) Yes, sir.
22 Q. Okay. You know, based on your
23 investigation, that you could pass on the paved area,
24 from the window to the gate, and not trip or set off the
25 security lights, don’t you?
Sandra M. Halsey, CSR, Official Court Reporter
4165
1 A. Yes, sir. It says that you can walk
2 on the paved part from the gate to the window without
3 triggering the light.
4 Q. Okay. And you didn’t have to take
5 anybody’s word for it, I mean, you know from experiments
6 that were performed out there, weren’t there, to your 7 knowledge?
8 A. Yes, sir.
It was a clean up. You’d know that if you’d bother to learn anything about this case and trial. A huge amount of blood was shed at the kitchen sink and cleaned up, luminol proved it.
Too bad you didn’t know something about this case in your zeal to assassinate the character of a man sworn to uphold the law. there were no wet towels anywhere on any wounds, Darlie lied about wetting towels at the sink. Darlie murdered her children, the forensic physical evidence is overwhelming and all points to her. She’s never getting a new trial as there is no legal reason to give her one.She had a fair trial, she testified before the jury, they didn’t believe her, they convicted. That is the end of it. She’s lost all her appeals to date. All the post conviction DNA testing that is still ongoing points only to her and no one else. Even her appelate attorney Cooper has publicly stated there is nothing in the DNA tests to exonerate her. She’s a dead woman walking.
I would encourage you to stay away from a restorative justice site that believes in due process, fair trials, presumption of innocence, that media interference should not happen unless it is to right a wrong, and respect between bloggers and commenters as well as for inmates who are, like it or not, human beings with loved ones. You have nothing to bring to the table, but recycled insults and misinformation.
I don’t know much about the case, but one thing is for sure: neither of them seem to love the kids. I would be crushed if my kids were killed and they both, mother and father, appear in videos smirking and commenting everything in a casual way, as if talking about the weather.
I know that does not prove a thing about the murder itself, and people may react in many different ways, but it is kind of shocking.
I tend to be very suspicious of what the media presented of the two parents. Let’s not forget that the video at the grave was not shown in its entirety and they were crying and grieving.
They always like to present the clip when you look weird or insensitive. Mind you, I do not know these parents. I only looked at the trial and circumstances.
But it is said that Darin raised the surviving son lovingly. The grandparents on both sides said they were loving parents. I am sticking to the case itself. As you said, it does not prove a thing.
Check this link. https://www.inquisitr.com/3196111/darlie-routiers-execution-date-still-not-set-pending-evidence/. There is a photo of Darin being carried out of the courtroom by his pastor and a friend after his wife got convicted. It seems to depend from what side you want to look at it.
I was shocked also. Her best friends account of the first time Darlie went into the house after the murders was chilling. How Darin casually remarked that “this is the biggest thing Rowlett has seen” to the EMTs and cops while waiting outside dropped my jaw. These are just two of the biggest shockers for me. There were several, from each of them. Darlie was more focused at the “mess” in the house than she was on what happened to cause the “mess”. And how do you leave those children’s belongings behind in the attic? Like I said, there are several things that shocked me. I’m just glad she’s where she belongs. At least she doesn’t have to worry about getting “new carpet and new drapes and furniture”….
I never quite understand how someone can say that they are glad that someone else is on death row. Even if guilty, I would not be glad. This is not about carpets or furniture or what Darin said or what they thought he said. So many things were twisted in this case. It might not be the way you would react and yes, they were superficial like so many on our society, but I prefer to focus on the trial and the facts and evidence. This case was rushed.
And if a young mother who loves her children, but is suffering from depression would go as far as slicing her own throat and stabbing two of her children, I would certainly get her treatment first.
They turned her into a villain for chewing gum and using silly string and ignored the first part of the memorial. All of it should come out. She has been punished. Her only son had cancer. What else do you want? If she is innocent, it is sinful, if she did do it, it is still unfortunate for all.
