The long-awaited retrial of accused murderer and fugitive (*) Ira Einhorn is set to begin this week. Already I’m grinding my teeth:
Einhorn’s lawyers have said they hope to call celebrities such as Ellen Burstyn and Peter Gabriel as character witness.
And Einhorn, who has always maintained his innocence, may take the stand as well.
It’s gonna be a circus, isn’t it? I have no idea what useful testimony Ellen Burstyn and Peter Gabriel can give other than the “no really, he’s a real sweetheart, his heart’s in the right place, I just can’t bring myself to believe that this guy I once hung out with could have decapitated his girlfriend and stuffed her body into a trunk in his apartment” kind. And oh, the possibilities if Einhorn gets to expound on his belief that the CIA did it in order to discredit him. Where’s Judge Ito when you really need him?
(*) I refuse to call him a “former hippie guru”.
Michael has been following this more closely than I have, and he says that the tinfoil hat angle is not on the defense agenda (unfortunately). Apparently someone claimes to have seen her alive after the date Einhorn could have killed her.
How that jibes with the evidence they have, e.g., the mummified body and the newspapers found with it, will be interesting. The prosecution could screw up the evidence, but I have a hard time seeing how the defense is going to get reasonable doubt without a prosecution botch.
I will admit, however, to extreme prejudice in this case. And disgust with the idea that anyone is still defending Einhorn, not to mention slack-jawed disbelief that any woman would ever marry him.