Prosecutor owned Delbert....

Oh, I forgot to mention a big mistake on the defense attorney's part. During his opening statement he called the incident a murder when he shouldn't have.

I forget exactly what he said but it was something like, "Delbert wasn't involved in his murder", which is obviously a big no-no. Replace "murder" with "death" and your good to go bud.

If I remember correctly, Delbert did say he could read a little, and lets be honest, a first grader could read anything on Wheel of Fortune. And for all we know, one of his brothers could read and it was their choice to watch Wheel of Fortune. OR, maybe it was the only thing worth watching at that time of day, cause I really don't think they had cable.

The whole thing about the confession confuses me a bit though. He said they read it to him and he said he understood some of it, yet he still signed it. Though he did say he thought that if he cooperated he'd get to go home. So yeah, it basically comes down to he's not very bright, he did it, or some other strange reason.

I still think if he did it though it would be more obvious. They said Bill was stronger than Delbert, but who really knows. Whether that's true or not, what kind of person wouldn't try to fight back, leaving scratches or something on Delbert's hand. Or at least kick around enough to wake up the other brothers. Also, whether the police did put the pillow on top of Bill or it was always there, what evidence of a murder is that, if Delbert supposedly used his hand?

Bottom line is that people with an I.Q as low as Delbert can be convinced to sign a confession. Bottom line. He is not quicker than he lets on. People like this have flashes of common sense. He even says that he could understand certain things and not others, which goes to show that it's not completely restricted to specifics of what he can and can't read or can/can't understand. Just because he watches Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy does NOT mean he understands what's going on- he knew exactly who Vana White was, I wonder why that is? Probably because she's a sexy woman, not because she was flipping those vowels. The brothers are like children, which is clearly evident when they're all watching the TV at one point with their friend (I can't remember his name but he was fully competent in trying to help the Wards with what was going on around them) and on the report about them someone even says that they are just like children that haven't grown up. The part that amazes me is that neither of them says, "Hey- we're not children!" or gets upset.. they all heard it, but nobody even the friend says word one about it because they ARE children.

But I do agree on how the defense attorney shouldn't have even uttered the word 'murder', and a couple other points. However, I think the Wards are all legally mentally handicapped and there's no getting around that. Delbert had the sense to know that he didn't do it, but he didn't understand everything else surrounding it. Case and point, he knew the words "waive your rights" but he didn't know what his 'rights' were- as his friend points out, he could have thought it was waving to the person walking down the street.

Putting that quivering old man on the stand and attempting to grill him certainly turned the jury against the prosecutor. The smug medical examiner probably didn't help either.

Del surely didn't cable. Might have watched Wheel of Fortune just because it was on. Even if not, I still watch Jeopardy sometimes even though I don't know the answers.

I had a semi-retarded friend in high school who was probably smarter than Delbert. With enough pressure and convincing I have no doubt he would confess to a crime he didn't do. Even murder. To me Delbert's confession meant nothing.

You make him out like he's completely braindead. He's still a person, with a conscious, and some form of deductive reasoning skill. He knew that Matlock was a criminal defense attorney, so what? It's not like all he could say and understand on his behalf that he was some hurrdurr fella on the television. Despite mental retardation generally being defined as IQ below 70 (Delbert being 68), I don't think he was retarded. He was just slow compared to the educated populace, because farming with his brothers is all he'd known his entire life. He didn't have any formal education, he had very limited contact with the outside world (and what, Munnsville was like 3,000 people, right?), and I think he probably could have been knowledgeable with education from an early age. The automatic assumption that rural folks are retarded is ludicrous, as that one guy said in the video. It's just a stereotypical stigma.

He didn't "own" Delbert in any way. The evidence was completely unfounded, the medical examiners evidence (or lack thereof) had been retreaded on circumstantial grounds. You bring this old simple man into an interrogation room with guys with flashy suits and lights accusing you of doing something and saying you will be able to "go home with a signed confession," sure, he would do that, because he doesn't know how the legal system works and, in part, doesn't understand the ramifications of what he's being accused of.

Its a jungle out there.

I watched this last night and have to say I disagree. The prosecutor came off as a bully who was interested in winning a case, not justice. Just because Delbert had signed a confession does not mean he understood what he was signing. The defense did a great job in showing that with Delbert's level of intelligence, he could be easily led.

My girlfriend, who teaches Special Ed to lower functioning students and is in a Master's program to become a school psychologist, said that it appeared he was really just uneducated. One does not live on a farm without being able to at least take care of their self. If he *did* kill his brother, he would not have done so maliciously (which is apparently what the filmmakers also believed), simply because he was likely not capable of such thought. Much of his 'civilized' behavior seemed mimicked, not something he thought was normal. As an aside on this, I didn't have closed captions available, but I could have sworn Delbert said that 'Amanda White' was the woman on Wheel of Fortune. It cemented in my mind the fact that if he was trying to fool someone, he was trying to fool them into thinking he was not as slow as he really was, out of pride.

Regardless, everyone is presumed innocent and it's up to the prosecutor to prove beyond reasonable doubt that someone is guilty. I don't feel he did that, even with his confession. The prosecutor's medical examiner was terrible (my girlfriend laughed out loud every time he was on screen) and grilling the other brother was a huge mistake. I'm surprised it took the jury as long as it did to come back with a not guilty verdict.

The prosecutor simply had no case. I'd have been shocked if the verdict had been otherwise. There was NO proof that a murder had even occurred, and although it's obvious that Delbert was lying about some things, it's also clear that no confession from him could be taken seriously. They should have provided him an advocate in the first place.

What's interesting here is that the representatives of the system clearly saw him as an ignorant hick that they could railroad. The lesson is that they should have taken the case more seriously and provided legal counsel before extracting the confession. Having no other evidence to prosecute, this case shouldn't even have been brought to trial.

So how the prosecutor 'owned' the defendant, I don't know.


"I'll book you. I'll book you on something. I'll find something in the book to book you on."

He could probably read enough to get something out of Wheel of Fortune. Or at least be intrigued by it. After all, he also said he watched Jeopardy even though he admitted he couldn't answer many of the questions on it. I imagine these guys spent a lot of time watching TV, because what else would they do with their free time? They couldn't read books, they were around each other pretty much every minute of their lives so there probably wasn't much to talk about, so I imagine they sat in front of the TV quite a bit. And TV can educate you a little, so they probably knew some random facts here and there. They didn't seem to be physically retarded so much as just raised in isolation and, thus, developmentally disabled due to not getting much intellectual stimulation when they were young. The older you get the harder it is to pick up things, if you haven't had a background in it.

I know a lot of people who've been stunted by upbringing... mostly Southern evanglicals who've been home-schooled by their parents. They're not as bad off as the Ward brothers, but they're still far behind the curve, and there's nothing physically wrong with them -- they just never really learned how to learn, never really had their minds challenged when they were in their developing years.