Additional material that was hidden from the public
1) At the trial it became clear that a lot of the early facts given to the public by the police were not true
https://tribalcash.org/images/pdf/Esar_Met_Information.pdf
Almost every single major detail told by the police to the public was contradicted by witnesses at trial. The net effect was that there really was no evidence any investigation had ever been done. The body was found, then everybody involved tried to cover up mistakes. There was never any real investigation.
The police and prosecutor were pressuring people who just got out of refugee camps and had a lot of experience being pressured by authorities.
If you want to get the truth from somebody you do not menace them. Police kicked down the door of Esar Met's aunt and uncle and those two then told police exactly what they thought would protect them i.e., they didn't really know him that well and did not invite him. Later, at the trial, the prosecutor would be surprised again and again by Burmese people who decided to tell the truth once they no longer feared an attack from police.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1307.mp3
That clip, by itself, should have caused a mistrial and a new investigation, since it validates Esar Met's planned trip. The person in that clip had been with his family waiting for the police when the police kicked down his door. Like almost all of the Burmese people in this case, including the roommates and the victim's family, he was hesitant to give any information to the prosecutor that might lead to problems, and it is very clear that the prosecutor felt he had the power, or right, to intimidate the Burmese.
Here is the same witness as his memory improves a bit at the trial, when he is not so worried about armed gangsters assaulting his family.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1325.mp3
Right after police kicked down their door and terrorized their family he and his wife could not remember anything that might cause hostility from authorities, anything that might threaten their family, such as the fact that Esar Met had visited them previously. In later testimony, when they were less worried about consequences, they both remembered that Esar Met had visited their house previously and they had visited him at SouthPark.
Here is another one in which Esar Met's neighbor says Esar Met had stopped by in the morning and said he was going to visit his aunt.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip916.mp3
The prosecutor would later 'add a note to the record that this witness was making friendly gestures to Esar Met'.
2) Police may have arranged clever fallback plans to create new evidence if needed.
One detective testified at the trial that police got no responses during one search only at apartments #472 and #476.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip191.mp3
But written records at the police department appear to contradict that.
Because those two apartments are so close, and appear to be connected in the porch areas behind the apartment complex, the detective appears to be trying to suggest that the residents of another apartment were working with residents of #472 to do 'something' that night which needed to be hidden from searchers.
The fact that the detective is giving untruthful information, under oath, and the specific information he is fabricating, might reflect his personal suspicions about the inhabitants of #476.
3) There was both direct and indirect pressure put on witnesses, which in some cases amounted to terrorism
All of the Burmese families involved in this case have experience with state terrorism in Burma, where violence against less powerful ethnic groups is common, and in Thailand, where soldiers and police would attack refugees, extort money from them, and so on. Many Burmese have experienced attacks by authorities which include rape and murder by authorities.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1311.mp3
After the raid at Esar Met's uncle's house, during which his family was terrorized, his aunt was asked questions about him.
Of course she said he had never come to the house before and she had no idea why he came. She did not want the police to break down her door again and point guns at her family.
Later on though, when she was not under immediate threat by dozens of heavily armed men, she admitted that in fact she had visited Esar Met at SouthPark, and he had been to their house before, and had even spent the night at least once.
She was put in an awkward situation though. She lied the first time because she was terrorized, her husband and nephew had just been attacked by police. Then she was told the penalties for perjury, and wasn't entirely sure if it was more physically dangerous to her family for her to tell the truth or to lie.
She knew that authorities were not interested in the truth, and she had small children in the house and did not want to endanger her own kids. Shortly after the raid, if anybody had asked her 'Did the police rescue you?" she would have said "Of course".
It's fairly common in the U.S. for police to target families, and that probably has something to do with the psychology of policing in a melting pot.
https://reason.com/2021/07/30/qualified-immunity-police-drug-raid-texas-lucil-basco/
Here is one of many dozens of examples of prosecutors trying to get a specific answer from a witness. This particular witness, the young friend of Hser Ner Moo, was subjected to ridiculous interrogation from the investigator. She understood, like Esar Met, that nobody was really interested in the truth, and like him, she did her best to tell the dangerous people what they wanted to hear.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip904.mp3
In addition, there was an obvious cliquishness among those who supported conviction and those who didn't, with the prosecution and defense both on the conviction side of that clique.
