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Don't Just Blame Boulder Prosecutors

Attorney Andrew Cohen analyzes legal issues for CBS News and CBSNews.com.



Are you surprised the case against John Mark Karr fell apart? Of course you aren't. You would have been more surprised had it stayed together — had it been conclusively proven by DNA evidence or otherwise that Karr really was the little girl's killer. Because you knew even before some of the major players said so Monday that the JonBenet Ramsey murder investigation always ends up being a black hole of unmet expectations, great disappointments, baffling inconsistencies, official incompetence, and unimaginable creeps.

Karr and his Boulder pursuers are only the latest in a long and ever-growing string of sorry or sleazy people whose lives and careers, intentionally or otherwise, have been made worse by their involvement in this murder mystery. Call it a curse. Call it bad karma. Call it whatever you will. No one gets off the island alive. The case attracts false hopes the way a country dog attracts fleas. The investigation wins only for its ability to lose spectacularly, as it did here with its attempt to see if Karr ever had truly acted on his sick obsessions.

In the wake of Monday's pre-case collapse of the People v. Karr, there is plenty of blame to go around and not all of it ought to be aimed at Boulder investigators and prosecutors. Despite his defense attorney's silly protestations to the contrary, Karr deserves most of the blame for the 12 roller-coaster days of intrigue and doubt that we have just endured. He fueled the flames of suspicion even as he was undercutting his self-professed ties to the murder. He traded straight-up a potential lifetime of illegitimate sexual prey for a few moments of high visibility in a world gone mad. He loved JonBenet so much, so he says, that he thinks he killed her or thinks it was cute and clever to make people falsely believe it was so.

His life now is worse, much worse, than it was before and that alone ought to give solace to the hundreds of millions of people who believe he is guilty of something more than being a creep. He may think the fame is worth it now — hey, it got him a free one-way ticket out of Thailand and brewing legal trouble there. But wait until his California trial gets closer. Wait until the nation's child-porn investigators turn their sights upon him. Ten will barely get you one that he will be suffering, in prison or elsewhere, long after most people have forgotten his name.

The media, too, deserve their measure of shame for the endless hype and the overwrought speculation that marked this latest chapter in the Ramsey story. It was the media that took the tinder spark and generated the conflagration we have just witnessed. We were warned by Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy that the investigation was just closer to its beginning than its start but we sure didn't listen, did we? It was the media that created the highest of expectations and now is ready to crucify prosecutors for not meeting them. It was the media that took a 10-year-old investigation and decided that it would be and could be and most importantly should have been resolved in less than 10 days or maybe even 10 hours.

And then there are the good public officials in Boulder, Colo., who probably wish today that they had never heard of Thai Airlines, or grilled shrimp, or John Karr. Do yourself a favor. Read the People's Motion To Quash Arrest Warrant filed Monday afternoon by prosecutors as they waved bye-bye to their case against Karr. It represents the most comprehensive summary yet of why law enforcement officials acted the way they did when they did in bringing Karr in from the cold when they did. It doesn't answer all the questions reasonable people will have about the way the investigation was handled. But it doesn't make police and prosecutors look like idiots, either.

Colorado's law enforcement community, and Boulder officials, made two critical mistakes during this episode, neither of which would have changed the outcome here — no DNA linking Karr to Ramsey is the sine qua non of this story — but both of which would have dramatically changed public expectations before Karr was let off the hook in Colorado and changed public perceptions now that the case is over before it started. In other words, Karr would not have been charged even if these mistakes had not been made. But without these mistakes we would be leaving his chapter in this story with a much better taste in our mouths.

From the prosecution's motion to quash, it is clear that one reason why Boulder officials decided to pick up Karr quickly was because they were afraid he might flee before a proper DNA test could be performed upon him. So why didn't they act in concert with California officials, from whom he had skipped bail in 2001, to try to bring him back to the States for reasons (child porn, violating conditions of bail, etc.) that had nothing to do with the Ramsey murder? In other words, why didn't Boulder officials simply tip off their California counterparts that Karr was in Thailand and then offer to help their Golden State cousins bring the guy back home?

Once home, they might have been able to do that DNA swab they say they needed and then make their scientific conclusions about Karr's guilt before alerting the Planet Earth that a Ramsey suspect was wanted and on the verge of being arrested. For years and years these investigators have toiled in silence and secrecy. And yet when it came time to make a move they blew their cover long before they had to. That might work in an ordinary high-profile case, but it wasn't going to work in this bombastic case and everyone in Boulder should have known it.

The other fault I find with Boulder officials was the inclusion in Karr's still-sealed arrest warrant of those references to first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault charges. Even though we still haven't seen that affidavit — don't expect it to be made public anytime soon, either, because it may contain information the secrecy of which still is important to the investigation — the use of those charges to justify Karr's arrest signaled everyone that the Boulder police thought there was a good chance that they had nabbed the guy. Again, this was bad "expectation management" on the part of Boulder officials, who surely could have ginned up lower-level alleged offenses to justify what they were trying to accomplish.

And even after the case was dropped it was clear that Boulder officials weren't dealing smartly with their California counterparts or the media. There is no excuse for the apparent lack of communication Monday afternoon between Boulder County and Sonoma County that resulted in Karr being "released" and then re-apprehended by Boulder cops after California authorities sent a telex to Boulder telling Karr's jailers that he was still a wanted man in California. There should have been no such scramble. Boulder should have given Sonoma County enough time to have that telex waiting once the case was dropped.

Other than that, what else do you want to blame Boulder prosecutors for? The business-class flight from Thailand? Fair enough. But so what. The guy was not yet arrested and on Thai Airways the motto is: to every man his own shrimp. And, anyway, wouldn't you trade a few thousand dollars of government money to get a guy like Karr off the streets? That's the under-appreciated fact in all of this. Even though Karr didn't kill Ramsey, he isn't stalking other young girls today. Even though he wasn't the right guy for this case, he wasn't the wrong guy to take out of circulation. It's not like Boulder officials scooped up Little Mary Sunshine.

We saw Karr, oozing weirdness, and we heard the allegations, and we wanted it to be true. We wanted it for JonBenet and for John Ramsey and even for his late wife, Patsy. We wanted it to be true and over and Karr looked and sounded the part. It didn't work out. But don't be too harsh on prosecutors or investigators. They had a guy they believed to be a pervert "admitting" in gross detail to involvement in the Ramsey case. He fit the profile and still does. So they brought him in to check it out. I hope they do it again and again and as often as they need to if, in the end, they solve this horrible case and thus end this unfathomable fascination so many of you have with this story.

By Andrew Cohen

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