Thomas Atkinson, 35, ignored all of those ads about the risks of smoking for years and he is now facing the potential of life in prison or death in Texas. Now it is not those FDA bureaucrats gone wild, but criminal prosecutors who say that DNA tests on a discarded cigarette butt tied Athinson to a murder.
A discarded cigarette at the scene of a fatal July shooting in North Austin led detectives to a Hays County man now charged with murder of Alejandro “Alex” Hernandez Jr., 42 (below) Police found the butt in the pick up truck at the scene but Hernandez does not smoke. Police say that Hernandez picked up a prostitute called Sunshine before he was shot. Witnesses claimed that Hernandez would not allow Sunshine out of the truck and Atkinson confronted him — ultimately shooting him.
Source: Statesman
The first hand effects of smoking are often dimwittedly not seen by the average Joe. The tobacco industry paid the movie stars and the movie industry to promote smoking in movies and television. John Wayne sits his patrol down on the side of the trail in Vietnam and tells the boys to “smoke em if ya gottem”. Millions get the promotion and over the course of time most who smoke die from it, if they dont get run over by a truck when they are lighting up in an intersection. Back in Nam the Viet Cong relied on John Wayne and the Americans to smoke cigarettes out in the jungle so that they (the Cong) could locate them and blow them up.
The dumb schmuck in the photo here in the article has probably been smoking since his mommy taught him by example when he was twelve. They will let him smoke in prison (thankfully) and he wont live past 62 or so if prison and smoking mortality rates kick in.
We do not have a one child per couple rule in this country and so we need poisons to keep our population from getting out of hand. Smart is a word that is defined by action and not information and informed consent is a way to allow people to suicide slowly by smoking all their waking hours and looking ugly.
The effects of DNA so called evidence is a two way street. Sometimes old crimes were laid upon some schmuck who was innocent and years later DNA firmly found on the knife and in the dead guy’s wound might exonerate the convict. But the opposite cold case scenario can happen. A cop collecting evidence in 1982 did not have DNA cross contamination protocals etched into his skull and so when he collected the underwear of dead victim he might have also been shaking hands with some schmuck who is now charged with the crime thirty years later.
There is a federal constitutional standard of review in criminal cases on the sufficiency of the evidence that is rejected by many state courts. Mizzoura is one example. States that reject the federal due process and fair trial jurisprudence are Unreconstructed– they reject the 14th Amendment. Most of these states are former slave states. Put two and two together here folks and we have a 2012 continuation of the Civil War and inquiring minds might want to wonder why the Supreme Court in some yahoo place like Mizzoura rejects the 14th Amendment and adopts in its stead a standard which is best described as “I know it when I see it” when reviewing the adequacy of the evidence in a criminal conviction.
There is a lot to this story here where schmucko drops his cigarette when he just committed a crime. I am sure he watched the movie The Green Berets at some point and if not on the streets then at his leisure hour in the joint.
Smoke em if ya gottem.
This is something right out of NCIS! Amazing forensice work.
According to Elliott R. Morss, Ph.D, alcohol is far more harmful than smoking.
The World Health Organization (WHO) in its 2011 report said that that the harmful use of alcohol results in the death of 2.5 million people annually including 320,000 young people aged 15-29 years.
http://rehmat1.com/2012/08/08/rev-ted-pike-alcohol-is-jewish/
Darren,
I seem to recall that as well…. Many a homicide are/is being determined through DNA……
Nick,
Maybe she worked the morning shift…..
“Sushine.” What a beautiful name for a prostitute.
(alleged)
Well there yoiu go smoking kills, but it is usually yourself (or maybe someone close enough to you for the 2ndhand smoke to kill) not a victim.
We had a case in our state many years ago where a person who was a suspect in either a rape or murder (sorry but I don’t remember which) had fled the state. LEOs learned of his location and concocted a scheme to obtain his DNA to compare with that left at the scene.
Under false pretenses, the detectives made up a packet proffering the suspect had won a contrest and requested he send his response in the enclosed envelope. The suspect did so and licked the envelope, providing a DNA sample for the state which then linked him to the crime.
He contested the subterfuge to obtain the DNA but lost on both the suppression and the appeal.