When Esar Met's friend gave testimony, he did not obey that cliquishness, and that angered the prosecutor.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip921.mp3
It's hard to believe adults involved in a murder trial would behave like that, but it is evident throughout the trial.
Here is an example of the difference between how witnesses responded to the hostile prosecutor vs how they responded to friendlier questioners. The prosecutor had just finished questioning this witness, and the prosecutor was clear that he had no problem with authorities kicking down her door. The defense lawyer is a bit more polite, and gets quite different answers.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1373.mp3
Another example of the same phenomenon. The prosecutor was not interested in facts, truth, so he cornered the witness into a brief assertion that Esar Met had spent the night there, the implication being he was fleeing and needed a place to hide out. The friendlier defense lawyer got a somewhat different, more factual, version.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1374.mp3
And here, another example of the prosecutor insulting Burmese witnesses and trying to pressure them into saying what he wants them to say. Notice that even the translator who is Karen ethnicity is offended by the prosecution.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1367.mp3
4) The same detective referred to above in item 3 was instrumental in helping the FBI stage the finding of the body
The FBI knew where the body was but they had to 'uncover' it in a way that did not arouse suspicion.
This involved pretending to start a new apartment search, and having FBI agents suddenly stumble upon the body.
This detective, the same one in item 3 above and also the same detective who conducted the 'confession interview' with an FBI agent, gave testimony suggesting there were two searches and it was on the second search that the FBI found the body. There are many problems with his testimony, some of them will be obvious to anybody who studies the case.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip192.mp3
There are a lot of oddities regarding that detectives testimony, even aside from his not being asked any questions about his several hour interview with Esar Met and his not being asked about why he needed to be excused from testimony that he would have had to give the following day. One example is the odd chumminess which the defense attorney showed towards him, but not towards any other witness during the trial.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip199.mp3
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip200.mp3
And then, of course, there was the sliding glass door at the rear exit of the apartment which nobody knew about until he mentioned it. Notice in this clip how the questioning starts with the door that connects the apartment to other apartments nearby, and which was ignored in the evidence up til then, then seamlessly transitions to a discussion of the front door in order to get testimony back on track.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip203.mp3
The mysterious bloodstains on the back of the jacket were brought up during his testimony, since he had been downstairs with the body.
Here is him claiming he had no contact with the defendant after leaving the downstairs.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip824.mp3
And to the right is a photograph showing him being in contact with the defendant, in fact with his eyes literally inches from where the blood stain would later be found.
More of that photograph in its original video context is at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJtPvcjOobs
One interesting additional observation about how this item #5 relates to item #3.
It's possible that the detective felt bad about helping the FBI arrange evidence against Esar Met, and his testimony about the first search may have been an attempt to give a sporting chance to Esar Met to defend himself. In other words he may have added the detail about #476 so that some time in the future, whether before or after the verdict, there would be enough probable cause for Esar Met to force a review of the case.
Of course since then a mountain of evidence has surfaced showing problems with the investigation, and there has never been any interest in reviewing the case, by anybody in Utah, so his brief pang of possible morality went to waste anyway.
5) Here is a very long clip containing a few important pieces of information
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip981.mp3
That is the detective sergeant who died in a freak drowning accident. He may have been a popular guy, may have had a lot of supporters, but the simple truth is that he gave inaccurate information under oath at the trial, and it appears his motive was to create a record of testimony which supported certain disproven facts in the Esar Met interview. He was helping to frame Esar Met by changing his testimony.
The audio has other minor deceptions on his part, efforts to deflect responsibility for mistakes made during the search, but there is one especially interesting part.
Throughout the trial, the prosecutor had been asking dishonest questions to witnesses in an effort to mislead the jury.
A common question to family members of the victim was 'Did you give permission to Esar Met to restrain Hser Ner Moo?", which implies Esar Met was involved in the crime, which he was not.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip616.mp3
The 'strict Mormon' types who predominate on the jury are very honest people. They may be a bit rural or provincial in some respects and they are very inexperienced with the kind of rhetorical deceptions the prosecutor was using. It's sort of like using the cliched accusation 'Have you stopped beating your wife' to suggest that somebody is a wifebeater when they are not. A big city urban jury would have recognized the dishonesty of the prosecutor, but the jurors trusted the prosecutor not to deceive them, so they were deceived.
