Case for Gospel Reliability
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If I was going to make a case for Christianity, you have to understand that this is a case we make circumstantially. There’s two kinds of evidence. There’s circumstantial evidence, or called indirect evidence. And there’s direct evidence. These are the only two categories of evidence, folks, direct and indirect. And indirect evidence gets a bad name and it shouldn’t. I want to do a case with you right now using nothing but indirect evidence.
Here’s a guy who’s been accused of killing his girlfriend with that baseball bat. He bludgeoned her to death. Now, if I had a way of convicting this guy, what if it was easy? I just went out and I talked to him. Do you think he would tell me the truth about what he did? I don’t think so. Most guys don’t. And if he’s been keeping this secret for 30 years, there’s a good chance he’s learned how to lie about it. He’s not going to tell me the truth.
If he did tell me the truth, though, this would be a direct evidence case because direct evidence comes down to eyewitness testimony. That is the only form of direct evidence. Eyewitnesses. He would be the eyewitness because he saw himself do it, so he could testify about what he did. But what if he’s not going to help us? I don’t think you can trust him for any of this stuff. So what if I had a different kind of evidence? I had another witness, not our guy, who saw him do the whole thing. That would be pretty good. What did they say, for example, she says, “Yeah, you know, I’m out clipping my roses and I look across the street and I got a neighbor who’s lived there for years and she’s a sweet girl, but you know, she’s always fighting with her boyfriend. I can hear her fighting all the time and sure enough, this day she’s fighting with her boyfriend again. I look up to the big plate glass window and I see he’s got a baseball bat in his hands and he is beating the dog snot out of her with it. And she’s down. He keeps on swinging there’s blood everywhere. He gets in his car. He run drives off.”
Wow. How do you know who it was? Well, I’ve known the girl for like 20 years. She grew up in this neighborhood. Okay. What about him? Well, I’ve known him that long too. He also grew up … They’ve been dating forever. Okay. And I’ve known this guy since he was this tall. We do everything together. We have barbecues together. 4th of July. As a matter of fact, when he did this to her, he was wearing the shirt that I gave him for Christmas two years ago. That’s pretty compelling, don’t you think? If that witness stands up under cross examination, that one witness might be enough to convict this guy. That’s a piece of direct evidence pointing to our suspect. That’s called a direct evidence case. Make sense? Because we’re using an eyewitness.
But let’s say the situation is slightly different. Maybe she didn’t give that shirt to him for Christmas. And maybe when he does this crime, he’s actually got a mask on his head. Now what do we do? Did you see who did it? Yeah. What do you know about them? Well, he kind of looks like the same physical build as her boyfriend, but he had a thing on his head. I couldn’t see. Are you willing to convict now on the basis of his physical description? I don’t think anyone here would convict, right? But now we don’t have a direct eyewitness. We got to build this some other way. We got to build this case indirectly. This is a circumstantial case. Indirect evidence is also called circumstantial evidence.
Every case eye work is circumstantial. I have never had a direct evidence case. I wish I had them. When I first opened this detail on my agency, we had 30 cold cases. None of them had witnesses. None of them had DNA. None of them had fingerprint evidence. None of them had anything except when I’m about to show you and I had to build him one step at a time. What if I went out now and I talked to this guy, knock on his door, “Dude, what were you doing yesterday at the time of this murder?” Oh, I was visiting friends. He’s got an alibi, but when I check out his alibi, it turns out he’s lied to me about those two hours. He lies to me about where he was and what he was doing. And he fits the general physical build of our suspect. Do you think he’s guilty? How many of you think he’s our guy? Why would you lie about your alibi? Raise your hand if you think he’s guilty? Really? Dude, you are like a hanging judge. You need to come out to Torrance and sit on our jury pool. We had 12 of you guys, we’d be convicted guys right and left.
But most of us, except for the hanging judge, most of us, that’s not enough. I’m with you. I understand, I’m messing with you. So I do a search warrant at his house and I discover he is got a murder weapon in his house. And I always describe this murder weapon, it’s pretty unusual. He’s got a baseball bat in his house. None of you have a baseball bat in your house I bet, right? Oh, you have bats, right? How many of you have a baseball bat in your house? Raise your hand. That’s almost everybody.
