Patrick Byrne

Jason's Public Defender

1. Didn't introduce the fact that the very ticket that made Jason a suspect was his ALIBI

2. Didn't get Jason's medical records or diagnosis

3. Didn't point out that the results came back negative

4. Didn't bring up that the DCI results showed no fingerprints or hair fibers of the girl in Jason's truck

5. Didn't to a time study to show that it was impossible for Jason to have commited the crime

6. Failed to point out that the girls story all took place in just eleven minutes (making it not possible)

7. Failed to put Jason on the stand so that he could testify to what took place in the missing 40 minutes of video

8. Failed to point out all the flaws in the girls identification, the details that changed over time and the overwhelming clues that the officers were covering up a whole lot of things for no apparent reason

9. Failed to object to search warrant that was based on the girl's identification of Jason's brother, Tim, or that she was driven by his home to get a good look at his truck 3 time before she'd made her statement that day

10. Didn't bother to bring to light that Sue Flander, the other half of the defense team, handed Esther all the pictures taken of Jason clothes that day during the girl's August deposition and told her to study them - then failed to point out at the hearing exactly how the girl suddenly knew the correct color of his shirt, the brand of jeans he was weariing and everything else that she "now remembered". Were they on the prosecutions payroll?

11. Didn't call a single witness

• Not Jason's employer's to establish the time Jason actually left Lime Creek Nature Center

  Not the two witness that the prosecution dropped from his list because they proved that an identical truck had been seen on the victim's street several times that week when Jason was at work

• Not Jason's brother who could have testified to the actual time the officer stopped Jason, to the condition of Jason's truck and how it did not match Esther's description, that Jason's shoes were not wet or muddy from being in the river, of what Jason was wearing that day, that Jason never took off his watch - he even slept in it, that the girls was NOT in the truck when Jason got his ticket (as she would have had to have been to make the prosecution's version plausible, and to a whole lot more

• Not Rosenbladt - the prosecutor himself who was present for the events that day, who rode with Officer Stearns to get the search and arrest warrants signed by Magistrate Ayers, AND who was with the officers when they went to Jason's house to yank him from his bed. The prosecutor who several times interjects to correct officer testimonies. Did anyone go through his files to see all the other evidence he withheld?

Proof that an Education can get you a job and income in return for doing nothing.

Okay - that's not fair. Byrne conducted several depositions before the trial, and he showed up for work. Unfortunately for Jason, he was so tired from carrying the DA's briefcase that by the time of the trial, he couldn't muster the strength to call a single witness or utter one word in the form of an argument. Yet somehow, he managed to hand the judge the statements of Jason's employers in the two minutes between the state resting and the defense passing out. His lack of counsel or any type of defense is later referred to as his trial strategy.

All the Things He Didn't Do

And his sidekick,

Susan Flander

All the Damage She Did

Dean Stowers

Proof that an Education doesn't make a lawyer great

1992