Near the end of the first clip above, #981, the prosecutor is trying to make a point about the blood footprints found downstairs, but the sergeant reacts quickly with a comment to the effect that none of the police officers were barefoot, and the prosecutor is thrown off guard. He reacts by asking if anybody was barefoot. The witness says that the four roommates were barefoot, which is not what the prosecutor wanted.
6) Another 'denim jacket problem' the prosecution solved with a stipulation
A question that arises again and again is 'How did nobody notice four blood stains on the back of Esar Met's jacket?'. Look at the photo higher up on this page. The bloodstains were near the top of the back of the jacket.
One of the two forensic technicians that testified was not asked that question. Most of his answers fell in the "I can't recall" category. The other person involved would probably have had a better memory, but the prosecution requested, and the defense agreed, that her 'testimony' would be substituted with a stipulation which said she would have testified that she didn't make any mistakes and didn't contaminate the jacket. No way to ask her how she failed to see four bloodstains.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1067.mp3
7) One of the most harmful mistakes made in the trial involved the confusion over ethnicities
The victim and her family, as well as the roommates and the first translator, were all 'Karen' or 'Karin' ethnicity. Their tribe originated roughly in the area of modern day Burma but was overpowered by the melting pot, more powerful tribes, and were made unwelcome in their own land. Geographically they are Burmese, but during the trial they are referred to as 'ethnic Karen' whenever the tribal question arises.
Esar Met and his family are ethnic Indian, from South India. They have no connection to Burma, aside from that being a place some of their group escaped to in the past to avoid local tension.
Because the language Esar Met uses to communicate with the roommates and other Karen people is Burmese he is referred to as Burmese during the trial.
The implicit suggestion to those watching the trial is that Esar Met has some connection to the Burmese group which commits ethnic crimes against Karen people, but in fact the exact opposite is more true. The Karen people have various militias, some of them respected fighters and well armed. Esar Met's group has limited claims to any territory in Burma so they are more inclined to leave when the hordes move in to rape their women and kill their men.
8) A lot of the official trial recordings have heavy static starting just as some of the oddest testimony is delivered
Here are some examples from this witness, but it occurs throughout the trial.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip600.mp3
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip601.mp3
It looks like somebody from the state deliberately fuzzed many of the soundbytes which might threaten the prosecution, perhaps to discourage the media from playing those clips.
Here is a recording of the Medical Examiner's investigator.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip597.mp3
There are a lot of questions he should have been asked, like why didn't he ask the family about medical conditions. And lots of implausible testimony he gave that casts doubt on evidence collection and the medical examiner's office in Utah.
But in this clip the prosecutor is using him to remind any law enforcement personnel who viewed the interview that the shoes were thrown into the bathroom, which at first glance appears to corroborate one incident in Esar Met's false confession.
The problem with that 'corroboration' is that Esar Met had been shown a picture of the shoes near the toilet, so he knew what the correct answer to that question was.
The ridiculous thing about this clip is that it shows that the prosecutor appears to have prepared supposedly neutral witnesses so they would give the answers the prosecution wanted. The defense was not asking any of the questions they should have asked, so effectively there were two prosecutions and no defense.
9) Here is another audio recording of that same witness
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip598.mp3
Previous testimony by a firefighter had said she had been dead a minimum of 4 hours when he arrived around 8pm.
This testimony by the investigator for the medical examiner refers to around 530am, day 3, when he removed the body.
Esar Met had left the apartment no later than 239pm, day 1, but probably much earlier, so this is at least 39 hours after he left. The injuries she sustained would have been lethal within minutes of the final attack.
Note too that the girl was wearing her coat when the body was found. That points to a slightly different scenario regarding her initial disappearance. In the beginning of Esar Met's testimony he mentioned that she was carrying a bookbag of some sort, and another witness mentioned that she often had a small backpack which she liked to carry around. The refusal by the police to admit their early mistakes in the interview prevented anybody from looking for significance in that, and most likely the family was not even asked if that backpack/bookbag was still in the home. The killer probably disposed of the bag along with his bloody clothes. The translator makes an odd mistranslation at line 292 at https://pastebin.com/qZcK69HH
He testifies that as of 530am, day 3, she had been dead at least 18 hours and possibly up to 36 hours. In other words she could have died from 3 hours after Esar Met left and up to 21 hours after he left.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip407.mp3
That by itself excludes Esar Met as the killer, but anybody can research the timelines he gives and see that he is trying to err in favor of the prosecution, though little benefit it offers them. Rigor mortis occurs much more quickly in smaller bodies. The house was being used by tropical Asians, so even if the basement seemed cooler because it was dark, the temperature was probably not that low. Esar Met owned only one thin denim jacket and the furnace room was downstairs.
