I am not a lawyer and TV has definitely not been an accurate representation of the law. So I'm hoping to get some clarification on things here:
- Today we learned that the person who committed the Parkland murders is pleading guilty, more than 3 1/2 years after the fact.
- The person guilty of the Charleston Church Shooting in July 2015 was finally convicted of it in December 2016, nearly 1 1/2 years after the fact.
- The person guilty of the Aurora theater shooting in July 2012 was finally convicted of it in July 2014, nearly 2 years after the fact.
- The person guilty of the Tree of Life shooting in October 2018 has still not been convicted nearly 3 years later.
I understand the notion that it takes time to gather evidence, complete investigations, interview witnesses, etc. but in these described situations, said evidence is literally all right there. Furthermore, I am under the impression that when these types of attacks occur, a lot of resources are made available to expedite processing evidence.
However, on the same note, when 30 survivors can all point at the same person and say, "That's the jackass with the assault rifle,"; and here's a whole live video feed of the attack; and here's their manifesto from their computer; and here's the police dash cam footage of when they arrested this person who was in full body armor. Part of me wonders, isn't that sufficient to get this done within 6 months? Are you wasting time getting DNA test results on each individual shell casing?
Given that some of these convictions take more than 3 years to get, I have to wonder what the heck the prosecution is doing.
Can someone explain to me the full process to help me make sense of these timelines?
REQUEST TO EDITORS: PLEASE DO NOT EDIT IN NAMES OF ANY OF THESE SHOOTERS.