<p>Correct. They’re hoping for results from the forensic testing of the car later today.</p>
<p>I simply meant they didn’t take him to the police station in handcuffs. He went there voluntarily – as voluntarily as a person of interest can. ;)</p>
<p>@lookingforward The press conference from yesterday is on NBC29’s website. <a href=“http://www.nbc29.com”>http://www.nbc29.com</a></p>
<p>I would hope the lawyer would tell him to be cooperative if he was innocent of any serious wrong-doing. If he was responsible, and she is alive somewhere, they could have quickly negotiated a plea bargain, for her safe return. The lawyer should only tell him to keep his mouth shut if she is no longer alive and he was responsible.</p>
<p>Well, I doubt the lawyer knows what happened either at this point. Do we know how long he was at the police station?</p>
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<p>Yes, it would imply that he was scared. </p>
<p>Because, you know, innocent black men have never been convicted of the murder of white women on flimsy circumstantial evidence. </p>
<p>Sure, he may have a guilty conscience. Buying drinks for 18 yr old girls in bars is something that every 32-yr old man knows is not acceptable behavior. Although plenty of them do it. :(</p>
<p>Again, he may be guilty or complicit in her disappearance, he may not. The problem with fixating on him as the sole POI at this stage is that the real criminal can escape notice. Richard Jewell, anyone?</p>
<p>He’s the last person she was seen with so he knows what happened next. Whatever that was. I also think the police know more about this than they are letting on and if they have her DNA in his car or apartment he is cooked. If not, this could get very sticky. </p>
<p>They have no one else to focus on because he is the last known person to have contact with her and he has not provided any info to the police about where she might have gone after they “went separate ways.” He would be a main POI in this , regardless of race. I hope they get the forensic evidence today and that it will clear up whether or not Hannah was ever in his car.</p>
<p>I haven’t heard that the police got a warrant to search his cell phone. </p>
<p>I also wonder what the other people in the apartment told police about what time he came home that night.</p>
<p>Did Jewell have a criminal record? It looks like Matthew does. Its available online for resourceful people (ps: some of it looks like either his father, or someone else with a different birthdate or fake ID). </p>
<p>Focusing too much on him may possibly turn out to be wrong; but he’s, as far as we know, the last person to have been seen with Hannah. He was with her, but he hasn’t provided any information. He stayed silent and out of sight for a week. So, on the list of possible suspects, he wins the prize right now. He’s number one. No getting around it.</p>
<p>And its possible that he’s taken off because he has some idea of what a forensic examination of his car might find. Time will tell. I think he is scared, and its for a good reason. </p>
<p>Yes, forensic evidence is key. If it turns out that there is no evidence of her being in his car–and he actually IS innocent–I would think he would be likely to be more forthcoming about what happened.</p>
<p>I really wonder about the other disappearances. I also wonder about the fact that when he came up and put his arm around her she evidently didn’t flinch away. Did they know each other somehow?</p>
<p>Alexis Murphy disappeared in the general area but they have a guy in jail on that, Randy Taylor. I believe that they have evidence he may have had contact with Samantha Clarke, another person who is missing. There is a transgender woman, Dashad Smith, who disappeared in 2012. Her roommate said she was going to meet someone for a date but hasn’t been heard from since. The only one that seems to me that has any similarity to Hannah’s case is the 2009 Morgan Harrington case , the Virginia Tech student who disappeared in Charlottesville while attending a concert. But I’m certainly no expert on how they analyze similarities.</p>
<p>Didn’t they get probable cause to search the apartment after impounding the car? </p>
<p>Or he could be not guilty of anything. Haven’t you lot ever watched the YouTube video, “don’t talk to police?” </p>
<p>At present, the police are under pressure. They need to find a suspect. The last guy to talk with her will do. Any good defense lawyer will focus on his client’s defense. </p>
<p>I think it’s a good idea for anyone to get a lawyer if they are being questioned by the police.
