Alice Crimmins Essay Research Paper THE ALICE — страница 3

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largely under Rorech s new claim that she agreed to her son s death( Lissner, 55). The second trial reveled how sloppily detectives had handled the investigation. Potential evidence from the Crimmins apartment was not kept. Psychiatric doubts about Sophie Earominski s mental fitness were introduced(Fosbourgh, 26). Joe Rorech expanded his testimony, saying that Crimmins told him that a convicted bank robber named Vinnie Colabella had killed Eddie Jr. for her. Prosecutors took Colabella out of prison and put him on the stand. He denied ever seeing Crimmins before (Fosburgh, 27). The defense attacked the only motive prosecutors gave for Crimmins having her children killed, the custody battle with her husband. Her divorce lawyer had advised her that she would never lose her children

under New York law, regardless of allegations about her moral reputation (Gross, 264). A new prosecution witness, Tina DeVita, remembered glimpsing a woman, a man with a bundle, a boy, and a dog on the night the Crimmins children disappeared, echoing Earominskis scenario without idenifing anyone. After DeVita s testimony, Alice Crimmins appealed to the public for help. A man named Marvin Weinstein came forward and testified that he had been walking in the neighborhood with his dog, young son, wife, who was carrying their daughter in a blanket. Mrs. Weinstein came to court. She resembled Alice Crimmins (Gross 273). The states case seemed so shaky that shock and weeping filled the courtroom when Alice Crimmins was again found guilty. In May 1971, she was sentenced to life

imprisonment, for murder, with a concurrent five to 20 years for manslaughter (Fosburgh 1). The murder charge was overturned two years later by an appellate division of the New York Supreme Court, which ruled that Eddie s death had not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt to have resulted from a criminal act. The court ruled that allowing errors like Joe Rorech s testimony that he had taken truth serum and a prosecutors declaration that Crimmins did not have the courage to stand up and tell the whole world that she killed her daughter were grossly prejudicial . The court ordered her to be tried again but only on the manslaughter charge (Permotter 1). In February 1975, however, the New York State Court of Appeals reinstated the manslaughter verdict. Noting that two juries had

found Alice Crimmins criminally responsibly for the death of her daughter (Goldstein, 34). The court ruled that the conviction was fair because there was no significant probability, rather than only a rational possibility that the jury would have acquitted the defendant had it not been for the error or errors which occurred (Goldsein, 96). In September 1977 Alice Crimmins was granted parole after serving five years of a five to 29 year sentence(Sheppard, 1). Alice Crimmins was a woman victimized by the fears and morality of a newly arrived middle class. I believe that Alice Crimmins is not guilty of the horrible crime, of murdering her two children. I feel that society was to opposed with the fact that she was a swinger that they did not care about the real killer. I do not feel

that just because she slept around means that she did not love her kids and was a great mother. It will be a great day in our society when we can see the human being behind the job and realize that they are capable of love.