Case Study on Ronald Jeffery Prible

Introduction

The case involved Ronald Jeffery Prible versus the state of Texas who was charged of murder and later sentenced to death. The basis for the consideration of a new hearing was because despite the initial DNA testing predicting the probability of the DNA from the victim's mouth belonging to someone else instead of the appellant, the trial court declined the motion by the appellant to have the DNA tested under the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Chapter 64. The appellant states that the due process rights of an appellant seeking to have the DNA evidence from the scene of crime tested for a DNA from another person were violated by chapter 64 of the code of Criminal Procedure. With the appellant having contended the probability of another person committing the murder, the probability of having DNA evidence was crucial for the case.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Upon the completion of hearing of the appeal by Prible, the appellate court agreed with the findings of the trial court that the rights of the appellant were not violated by chapter 64 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure. Therefore, the appellant point of error was overruled by the appellate court and the trial court's decision to deny the appellant the post-conviction DNA testing affirmed.

In this case, the appellate court adopted the rule-based reasoning where they relied on the use of syllogisms or arguments based on formal logic to overrule the appellant's point of error and affirm the decision by the trial court. Through this case, it is implied that there is the need to follow the various law statues to the letter when deciding a case to avoid instances of the accused appealing and proving any form of discrimination by the law.

Testimonial Evidence 1: Case Name: People v. Wright Citation: 755 P.2d 1049, 45 Cal. 3d 1126, 248 Cal. Rptr. 600 (1988).

The case involved the people of the state of New York versus Howard Wright who had earlier been tried and charged of murder in the second degree. The case was termed circumstantial since it lacked testimonial evidence from an eyewitness to the crime as well as lacked any credible forensic evidence that could clearly establish the defendant guilty. Additionally, the people's side lacked other additional evidence that could link the victim to the defendant because other than the testimony that put the defendant in the company of the victim during her death and the statement by the defendant that he engaged in consensual sex with the victim. Further, the people's side lacked enough proof as the prosecutor relied heavily on the results of the DNA testing to link the defendant to the murder but the DNA result was termed circumstantial since it failed to match the defendant's DNA to the one connected at the crime scene. Instead, the DNA test just indicated that the defendant was part of the contingent of the male DNA's and the provided testimony could not hold any statistical weight to measure the statistics of those results. Upon completion of the hearing, a majority of the appellate court's judges affirmed the decision of the trial court by stating that the court did not commit any reversible error. This is because despite the trial court committing an error in refusing to give an instruction that would focus the attention of the jury on the psychological factors that could have negatively affected the accuracy of the eye witness identifications, giving a room for more testimonies would give rise to a reasonable doubt of the defendant's guilt.

The judges at the appellate court adopted the analogical-based reasoning to reach its decision whereby both sides of the cases relied on the facts of a previously decided case to argue that the current case ought to be decided in a similar manner (Aarnio, 1977). This is because they used facts from cases such as that of People V. McDonald (1984) to explain why the errors committed were irreversible and further used the rule-based reasoning to affirm the decision of the trial court. This case helped make it clear on the need to present enough evidence from witnesses prior to prosecution as the adoption of more testimonies upon conviction may make it had to prove the fairness of judgment and thus not prove the guilt of the accused beyond any reasonable doubt.

Testimonial Evidence 2: Case Name: State v. Michael Citation: 642 A.2d 1372, 136 N.J. 299 (1994).

The case involved the state of New Jersey versus Margaret Kelly Michaels at the supreme courts of the jersey in the year 1994. In the case, Michaels was convicted of sexually abusing children that had been entrusted for her care. The trial court sentenced her to a long prison term with a substantial period of Parole ineligibility which was reversed by the appellate court and case scheduled for retrial. The basis for reversal was on the considerate errors that occurred during the prosecution. It was ordered by the appellate court that for a successful retrial of the case, the state of Jersey had to allow for a pretrial hearing with the aim of determining whether the statements and the testimonies from the child abuse victims had to be excluded since the testimonies had been corrupted by the improper questioning by the state investigators.

Upon the hearing of the case, the Supreme Court found that the interrogations regarding the case were done improperly and there was a probability that the evidence derived from the investigation was unreliable. Therefore, the court held that in case of the re-prosecution of the defendant, there must be holding of the pretrial hearing to prove that the testimonies derived from improper investigation techniques retain weight in convicting the defendant. It is upon this that the supreme court of Jersey upheld the judgment by the appellate court.

The case used the rule-based reasoning to bring forth the arguments based on formal logic whereby the judges at the Supreme Court took rules and applied it to a set of facts to come into the conclusion of affirming the appellate court's judgment (Aarnio, 1977). This case had various implications on the conduct of criminal investigations as it proved the need for the investigating officers to make use of appropriate methods to gather evidence to be used in convicting the accused in a court of law.

References

Aarnio, A. (1977). On legal reasoning. In Annales Universitatis Turkuensis. Turku University Library.

People v. John, 27 N.Y.3d 294, 52 N.E.3d 1114, 33 N.Y.S.3d 88 (2016).

People v. Wright, 755 P.2d 1049, 45 Cal. 3d 1126, 248 Cal. Rptr. 600 (1988).

Prible v. State, 175 S.W.3d 724 (Tex. Crim. App. 2005).

Rissland, E. L. (1989). Artificial intelligence and law: Stepping stones to a model of legal reasoning. Yale LJ, 99, 1957.

State v. Michaels, 642 A.2d 1372, 136 N.J. 299 (1994).