There was no door between the various floor so as long as the front door was closed air temperature stratification would not have been extreme. That changed after the body was found and the front door was left open for a long time, letting cold air flow downstairs. It was about 43 degrees Fahrenheit outside when the body was discovered. Leaving the door open just a few minutes would have dropped the temperature in the basement significantly, but in fact there was heavy traffic in the apartment for the next several hours, so it probably got cold.
The time of death is the simplest way to exclude Esar Met as the killer, and if anybody had been interested in getting accurate information there are a lot of things that could have been done.
The medical examiner did all sorts of gruesome cutting on the body, removing the brain, etc, none of it provided any information beyond 'she was beaten' which was already known.
A child that age in the United States does not go more than a few hours without food. Pumping her stomach or otherwise looking for digestive residue would have been less intrusive. If they wanted even better information they could have asked her family what and when she ate last.
That would have excluded Esar Met as the killer, but there is another horrific twist in that information.
The evidence seems to be that she was partially injured, but still alive, for quite a while, until somebody gave her a final lethal beating.
This kind of series of events would leave a slightly different evidence trail, and that seems to be the case.
What would happen if this had come out at trial? Of course there would have been more criticism of the search since there had been a significant window in which she could have been found alive.
10) Another awkward clip from that witness
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip599.mp3
Here, he is telling everybody that he had been told by the police that the last time the child was seen alive was 215pm on day 1.
That time frame, roughly 2 to 215pm, was what the police had told the public, and by itself excluded Esar Met as the killer.
The police had fabricated a number of events, including by coercing Burmese witnesses who had been terrorized by them, into supporting that timeframe.
When witnesses utterly disproved that timeframe at trial, a second problem occurred, that of time of death. A 'last seen alive' time of 2pm was pushing the outer limits of 'time of death' and if the state wanted to prosecute Esar Met they couldn't really push it further back.
The witness in item #2 on the 'Hidden Evidence #1' page was the last reliable witness to see Hser Ner Moo alive. She knew the victim well and her daughter was a friend of hers. When that witness disappeared, some time between the last preliminary hearing and the trial, the prosecution was free to do anything they wanted with the 'last seen alive' element.
11) The footprints at the crime scene were used as evidence against Esar Met, and presented to the jury as such
One witness said at trial that the footprints were 'possibly' from Esar Met, and the prosecution ran with that.
Here is one witness stating that there were three footprints walking away from the bathroom, and another clip of the same witness saying only footprint samples from Esar Met were taken.
The quality of these recording is very poor but this is the actual quality of the recordings stored by the state of Utah. As mentioned before, it's possible some of the recordings have been deliberately obscured by somebody working for the state.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip114.mp3
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip117.mp3
12) Esar Met had already learned not to trust the police, but he would learn, too late, why he shouldn't trust his own lawyers
During the trial, a lot of questions regarding evidence were apparent. Since the evidence doesn't really have value unless it is trusted, the prosecution found a way to solve this issue and eliminate doubts about the trustworthiness of the evidence.
The prosecutor created a stipulation, a piece of evidence, which said "All of the evidence was collected properly, none of it was contaminated, etc"
Sounds good, but the defense would never agree to that. It eliminates all of the doubts about the jean jacket, the fingernails, in fact all of the evidence.
Actually the defense did agree to that.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1131.mp3
A person can only guess at the conversation Esar Met's layer had with him.
Defense lawyer "We would like to agree to a prosecution stipulation which prevents us from challenging most of the obvious doubts which have been raised about the evidence."
Esar Met "Sounds good. So explain why we are letting the prosecution change all the rules about evidence though."
Defense lawyer "Trust me on this one Esar."
Esar Met "Otay."
13) About 18 minutes after that stipulation was read, a forensic expert gave evidence about the footprints found on the carpet
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1136.mp3
There are a lot of problems with the footprints, even aside from the questions the defense allowed the prosecution to prohibit.
For example, they are footprints in blood leaving the bathroom. They suggest somebody, probably an Asian, i.e., somebody who removes footwear inside, left the bathroom after there was blood on the floor of the bathroom.