But if you are innocent, you can have a lawyer and still cooperate.</p>
<p>I do wonder about the ethics involved - hypothetically, if you are a lawyer and your client tells you he might have info about a kidnapped person but he may be involved, what do you do? Advice your client to bargain with the info?</p>
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<p>Not only will he “do”, he’s logically the number one suspect. That is especially true if there is reason to believe from prior behaviour that he isn’t always a model citizen. We appear to have that here. </p>
<p>I wonder what the police know about the two guys who were at his apartment. The mention of the gang theory someone said above did get me thinking. I know the warrants are sealed, and that hopefully the police will learn more about the forensics soon. But, just some general questions, that I’m hoping someone who has a legal mind here can answer…</p>
<p>Is it possible that whatever the police saw that gave them “probable cause” after searching Jesse’s car was not even Hannah related? For example, if there was evidence of a little bit of drugs in the car, could they then get probable cause to search the apt for evidence of drug dealing? And, in carrying out that search, can they take evidence of other crimes, or anything they think that could lead to other crimes? And, could they have taken his cellphone in the course of that search? Maybe the drugs is a bad example on my part, as they could have arrested him on the spot for that. But I’m wondering how minor of a thing is needed to get “probable cause” and must that crime have something to do with the one being investigated, or can it be any crime.</p>
<p>And, I agree, @sevmom, I’m no expert either, but this case seems most similar only to the Harrington case. From where the victims were last known to be (either at or pretty darn close to UVA), to their ages, and that each was likely wandering alone, and may have been a little tipsy. And certainly Randy Taylor, as a convicted felon, would have had to submit DNA, right? If there was a match that linked him to Harrington, that would have come out. There were able to collect DNA from Harrington. That DNA recovered did match an unsolved 2005 abduction and rape in Fairfax VA. There is a description and a sketch of that man. Of course that doesn’t rule out that Taylor and that man weren’t somehow working together, but I find that less plausible. It is not out of the realm of possibilities though</p>
<p>The police chief now says he doesn’t expect test results back until tomorrow. </p>
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<p>This happens all the time, and it’s not a difficult question at all from the standpoint of legal ethics. Not only do you advise your client to bargain with the information, you actively represent him or her as negotiator and go-between in the negotiation. </p>
<p>I know it sounds sleazy, but I don’t think it is. The criminal justice system works best when criminals are represented by competent counsel. That means really represented – that counsel is working zealously within the bounds of the law to further the client’s interests, and the client knows and appreciates that. Sure, sometimes this can lead to a guilty person avoiding punishment (as with OJ Simpson), but that’s a very, very rare occurrence. The normal thing that happens is a plea bargain where there is an agreement about the charge, the sentence length, and also sometimes type of prison facility, all of which gets vetted by the judge.</p>
<p>In a situation like this one, if the suspect goes to a lawyer and the lawyer refuses to help him negotiate, the chances are low that the suspect is just going to give up and reveal his information to the authorities. They are not going to get the information from him; they are going to have to develop it on their own. Which sometimes they can do, and sometimes they can’t. </p>
<p>If the lawyer gets involved, but the police are confident they have enough leads to solve the case and find the body on their own, then offering to reveal the information won’t get the suspect much in the plea negotiations, so it’s not like there will be a horrible distortion of justice there. If the police are not confident like that, then the information really has value. But I think we are all better off if the guilty person is identified and goes to prison for a significant term (as will happen, but maybe not life imprisonment or the death penalty), vs. possibly never being convicted and the family never getting closure.</p>
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<p>Well. They apparently were able somehow to get some DNA from the Harrington case that apparently matched up with a rape case in Fairfax years earlier, and that one had a sketch with help from the victim. It is a sketch that doesn’t look dissimilar to Matthew, although he would have been 9 years younger, and these things are necessarily rough. But I would think that you could have probable cause from the combinations of circumstances to examine some DNA from Matthew. If you could match him to the two outstanding cases, you wouldn’t have to concern yourself so much directly with the current one.</p>
<p>Maybe he didn’t do anything here, but if I were a policeman, I’d be looking for any DNA sources from Matthew. I wouldn’t bet much on him voluntarily returning to Charlottesville. </p>