By N.S.
The 2016 jury was faced with a dead boy whose body was dumped in a marshy area, and was so decomposed after one year that the cause of death couldn’t even be determined, and a mother who had told one lying story after another to the cops at the time.
“She first told investigators she briefly left her son alone to get a soda and that when she returned to where she last saw him, he was gone, NJ.com reported.
“Then she said she left Timothy with a woman she bumped into at the carnival and only knew by her first name through Lodzinksi’s work at a bank — then went and got a soda, and by the time she returned, the pair had vanished.
“A third version involved the woman and two men, one of whom took Timothy at knifepoint from her.
“Timothy’s body was discovered about a year later in a marshy area close to an office building where Lodzinski once worked.”
“An appellate judge was added to the rehearing to serve as the tie-breaking vote.
“‘This is a great day for the rule of law and for the proposition that convictions have to be based on evidence, not on speculation or emotion,’ Lodzinski’s lawyer, Gerald Krovatin, said Tuesday.
“‘Michelle is enormously grateful to everyone who has stood by her throughout this long ordeal.’”
“He added to NJ.com that Lodzinski ‘started to cry’ when given the news.
“Defense attorney Gerald Krovatin shows Timothy Wiltsey’s kindergarten graduation robe during Michelle Lodzinski’s murder trial in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on March 16, 2016.”
“But the mom’s brother, Michael Lodzinski, told the outlet, ‘We all know the jury got it right.
“‘What happened today was just a result of some legal maneuvers and employment of a rarely used rule to insure a certain outcome, it is by no means a declaration of her innocence.’”
“The judges in the majority ‘believe they have righted some great wrong today but all they did was rob justice from a little boy.’”
2 comments:
>NJ.com
In stunning move, court overturns Michelle Lodzinski’s murder conviction, setting stage for her release
At Lodzinski’s trial in 2016, the blanket was presented by prosecutors as “the smoking gun” that proved her guilt. ... “She dumped his body in a creek like a piece of trash, but she left behind a telling clue, this blanket,” said Deputy First Assistant Prosecutor Christie Bevacqua, putting on blue gloves and holding up the filthy and faded blanket found about 30 feet from Timothy’s remains. “No other killer could get this,” she said.
Did they contact a genetic forensics company (e.g. Othram) to get help analyzing whatever material evidence they had, like the blanket?
Then in 2014, investigators began taking another look at the evidence they collected in the long-shelved case. Among the items was a faded blue-and-white child’s blanket discovered near the creek where his remains had been recovered. The prosecutor’s office, convinced that the frayed fabric could have only come from Lodzinski’s apartment [ed: ? -- why were they convinced?], went back to question a niece and two others. All three testified later at the trial that they had seen the blanket in her home when they were babysitting there.
The boy died in 1991 -- why only in 2014, nearly 25 years later, did they ask if friends/relatives had seen the blanket before, e.g. at her residence? -- how credible is the identification of an old blanket after so much time?
It would have helped greatly if her DNA was found on the blanket -- that would have tied her concretely to the blanket, which was found near the boy's corpse.
She LOOKS nuts.
--GRA
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