"Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk." (Henry David Thoreau) There are two great branches of evidence in a Criminal Case. They are direct evidence and circumstantial evidence. The meaning of direct evidence is as plain as the nose on your face. A first grader can easily grasp the concept. Whatever a person perceives with any of his physical senses is direct evidence. If you see a crime happen that is direct evidence. And if you smell it or touch it or taste it or hear it as it happens -- that is also direct evidence. Everything else is circumstantial. Therefore, the meaning of circumstantial evidence is easily comprehended and just as easily categorized. If it isn't direct evidence it's circumstantial evidence. And if there's a trout in a can of milk, we know the farmer has dipped his can into a stream of water. We didn't see him do it, but we know the squiggly rainbow didn't come from a cow's udder. The finned scrapper getting his first taste of milk is irrefutable circumstantial evidence of dairy farmer duplicity!

A Trout In The Milk

Profiles In ProsecutionBy Mel Harmon

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Mel Harmon
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4567-6745-7

Contents

Author's Note.....................................................................vPreface...........................................................................viiThere's A House I Know By Heart...................................................3The Passionate Sense Of What Might Be.............................................37Direct Evidence Follies At Freedom Park...........................................83The Ultimate Act Of Selfishness...................................................93The Arrogance Of Lust.............................................................115The Arson Home Invasion...........................................................125Extremism In The Pursuit Of Procedure Is A Mockery Of Justice.....................143A Bible And A Jar Of Petroleum Jelly..............................................163Clues In A Blood Splattered Room..................................................201A Bowl Of Chicken Soup Before We Part M'lady?.....................................223Terror Has A Human Face...........................................................237A Learning Experience.............................................................253

Chapter One

I'm the son of a farmer. When I was two years old my father and mother moved into a four room adobe farmhouse. The year was 1940 –– a time of simplicity and frugality. We had kerosene lamps for lighting, a coal burning stove for heating, and a wood burning stove for cooking, There was no central heating nor cooling system – we had no electricity. We lived without much money, without a telephone, without a television, without a washing machine, and without running water. We only had a battery powered radio, and our culinary water had to be hauled from town in a large metal barrel.

One day the water barrel slipped and mashed one of Dad's thumbs. It looked like a fleshy appendage of bloody pulp after the accident. I was terrified! The sight of the mushy thumb remains etched in my mind to this day. Recovery is painfully slow. And sometime during the healing process my father, blessed with innate common sense, acquires a greater appreciation for thumbs. He decides that two healthy thumbs are a very valuable commodity. Therefore, once he is physically able – necessity being the mother of invention, he builds a cistern on a nearby hillside. Then, with the confluence of a crudely constructed water pipe system, town water poured into the cistern from a 500 gallon tank secured in a wooden frame that slides in and out of the bed of our pickup truck, and the law of gravity – we have some running culinary water at our farmhouse. And Dad doesn't have any more mashed thumbs, though an occasional scaly lizard does find its way into our water supply.

* * *

Actually, there is running irrigation water just a few rods east of the house. A large irrigation canal fed by river water borders our farmland for half a mile. It carries irrigation water for hundreds of acres under cultivation throughout the Fields. The Canal is wide and deep and the current swift. Several years before the smashed thumb incident, and only a few months after we'd moved to the farm, I chose to do some exploring, so I've been told. Mom has recited the story on many occasions. What follows is a reasonable facsimile of her various accounts of the event.

I am playing on the back doorstep of our farmhouse, when I decide to shake things up by embarking on a summer stroll – solo. My quest will take me about a quarter mile along the narrow west bank of The Canal in search of my Father. So, I scamper through the small, lateral irrigation ditch immediately south of the house, which is empty. Then, I make a beeline for the Big Ditch – the Fields Canal. My objective is soon attained.

I pause at the brink of the waterway, peer into the depths of the roily water, and hang a hard right. Childish instinct choosing to toddle along the razor thin footpath that threads its way through thick brush along The Canal. Hoping the primitive path leads to my Daddy. Thereafter, short, unsteady, tipsy step after step I persistently trudge through the thick underbrush along the edge of the swift moving water. Separated from the channel of the stream by a scant twelve inches of bank. One carelessly discarded farm implement, one slip, one stumble, one misstep, or one slight cave-in along the path I trod would have caused me to splash unseen into a certain watery grave – sweeping me miles downstream in the turbid water and out of the mortal lives of two loving parents.

But it didn't happen. It's been said, "God protects babies and fools." (George Bernard Shaw) I'm living proof of the veracity of the renowned playwrights flippant remark. Heaven protected me that pivotal day long ago when a baby boy foolishly strays from his Mother's safe haven and tries to find his Daddy all by himself.

Words cannot adequately describe the reaction of my dear Mother when she notices her little toddler in striped coveralls is missing. I believe my Mother's worst nightmare has always been that one of her children would fall into the murky waters of the big irrigation ditch and drown.

She runs around the outside of the farmhouse, and seeing no sign of me, she dashes to The Canal. Breathlessly staring upstream and downstream as a fervent prayer forms in her pounding heart. "Dear God, no – no – no! Not my precious baby. Please don't let him be in the water. Please. Please. It will kill me if I've let him fall into the water!" However, she still sees nothing. There is no sign of the curly, tousled little head of hair. As quickly as a blink of the eye, it seems, he is gone.

My Mother can see my Father working in the second field south of the farmhouse. She begins running and stumbling along the narrow ditch bank toward him. The rough brush scratches her legs and the palms of her hands are abraded by smother weed, Johnson grass, sunflowers, and clods each time she falls. The heavy growth of foliage along The Canal shields the intrepid little toddler from her view. Tearfully, panic-stricken she screams my Father's name, "Elmer –– Elmer –– Elmer, help me! Melvin's gone. Melvin's gone. I'm afraid he's fallen into The Canal. Dear God, help me! Help us!"

Who can fully grasp the anguish of a mother who fears she has lost her little two year old, the first-born of her womb, into a treacherous current of deep running water? That little one who is the object of her loving care each day from the time the sun rises until the sun sets – and into the night. My Mother's fright becomes hysteria. The delirium makes it hard for her to see or think and breathe. She is crazy with grief and misgiving. How is it possible she has allowed this to happen? How can she ever forgive herself?

Finally, her screams, her frenzied gestures, and her desperate dash along the canal bank catch Dad's attention. He drops his shovel and runs along the ditch toward her. She's so distraught he's been unable to fully understand the situation. But he has heard her cries concerning "Melvin" and fears the worst. His heart aches. Tears stream down his face as he plows through the brush.

Then suddenly, in a heartbeat, darkness turns to light. The foolish toddler and the frantic father meet. He sees me as I see him, and I scamper into...