In other words the killer still had blood on his feet after placing the body there. The same state employee who 'found' the blood on the back of the jacket, and the DNA under the nails, said he found what could have been a microscopic amount of blood in Esar Met's shoe, but it wasn't visible and could not be DNA tested.
The blood residue on the soles of the killer's feet dissipated after three visible steps, but there still would have been lots of blood between the toes, and of course on the hands and other places on the killer. A lot of the blows created spatter which would have deposited blood on the pants, including the two kicks that the translator mysteriously referred to during the interview on line 374 of the interview.
It isn't clear how the translator knew about the kicks unless he had been at the crime scene, and it isn't clear why he did not tell the detective and FBI agent that he asked that question. The translator knew by then that he could trust the detective and FBI agent to cover him, as long as he helped them get the confession. Another transcript of the interrogation will be discussed later as it relates to this.
The kicks would have been delivered with either the top of the foot or the side, but they would probably have deposited some blood on the leg of the killer.
At any rate, the expert finally did explain how he managed to determine that it may have been Esar Met's footprint.
His explanation includes detailed, possibly classified, information about training he received at the FBI Quantico school, and sort of explains how he was able to be misused by the prosecution to plant fantasy evidence in the heads of impressionable jurors.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1140.mp3
Shortly after that clip the abused expert admits that the testimony is part of the prosecution sham.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1141.mp3
14) The suppressed interview played a big part in the trial, even though it was hidden from the jurors
It was widely reported in Salt Lake City media that Esar Met had confessed. In fact quite a few jurors were dismissed evidently because they answered on the jury questionnaire that they knew he confessed and believed him guilty.
Notice that most Salt Lake City media outlets have removed articles that mention the confession, but they are still available on sites outside Utah, as well as on archive sites.
Both the defense and prosecution agreed to suppress the confession interview so it could not be examined at trial.
During the trial a hearing was held without jurors present, during which the lawyers questioned one of the people involved in getting the confession.
Here are 5 long segments from that hearing with added comments in case a person doesn't feel like downloading the whole clips. They range up to 14 minutes.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1254.mp3
a) The transcript was created by the FBI
b) Detective still believes confession was valid
c) Interpreter knew family of victim
d) Detective mentions the shoes, the only accurate part of the confession, which suggests he was primed for the interview
e) May be misstating stair testimony i.e. confusing upper stairs with lower
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1255.mp3
f) 7 or 8 hours in custody before interview around 3am
g) Esar Met had gotten a mild beating during the arrest and this transcript has the translator offering more of a beating if he does not confess, this detail does not appear in the transcripts used on this website. The defense lawyer appears to be trying to give the detective an opportunity to excuse his mistakes rather than looking at the broader implications for Esar Met.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1256.mp3
h) Detective says he thought at the time the roommates were not involved, misleads regarding translators on other interviews
i) The FBI transcript segment is taken entirely out of context. Presenting it in proper context of the interview discredits it.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1257.mp3
j) The defense makes final comments
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1258.mp3
k) The defense lawyer suggests Esar Met is going to make the decision whether or not to testify, but this is contradicted by past events, including his 'outburst' in which he claimed to be innocent and was then barred from future hearings
Literally minutes later, after it is pointed out that ethnicities are an issue, what does the judge do?
She appoints another Karen ethnicity interpreter to translate Burmese i.e., she appoints allies of the roommates to translate for Esar Met and his allies.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1259.mp3
15) One of the stranger aspects of the case involves whether there was a sexual assault
The medical examiner initially said there was no sexual assault when the autopsy ended. But then the prosecutor and district attorney asked a child abuse expert to examine the body.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip325.mp3
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip326.mp3
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip327.mp3
This expert determined that not only was she sexually assaulted but
""It's a rare injury. It's a lot of injury. ... Rarely do we see more injury than this,""
It's hard to know what to make of this. The child abuse expert is being extraordinarily polite about working in the space of the medical examiner, which suggests substantial tension between the two, but whose facts are right?
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip406.mp3
Although the abuse expert testified that the injury could have been caused by either a body part or an object, she testified it was an unusual injury. Here is part of that testimony, along with a clip of another expert mentioning a broken metal rod or towel bar near the body. Notice too that the FBI agent mentioned the towel bar during the interview.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip256.mp3
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip328.mp3
The 'unusual injury' seems to suggest a staged rape in this case, somebody trying to leave evidence of a rape. Along with the underwear under the victim's face this would seem to point to one of the two older roommates.
