thus far. there is also this weird footnote, esther, the fact that a couple of off-duty new york city cops were apparently riding with this pack? yeah. that is a whole other dimension to this because now, and i believe those officers are under investigation by internal affairs. jon: at least one of them turned in his badge, yes. well, you know, there has got to be a limit how much illegal contact you can have while you are acting as an under cover officer. one thing i guess to fake drug buys but it is certainly another to see somebody who is, apparently an innocent, the driver and certainly the wife and child in the car, getting assaulted no matter how you define assault, and not doing anything about it and not calling it in for reenforcements? even if you, to do something that doesn t necessarily blow your cover. there is some problems. jon: just to be clear, there were at least two and perhaps as many as five new york city officers riding with this group. we don t know if they we
defense attorney. welcome to both of you. thanks for having me. uma: let s talk about the fact of the dna evidence. the defense argued, fred, that the dna does not tell the entire story. and managed to convince of jury of that. what s your reaction there? well, what my reaction is, first of all i think this decision was a travesty of justice but what you saw, and, esther will tell you about this, because she is one, a very good criminal defense attorney get to jury to look at all these other things the dna doesn t tell the whole story. no. the only story it told this woman s hands were around the victim s neck and this women s fingers were on the gas knob left, right after the crime to try and explode the property. so, you know, from his perspective, he got the jury to look at all these other things it doesn t show. of course it doesn t show that. they latched onto that. and they acquitted. uma: esther, a lot of people think when you have a abundant dna at crime scene
the strangling of aspiring model, julianna redding, despite investigators finding park s dna all over the crime scene. stunning acquittal leading to the emotional outburst from friend and family of the victim. [shouting] quiet. don t make the situation worse. i don t want to put anyone in jail. don t make any threats. please be quiet. go to hell [bleep]. something wrong here. uma: well as you can hear there, quite emotional from the reactions that, after the verdict was read. our legal panel has been following this story very closely from the very beginning, surely has some opinions about what took place. joining us now, fred tecce, former federal prosecutor, esther panitche, a criminal
no, no you need to focus on evidence to convict. and they didn t. it is what it is. you don t know that they didn t. they didn t come back with the verdict that you wanted. the defense was successful at least arguing planting the seed, that the dna could have been there because it was wiped away on a a towel. they were able to bring in the seeds of doubt to plant with this jury. look, the dna, you can t, i mean, i guess you can try. i guess this case stands for the proposition that dna isn t enough but this isn t ncis or csi. this is real law, real courtrooms. this is a real case. this is the kind of evidence that you get and, the fact is, that he gave some story to the jury that the victim may have brought a dish home from a party that the accused was at. and i thought it was, personally i thought it was way out there but what the heck. i was flat wrong on this one. uma: esther, you have the final word here. the jury did what juries do. this is why fred and i don t sit on ju
she was not guilty. now i will say, they didn t say that she is innocent. what they said is, by their verdict, is that she, that prosecutor could not meet its burden of proof. which is a very high burden as it should be in any criminal case of beyond a reasonable doubt. they thought it was possible she may have been involved but that is not enough under our system of justice to convict some one of what they wanted to convict her of. uma: fred, your reaction to what she just said? that is a great argument in the casey anthony where there was no evidence to point to casey anthony. in this case there was compelling evidence to point to this woman that did it. people like good defense lawyers like esther got to them to look at motive which isn t element of crime. why would the woman kill somebody if she was never arrested before. they argued all these things the jury was distracted to by. the prosecutor should have went back to the jury, no,