Now that this nightmare of a prosecution is over, I cannot thank the forum posters here enough, for their dedication in analyzing every piece of the discovery, every pleading, statute and relevant case, and every detail of every pre-trial hearing and the trial.
These forums have truly been a cooperative effort. You should all be proud of the time and effort you spent making sure nothing was overlooked and examining the evidence from every conceivable angle.
The public will never know how much work we all put into this case, especially the hours spent on things that never even came out at trial, from the contradictory or implausible statements of witness who never testified at trial, to timing the raindrops in the M&I bank videos.
You created maps, analyzed distances, listened hundreds of times to recordings, many of which were unintelligible, and strained your eyes watching shadowy images in clubhouse videos.
We also managed to avoid character attacks, remain civil, and not base our decisions on social media evidence that wasn't disclosed by one side or the other.
Did we make a difference? Not in the outcome of the case, that's the achievement of the defense team. Perhaps we had an impact on the public discourse. But that's not what's important. What's important is that every one of you perceived an injustice was being done to an absolute stranger, and you took to your keyboards and gave up hours of your personal lives to contribute to a cooperative effort to prove it.
I am so proud of the forum contributors here. And I just wanted to tell you. I may host these forums, but they belong to all of you as well. I hope they will serve as a historical account of what happened in this case -- and what this case was not about.
[Added: Another thing we did: We all left our personal politics out of the discussions.]