I always say this, but I did this in Canada for about a week in Vancouver. Every different church I would go to. And finally at the end of five talks, someone said to us, “Hey, you know, here in the west side of Canada, nobody plays baseball. There’s baseball team on this side of the country. Baseball’s not popular here. Nobody plays it. If you had a baseball bat in your house, that would be very suspicious.” So for Canada, what do you think I have on that version? I’ve photoshopped it, he’s got a hockey stick. Hockey stick. Yeah. Makes sense to them. So this by itself doesn’t mean much to you, does it? He’s got so he’s got a baseball. So what? Yeah, but this baseball bat’s different and this thick part of the bat right here, it’s not smooth. It’s all dented and nicked up. Like he’s been hitting something other than baseballs. Almost like he’s been using it as a club.
You do a forensic search on the bat. No blood, no body fluids, no tissue. Why? Because it’s been soaked in bleach. Now how many of you have a bat that you’ve been using like a club and you thought for some reason to soak it in bleach to destroy any biological material? Who does that? Now we got a guy who fits the general description, he’s got a BO alibi and he’s got a bleached baseball bat. How many of you right now, now you’re thinking, oh dude looks bad. Raise your hand. Right? Because you’ve started to triangulate these things. It’s not any one of these things. It’s the concert of all three of these things, right? Turns out also at the search warrant you discover he’s got a pair of jeans, but everyone’s got jeans, but his jeans are different. His jeans are dirty. They’ve got dirt and mud on him. Except at the knees. At the knees when we use luminol, it’s a chemical we use, it luminescence when certain body fluids like blood are present or when certain cleaning detergents are present. Turns out his jeans luminesce. They glow at the knees.
While you do a test for biological material, it’s not blood. It’s negative for any kind of biological material. It turns out it’s cleaning detergent. He’s spot cleaned his pants. Now clearly, he’s not trying to get dirt off his pants because there’s dirt everywhere on his pants. If that was the case, he’d be working everywhere else too. No he’s trying to spot clean something else off the knees. What’s he trying to take off the knees? But you see how we did that though? Do you see how circumstantial that is, really? But you feel good about it, don’t you? A guy who’s got a bleached baseball bat, who’s spot cleaning his jeans. That doesn’t make much sense unless he’s something more sinister than he appears.
It turns out also there’s no sign of forced entry at the house. Whoever did this, didn’t have to knock their way in didn’t have to break down a door to get in or break a window to get in. They got in that house, were either let in by the victim, well she would let her boyfriend in or they had a key to get in and turns out there are three people with a key, the victim, the victim’s mom and the victim’s crazy boyfriend. Now you know he’s a crazy boyfriend because he describes himself that way. When you do an interview with him, he tells you, oh I got an up and down relationship. I lose my temper. I got a bad temper. I know I do. She knows it too. I feel bad about it. I mean I do punch her once in a while. I smack her around, but she knows I don’t mean anything about it. It’s just my personality. And I always am sorry afterwards. And she always forgives me and takes me back. It’s just the nature of our relationship. And it’s an up and down kind of violent relationship. And yeah, I did find out on the day of the murder that she was cheating on me. I couldn’t believe it.
I could believe it. Could you believe it? Look at this guy, would you cheat on that guy? He’s smacking her around to begin with, I’m thinking I would cheat on this guy. And he says, “Yeah and I found out and I lost my temper and I smacked her a few times and her friends were there. I threatened to kill her, but I didn’t kill her.” Think he’s our guy now? Turns out that the witness saw up particular kind of shoe on the feet of the suspect. The suspect ran out of the house and had a shoe that had leather on the side. A band of leather on the side that she’s like, “Oh wow, that’s really unusual.” You do some research. This shoe is not a popular model. It’s only made by one company. It’s only selling at one store in your county. And in that store it’s been so unpopular, it’s only sold like 20 or 30 pairs in two or three years. But who do you think has got one pair of these in his house? Our guy.
So he’s got an unlikely pair of shoes, all this talk about his anger problems, he’s got a way in, spot cleaning pants, bleach bat, BO alibi, fits the general description. Come on. Really? Not only that, if you’d have gone and done the search warrant a half an hour later, he would’ve been dead because he was writing a suicide note when you got there. It’s half finished, it’s on the counter. And in that suicide note, he says, “I did something yesterday that I cannot forgive myself for. I exploded, lost my temper. Can’t take it back. Can’t make it right. I’ve got no choice now, but to kill myself.” But he doesn’t say he committed a murder. How many of you feel pretty good about this guy right now? Raise your hand. And you’re doing it so far with just 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 pieces of indirect circumstantial evidence. You have no eyewitness and no piece of physical evidence connecting him to this crime. Think about it. You have no DNA, no fingerprints. Do you realize you can make cases without that stuff? I do it every day.
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