I had forgot about this case until a few days ago, when I seen the clip for 20/20 episode. So much speculation going on in this case without all the facts. The biggest question is why was there so much evidence that was NEVER tested? The bloody fingerprints that didn’t belong to the Routier family members that lived in the home, but was never put through the system, things have come a long way since then, it very well could prove that someone else was in the home that night. The fact that bloody bare footprints throughout the crime scene, were different sizes around 8 inches in one photo and 9 inches in the other, the other bare footprints in the other photos didnt have a ruler beside them, DID they compare sizes of all them or even measurements of all of them? I do get that both Darin and Darlie were barefoot but I read, sypomeone stated the same evening that she seen 2 men walking near her home and one was walking barefoot within walking distance of the Routier home. Another photo that confused me was the photo of What I think I saw a pair of what was marked as Darins bloodstained jeans in the kitchen, were those the jeans he was wearing when he ran down the stairs, when he woke up in the middle of the night to his wife screaming or hearing glass breaking whatever it was that woke him. Was he sleeping in his jeans that night? If so, was it normal for him to sleep in his jeans? Aren’t investigators supposed to bag clothes for evidence? Why put his jeans in the kitchen? I also believe that I read somewhere about a pubic hair that was found in the family room as well but wasn’t a match to the Routier couple. I am very curious as to why some of the most important evidence was never processed, let alone was never showed in court to the jurors. I really hope that ALL the evidence gets processed so that wether she is guilty or innocent everyone will know for SURE. Too much evidence was ignored and not processed or presented. What do they have to lose? Just prove someone wrong or right already!
Exactly. Nothing to lose.
I totally agree that thorough investigation and due process are a must, it doesn’t matter if someone seems or is guilty as hell.
What I’m not sure is how the attitude of an accused person should be judged, I know that it is not a material proof, but doesn’t attitude indicate something, even if circumstancial?
Let’s say two parents whose kid is murdered throw a party the night after, should that be an element of judgement? Is that normal? Or should we only focus on hard proof? How do you weight that in the whole puzzle? Seems to me like a tricky thing.
Michael Morton is a good example of jurors and DA who judged a man by his demeanor only. He was wrongfully convicted in 1987 in a Williamson County, Texas court of the 1986 murder of his wife Christine Morton. He spent nearly 25 years in prison before he was exonerated by DNA evidence that only his own family had bothered to collect in the back alley; a bandana with the blood of the victim and perpetrator.
The jurors had found him guilty because they found him cold and arrogant.
Detectives take behavior into consideration during the investigation. It matters. If the Routiers had popped champagne right after the murders, there would have been suspicion coming their way. If a husband is flat after his wife’s death, it merits closer examination but does not always mean he is the killer. It has to be a combination of direct and circumstantial evidence. But not only attitude.
Good investigators do not put all their eggs in the same basket and remain impartial. Amateurs jump to conclusions.
Once the case goes to trial, professional prosecutors conduct themselves with dignity and do not feed the media with crap about a defendant. They present their case. Greg Davis was horrible. Calling Darlie a psychopath, saying that he knew she was guilty because of the silly string. This is not direct or circumstantial evidence. If all you have is character assassination in a courtroom, it might work, but the result will always be shady.
After the wrongful conviction of Guy Paul Morin in Canada, a team of experts came up with a report of 10 important points to avoid the same mistakes. Their points included the dangers of demeanor evidence, the need to be skeptical of experts, the dangers of tunnel vision, the realization that prosecutors are capable of misconduct. etc.
http://thetroublewithjustice.com/2014/10/04/international-wrongful-conviction-day-lessons-learned-from-the-guy-paul-morins-case/
But you are right, it is a tricky thing because nasty prosecutors know that some jurors will base their decision on emotions and they play them like a fiddle in the courtroom. The law is not always applied as it should. I would say that Texas justice is a beast of its own.