Mark Jensen - justice isn't always served.

Julie Jensen

History of Julie's Death

Timing of Julie's Letter

Legal Issues Surrounding Julie's Letter

Why this case has national interest

Legal Issues Surrounding Julie’s Letter (cont.)

Laura was the alleged source and denying it didn’t stop it from being used. It’s double hearsay, with the author denying it ever being said, and it is all allowed because … “forfeiture” was found by a judge using judicial discretion, which is what the U.S. Supreme Court was trying to remove.

The net effect of this is:

	Ohio vs. Roberts was criticized by the U.S. Supreme Court as being unpredictable because of judicial discretion.

	Crawford tried to correct this by reiterating that testimonial statements require confrontation.

	The states, in adopting forfeiture without the test created an instrument that allowed them to ignore Crawford entirely under a forfeiture finding.

	The net result is more hearsay coming in now under a forfeiture finding than originally was allowed in under the Roberts hearsay law, and again done under a ruling from judicial discretion.

	And again core testimonial statements are coming in that the confrontation clause would never have allowed

The U.S. Supreme Court will be hearing the case of Giles vs. California. The case will be argued on April 23 with final decision hopefully announced in summer. The decision on the Giles case will have a huge impact on Mark’s appeal and new trial.

The Supreme Court will review whether the Confrontation Clause permits the hearsay statement of a witness who is unavailable for trial because the defendant killed her – even though he did not intend to silence her testimony when he killed her.

This is known as the “forfeiture by wrongdoing” exception. It allows out-of-court statements to be used at trial even when the defendant cannot confront the witness against him. The statements are allowed on the equitable grounds that the defendant should not be able to benefit from his own wrongdoing.

The forfeiture by wrongdoing should not be applied to Mark because he didn’t kill her to keep her silent, nor did he know she wrote the letter.

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