Why keep harassing Eric Stukel and his friends
when a jury of his peers found him innocent?

First, Stukel was found "not guilty."

This has a different legal definition than
"innocent."

Second, none of his friends were ever tried for
the crime of conspiracy, accessory to murder
after the fact, assault, attempted murder, drug
trafficking, witness tampering, the list goes
on...

The trouble with Nebraska law is that the
prosecution has to prove in which county a
victim has been killed to prove Manslaughter 3.

Though the prosecution presented plenty of
evidence linking Eric Stukel to Tammy's
murder, they could not prove conclusively in
which county she died.

There was also a juror who really should not
have been on that jury, considering she was
friends with Dawn Stukel, Eric Stukel's
mother.

After an initial vote of 11 to 1 for guilt, this
juror told the eleven others that there was no
way they could convince her to vote guilty.In
other words, when eleven of those jurors
walked into the deliberation room, all of them
were ready to convict based upon the facts they
heard in the courtroom.

If my source on the jury is accurate, Dawn
Stukel's friend was able to convince another
juror that they should not convict based upon
the aforementioned technicality of location.

"How can we convict if we don't even know
where this person died?"

Once this second juror was convinced not to
vote guilty, he began going after the other
jurors "like a hammer" until all were voting
not guilty.

That evidently was the goings on in
deliberations. Based upon juror statements to
local reporters, I also believe the jurors had a
gross misunderstanding of the law, confusing
"reasonable doubt" with "no shadow of doubt."

If "no shadow of doubt" were the rule, no
person could be convicted of any crime.

Such absolutes just do not exist.

Unless, those twelve jurors were witness to
the crime, there can be no shadow of a doubt,
and if they were witness to the crime, they
wouldn't be eligible for jury duty anyway.

I believe the jury set for themselves an
impossible standard by which to measure doubt
to deal with their own collective conscience. I
believe many of those jurors comforted
themselves with platitudes like we just don't
really know what happened because we
weren't there.

Besides, it won't bring the person who died
back...and it was just so long ago anyway...why
ruin a young man's life for a mistake he made in
the past?

In other words, the jury got to know a
spit-polished version of Eric Stukel, nice and
cleaned up for the court proceedings.

The jury only knew of Tammy through the cold
process of these same court proceedings.

If the jurors were to feel sympathy for
anybody, it would have been for Eric Stukel.

One juror even referred to Stukel as that "poor
boy." In fact, having witnessed the end of the
trial, I would have to say these cold court
proceedings seemed to render Tammy's murder
a victimless crime.

In the end, Eric Stukel gets protected by
double-jeopardy laws under the Bill of Rights
and cannot be tried again.

Fortunately, though, my freedom of speech is
protected under that same Bill of Rights. In
other words, my 1st Amendment rights trumps
his 5th.

In the end, my goal is to know the truth and
make the truth known. Why? Because nothing
has been learned and nothing has changed. The
culture and attitudes -- hey, kids go out and
party and these things happen -- have not
changed.

If anything, kids have simply learned from this
that if they keep their mouths shut and stick
together they can get away with anything...even
murder.

As for harassment? If one can construe
disseminating facts and rendering informed
opinion about Tammy's murder as a form of
harassment, I guess I'm guilty...

m.c. merrill

MORE TOMORROW