16) The medical examiner testified literally for hours about the injuries, but something important was neglected.
The purpose of the trial was to determine if Esar Met had killed the child.
The medical examiner went into all kinds of exotic depth with regard to injuries, but not one aspect of his testimony was actually favorable to the prosecution. Despite all his lengthy comments about extensive violent injuries, there was nothing he said that supported the prosecution.
The injuries he described were not consistent with the motive the prosecution fabricated, nor generally with the personality of Esar Met.
Another expert witness referred to the killing as a 'crime of power', and the injuries do support that, and that motive is consistent with the roommates. Hser Ner Moo was friendly with another young Burmese girl who was not Karen ethnicity, she was friendly with Esar Met who was not Karen ethnicity. The fact that her underwear was put under her face points to a rural person from her own ethnic group trying to send a message, force a tradition, after 'teaching her a lesson' through the extensive violence.
One more interesting thing about his testimony that was ignored. He describes injuries to the head which are consistent with two kicks. There were two blood spatter areas on the wall that appear to be from two kicks. The only person who ever mentioned the kicks was the translator, the friend of the roommates who translated during Esar Met's interview.
See the pastebin link above on item #13.
All of the parties involved seem to be avoiding using the obvious phrase "two kicks', because that would aggressively remind everybody who had listened to the interview that a lot of things were being hidden from the jury.
Which raises another important issue.
Who actually had access to the widely publicized 'confession' interview?
The judge herself had been prevented from listening to the interview for more than 4 years. The defense and prosecutor carefully avoided giving her any access to the DVD recording and transcript by forgetting to file a copy with the court. They were careful to restrict access since almost anybody who had a basic understanding of psychology would immediately see that it was not a confession, but rather a carefully coerced fiction.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip97.mp3
For 4 years after the confession, the judge was waiting for the defense lawyer to 'be okay' with her watching a DVD of the 'confession' interview???
Then 4 years after Salt Lake City media reported in headlines that he had 'confessed', the defense decides to let the judge listen to it???
Who is working as defense???
Who is working as judge???
As eager as everybody was to hide important facts from the jury and the public, they also liked trying to find out as many hidden details for themselves as they could. Here is the medical examiner snooping on a whisperfest and the judge telling him the conversation doesn't involve him.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip409.mp3
17) Esar Met's aunt and uncle were never compensated for the door, despite police admitting they lied about the need to break down the door
The aunt and uncle spent $170 out of pocket to fix the door.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1375.mp3
Almost everything the police had told the public about the 'raid' turned out to be a lie.
He hadn't tried to flee. The police fabricated him fleeing, then when that got discredited they said it was a neighbor fleeing, but even that story varies by which police narrative you go by.
The Marshall service joint apprehension person who testified at trial admitted some of the things police said were not true, but then he told further lies during the trial, about Esar Met coming to the window and how that made him fear for the safety of the police. Esar Met had never come to the window, much less menaced anybody. He had been sitting at the dinner table when the cop kicked down the door. Other lies told by other officers created a vast web of nonsense that the local media decided not to report.
At the end of the day, a less well off working family had to shell out $170 to pay for the damage done to their door while none of the highly paid police had to pay anything.
Although police in Burma are a bit heavy handed, especially when it comes to raping and murdering minorities, they do, on occasion, investigate themselves.
https://www.businessinsider.com/afp-myanmar-to-investigate-police-abuse-of-rohingya-2017-1
In Utah, investigation of police in cases like this is almost unheard of, and there is no international organization that investigates the tens of thousands of innocent people who are disappeared into the U.S. prison system.
Almost all are people without money who are kept in jail mainly to prevent scrutiny of misconduct by law enforcement officers who investigated the cases.
Here is an exonerated person who is filing lawsuits against the police involved.
Almost every exoneration in the United States surfaces evidence of severe misconduct by police, prosecutors and others, so it is no wonder that so many people in the legal profession try to prevent exonerations.
In the Hser Ner Moo murder case, almost every person involved played some part in either helping cover up misconduct or deliberately helping twist evidence so it made Esar Met appear guilty of the murder.
18) Here is the officer who broke down the door lying, two times, about that event, both times under oath
The first clip is from 2012. His testimony is contradicted by every single person who was in the house who testified.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip627.mp3
Here he is at the trial in 2014. Still lying, but he has added a lot more details.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip873.mp3
That is one of the dozens of examples of why the prosecution needed the defense to prevent Esar Met from testifying.
