I could be way off base here from a legal standpoint; and maybe the Jury have received instructions/information to the contrary (or maybe they have a different opinion) - but if I was on the Jury I'd look at Joint Venture in the following way.
1) Was Odin Lloyd Murdered?
2) Were Hernandez, Wallace, and Ortiz the only other "participants" at the crime.
Assuming "YES" to the above, to me Joint Venture is intended to eliminate the chances that any (or all three) guilty parties "get off" because of a reasonable doubt that they weren't the trigger man and/or had no idea what was going down. In other words, once the State has established BARD that Lloyd was murdered and that those three were involved in the crime, the next logical implication is that one of them HAS to be guilty of murdering OL. Personally, once that happens, my feelings (again - could be legally incorrect) is that Joint Venture would "automatically bind" each of them as guilty unless they could somehow prove the above. It sort of shifts the burden of proof IMO. We KNOW one of those three is guilty (if we assume the State has established BARD that Lloyd was murdered by one of them) - now it's up to each individual defendant to show why HE is not a guilty party. Otherwise isn't the risk that they each point a finger at somebody else, Mexican Stand-Off style, and hope that each possibly gets off the hook for the murder rap?
I confess I'm not really sure how this works w/ multiple defendants being tried separately. If Hernandez successfully convinces his Jury that one of the others flipped out and murdered Lloyd while they were hanging out, and Ortiz successfully convinces his Jury of the same, I'm guessing those results can't be used against Wallace at his trial, correct?
Maybe I'm just as unrealistic as the posters who are waiting for the L&O smoking gun moment where AH breaks down on the stand and confesses, but I have a hard time shaking the idea that if I were on a Jury, and I had been successfully convinced that the State met its burden of proof on Assumptions 1 & 2 above, that I wouldn't be looking at AH and thinking that he's guilty under JV, in the absence of a creditable story (with testimony?) from him and another defendant about how it was the third guy who killed Lloyd out of nowhere.
1) Was Odin Lloyd Murdered?
2) Were Hernandez, Wallace, and Ortiz the only other "participants" at the crime.
Assuming "YES" to the above, to me Joint Venture is intended to eliminate the chances that any (or all three) guilty parties "get off" because of a reasonable doubt that they weren't the trigger man and/or had no idea what was going down. In other words, once the State has established BARD that Lloyd was murdered and that those three were involved in the crime, the next logical implication is that one of them HAS to be guilty of murdering OL. Personally, once that happens, my feelings (again - could be legally incorrect) is that Joint Venture would "automatically bind" each of them as guilty unless they could somehow prove the above. It sort of shifts the burden of proof IMO. We KNOW one of those three is guilty (if we assume the State has established BARD that Lloyd was murdered by one of them) - now it's up to each individual defendant to show why HE is not a guilty party. Otherwise isn't the risk that they each point a finger at somebody else, Mexican Stand-Off style, and hope that each possibly gets off the hook for the murder rap?
I confess I'm not really sure how this works w/ multiple defendants being tried separately. If Hernandez successfully convinces his Jury that one of the others flipped out and murdered Lloyd while they were hanging out, and Ortiz successfully convinces his Jury of the same, I'm guessing those results can't be used against Wallace at his trial, correct?
Maybe I'm just as unrealistic as the posters who are waiting for the L&O smoking gun moment where AH breaks down on the stand and confesses, but I have a hard time shaking the idea that if I were on a Jury, and I had been successfully convinced that the State met its burden of proof on Assumptions 1 & 2 above, that I wouldn't be looking at AH and thinking that he's guilty under JV, in the absence of a creditable story (with testimony?) from him and another defendant about how it was the third guy who killed Lloyd out of nowhere.