If you know you know, as they say. Over the past days in Massachusetts there has been a remarkable trial where a woman, one Karen Read has found herself facing prosecution in what has become increasingly obviously a corrupt case involving a city whose rampant abuse of power has led to a massive conflict. I must admit that I was a bit late to care about this case compared to the attention that many other people spent, though I did see articles and thinkpieces regarding the question of justice. One of the most puzzling things I read, in light of the evidence that I saw as well as the absolute abominable state of the investigation on the part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is that some people have said that there are some people whose faith in justice would be greatly harmed if Karen Read is found not guilty of murder. It is easier to understand how the faith of people in justice would be greatly harmed if she is found guilty, though.

It must be remembered, though it is easy to forget, that the standard the prosecution must achieve in order to deserve a conviction is beyond a reasonable doubt at a high level of moral certainty. The defense does not face the burden of proving the innocence of someone accused of a crime, only that there is a reasonable doubt as to whether they committed a crime. In this case, it would appear that reasonable doubt is not at all a difficult standard for the defense to reach, in large part because the investigation of the death at the center of the case was so incompetently (or, even more likely, so corruptly) conducted. When the prosecution’s theory is that the defendant intentionally struck and killed the decedent with a massive vehicle and the body had no bruises or broken bones in the arms and torso, as well as cuts to the arm that are consistent with an animal attack (and there was a dog with a known biting problem inside the house where the death apparently happened), with the only significant wound being a blunt force trauma wound to the back of the head that is consistent with a punch to the face followed by a fall backwards and not with being hit by a several-ton SUV at 30 mph or thereabouts, reasonable doubt would appear to have been reached.

One of the most appalling aspects of this particular case was just how bad the investigation was. Evidence has been tampered with and altered, witnesses were ignored, video footage was conveniently erased at key points, and even web search histories (including how long it takes someone to die if they are left outside in the cold) were tampered with, as well as there being no effort made to investigate calls being made among the interested parties at the place where the dead body was found, which was conveniently a police officer’s home with a well-connected family. And as it happens, the case had a few heroes, including a couple of engineers and ridiculously overqualified medical examiners who were able to provide a compelling alternative theory to the rather poorly thought out theory from the Commonwealth. But no hero in the case was as unexpected as the man who I will only call Mr. Plow, a snowplow driver who appears to be a man of simple and straightforward integrity, something sorely lacking as a whole in this case.

It has been thought by some that this snowplow driver, who happened to drive by the scene of the crime three times over the course of the early morning hours on the day when the death in question occurred, might have been thought of by the state of Massachusetts as a potential patsy, and his name was left off of all documentation by the prosecution and investigators in the hope that he would not be called as a witness by the defense, but despite the shameful lack of interest in what this honest salt-of-the-earth man had to say, he ended up providing compelling testimony that demonstrated some major holes in the timeline of the prosecution’s case, demonstrated a strong familiarity with the family in question through years of study in the town and work for the family’s pizza shop before finding a job as a snow plow driver whose cobbled-together plow was known affectionately as the Frankentruck. Demonstrating a firm awareness of the conditions in the yard when the death was supposed to have occurred and having not seen the body at the time when death apparently occurred was enough on its own to provide reasonable doubt, and the fact that the police investigators lied about the times he had driven up and down the street in question demonstrates at least part of the lack of integrity that marked the Commonwealth’s case overall.

It is yet unclear what the jury will decide in this case, given that closing arguments have just finished. While the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had a lot of witnesses, the qualify of their case was particularly, even shockingly poor, and Karen Read had effective defense counsel who was able to provide a compelling narrative of prosecutorial and police failures that indicate a frame-up job that ought to put anyone in the Massachusetts city responsible for this mess on their guard that they could be railroaded the same way should their freedom and existence become inconvenient to the powers that be. It is even thought that people like the state’s witness medical examiner (who provided, almost against her will, confirmation of the lack of agreement between the wound pattern of the dead man with a car impact death), as well as our heroic snow plow driver, are in danger given the way that their testimony punctured the awful theory of the police and prosecution. Let us hope that no harm comes to a rare honest man in a corrupt Massachusetts town; in such evil times as these we need all the honest men (and women) that we can find.