If Esar Met had testified, he would have said he did not leave the dinner table, and did not run back into the dining area. Everybody else in the house would have verified his testimony.
If that officer, Richard Deke Taylor, had wanted to continue with his lie, he might have been able to get another officer to back him up, but in that case the defense could have entered into evidence past incidents in which Mr Taylor had given untrue testimony.
The same officer would be at another trial 9 weeks later, as the defendant. He was raiding one house when he decided to break down the door of a neighboring house, and the person tried to file criminal charges against him.
https://www.deseret.com/2008/6/13/20258095/trial-set-for-springville-swat-raid-lawsuit
The person right behind him when he broke down the door of Esar Met's aunt and uncle's house also enjoys his job.
Officer Doug Howell has been investigated for a number of questionable things, and criticized for shooting a mentally ill person in that person's own home, a common theme in police shootings.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/04/26/utah-county-deputies-were/
https://www.deseret.com/2009/4/22/20313878/family-of-man-killed-by-swat-team-angry-at-police
There's nothing wrong with teenagers playing cowboys and indians, or cops and robbers, but when that same adolescent thrill is the motive behind an adult police officer's work, the officer needs to be assigned a job where he is harmless, or he should taste his own medicine
Here is another clip of that joint task force person.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip875.mp3
Esar Met is very thin, maybe 125 pounds, clearly unarmed. Mr Junior Commando has been using steroids for many years, has a fully automatic rifle and a pistol.
"Beckoning: The polite way to beckon someone is to use an open hand with the palm facing down and motion to yourself."
https://culturalatlas.sbs.com.au/burmese-myanmar-culture/myanmar-burmese-culture-communication
19) The level of cooperation between defense and prosecution is obscene
If it had been even slightly balanced a person might excuse it, but every single 'cooperation' was favorable to the prosecution. The judge made a slight reference to this and dozens of examples are listed already here.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1403.mp3
It's common for less financially able defendants to get a little less defense in court in the U.S., and likewise for 'foreign' or minority defendants, but there is not even a slight line between defense and prosecution in this case. There are two prosecution sides.
20) There was a lot of awkwardness in the court when 'roommate #1' testified
When the prosecutor said he was going to call 'roommate #1' in the following session, the judge said 'oh' in a heavy way, then the defense counsel told the judge that her questions for that roommate would be 'incredibly...' but the word was not audible. The prosecutor announced that this roommate had a special diet and required extra time for lunch, though it wasn't clear if the prosecutor was preparing his food.
Roommate #1, apparently the killer, was the oldest of the roommates, even considerably older than his brother.
He spent most of his life in Burma, which had ongoing civil wars since independence in 1948, and probably had some trauma from various abuses from that era which led to his anger that Hser Ner Moo was not limiting her social circle to Karen people.
21) One of the constant oddities throughout were the roommates claims regarding whether they knew the girl was missing
There was a tight knit Karen community so it seems implausible the roommates didn't know Hser Ner Moo was missing, as some of them claimed.
All of the roommates except roommate #1 claimed they did not know what the police were looking for when they entered their apartment.
Roommate #1 testified that when the FBI agents entered the apartment one of the younger roommates told him they were looking for the girl.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1425.mp3
Although the roommates, aside from roommate #1, claimed they did not know what the police were searching for, the friend who stopped by as the FBI was searching admitted he knew the girl was missing.
He was a 14 year old boy at the time and the first person who Hser Ner Moo's brother checked when she went missing.
Although he knew the girl was missing nobody at trial asked him if he knew why the FBI was searching the apartment.
He claimed he went there at that moment to study English, but admitted he sometimes went a month or more without visiting for English lessons, so it is unusually coincidental he decided to study English with one of the roommates just as the FBI was searching the apartment.
22) A defense lawyer was disparaged in front of the jury by the prosecutor, who suggested she was misleading the jury
She said to the brother of roommate #1 something along the lines of 'he must get frustrated or angry', along with similar comments, and the prosecutor felt obliged to suggest she was coaxing inaccurate testimony from him, so he tried to change the roommates testimony back again.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1422.mp3
Later, that defense lawyer pointed out to the judge several precedents which ruled that this type of conduct causes a mistrial.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1440.mp3
The judge did not want to do the trial again, so a mistrial was denied. Here is the twilight zone conversation justifying denying a mistrial.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1441.mp3
Everybody except the junior defense lawyer understands what is going on. She, the younger defense lawyer, is trying to provide some kind of defense but the lead defense lawyer and the judge and the prosecutor are determined to convict Esar Met.
The prosecutor had said that the defense lawyer "got you to agree with some things that are very different from what you said before", implying the younger defense lawyer was being dishonest.
The entire case, from start to finish, involved the government or 'prosecution' manipulating testimony, coaxing what they want from very easily manipulated and vulnerable witnesses.
Nobody ever complained about it, maybe because it wasn't obvious to them. But once some testimony got changed in a way that did not favor the prosecution, the prosecutor suddenly suggested the defense lawyer was using trickery. In other words he told the jury that the defense lawyer was the one misleading witnesses to alter facts when in fact much of the testimony throughout trial changed constantly as witnesses became less afraid, or more afraid, of their questioners.
What each person said is very clear. Anybody can listen to the three clips above. The judge does not say she will listen to the offending material and rule on a mistrial. She says she remembers all the relevant testimony and doesn't remember hearing a problem. Anybody can listen and decide if what the prosecutor said would reduce the credibility of the younger defense lawyer in the eyes of the jury.
At the end the senior defense lawyer steps in, and voila, he has a solution. He'll have the judge read to the jury a statement or stipulation along the lines of 'the defense was not trying to mislead you when they got testimony from witnesses which contradicted testimony the prosecution got from those same witnesses.' A sly maneuver that reeks of 'Have you stopped beating your wife', but covers the defense in a strictly technical way.
23) When Esar Met was being interviewed the translator referred to roommate #1 as 'The Christian Priest'
See line 1178 at https://pastebin.com/qZcK69HH
It isn't clear if the translator was making fun of the disabled roommate, or making fun of Western Christians, but it is clear that the translator knew roommate #1.
This is problematic because the translator also knew details of the crime, and crime scene, which he should not have known.
24) There are a lot of indications that law enforcement, particularly the FBI, interfered with the trial and with witnesses, and even with the lawyers
One of the biggest mysteries during preliminary hearings had to do with how, when, and why one of the roommates left while the FBI agents were searching the apartment, and the circumstances of his getting Esar Met's phone number and address.
A lot of questions popped up during preliminary hearings about whether the FBI agents were misleading or hiding something.
At the trial there was not any testimony, no questions, by any of the lawyers, to any of the witnesses involved, except to the roommate who got the number, about this.
Obviously somebody got all of the lawyers on both sides to hush up this mystery once the trial was on so the jury would hear only one version.
25) A common theme throughout the hearings and the trial was changing testimony, and memory failures, by the roommates
A lot of this had to do with the extreme aggressiveness of interviewers in trying to force testimony a certain way, but there may be other reasons as well.
Here is one of the roommates saying that his memory may have been damaged in a major earthquake.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1473.mp3
People who use force or trickery to get 'the truth' are never really after the truth, but in this case the deceptions on both sides are extreme.
26) It's odd that so many law enforcement employees lied about how many apartments went unsearched while looking for Hser Ner Moo
But their motives are pretty obvious.
Less clear is why all four roommates claimed they did not hear the police pounding on their door in the night and see them shining bright lights in the windows.
People generally wake more easily when they are in a foreign area, and people who had spent their lives in a conflict zone, and then in a refugee camp, would tend to wake more easily than other people.
A few hours later the roommates started going to work, and there was no police officer left at their door, one of the few places she was known to go, despite police claiming they had a lot of officers on the scene by then, and despite the fact that a young girl with severe asthma and no inhaler had been missing for quite a while.
Police had been called roughly ten hours earlier.
The roommate said during trial he did not remember if there were police around Southpark in the morning when he left for work.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1483.mp3
27) Almost the entire prosecution case against Esar Met consisted of sleazy accusations made by the prosecutor
The prosecutor would use insinuations and suggestions to paint an inaccurate image in the minds of jurors.
Here, he asks the roommate who talked with Esar Met whether Esar Met had a job. The roommate points out that he is not able to get a job unless the caseworker provides one, after all he does not speak the language, has no connections, does not know local customs.
The prosecutor then asks if the roommate knows what Esar Met does while the roommates are at work.
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1486.mp3
In Progress
