[00:00:01] Speaker 04:
All right, the next case for argument is United States versus Kauffman, docket 23-7058.

[00:00:08] Speaker 04:
Counsel, when you're ready.

[00:00:10] Speaker 00:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:00:12] Speaker 00:
May it please the court, Kristen Kimmelman for Stuart Wayne Kauffman.

[00:00:16] Speaker 00:
Mr. Kauffman challenges his conviction on a second degree murder count because there was insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he, in fact, had killed Mr. Joe Padteist.

[00:00:28] Speaker 00:
He was also convicted of an aggravated assault count.

[00:00:31] Speaker 00:
Both events stem from a gathering of people on his front porch on a Thursday evening.

[00:00:38] Speaker 00:
Now, as the district court recognized, this case was built entirely on circumstantial evidence.

[00:00:44] Speaker 00:
And so the government's job was to bridge the gap from the Thursday night assault to Mr. Batiste's body being discovered on Saturday morning.

[00:00:53] Speaker 00:
It was about a gap of 36 to 40 hours.

[00:00:57] Speaker 00:
And they tried to fill that gap with circumstantial evidence and inferences from that.

[00:01:03] Speaker 00:
But in order to do so, all of those inferences had to be reasonable and a product of logistical and probabilistic reasoning, not speculation or conjecture.

[00:01:13] Speaker 03:
Counsel, can I challenge that characterization for a moment?

[00:01:16] Speaker 03:
How do you wrestle with the testimony of the Joneses, where I believe Mrs. Jones testified that she saw Mr. Kaufman hit the victim with a pipe

[00:01:27] Speaker 03:
six times and Mr. Jones testified he heard but did not see the hitting of the victim with the pipe.

[00:01:36] Speaker 03:
Why is that circumstantial evidence and not just direct evidence that?

[00:01:40] Speaker 00:
That is direct evidence of an aggravated assault and that certainly is evidence that Mr. Kaufman hit Mr. Baptiste but not that those injuries caused his death.

[00:01:50] Speaker 00:
Now, the evidence that was at the scene was that there were 10 droplets of blood splattered on the front porch.

[00:01:58] Speaker 00:
The largest size of that droplets was a dime sized amount of blood.

[00:02:03] Speaker 00:
The Joneses left, so we don't know what happened after those six pipe hits, and she didn't see exactly where Mr. Batiste was being hit by that.

[00:02:14] Speaker 00:
The medical examiner's report does detail blood force trauma and hemorrhaging and lacerations on many parts of the victim's body.

[00:02:24] Speaker 00:
And of course, the pictures are in the record as well.

[00:02:28] Speaker 00:
That, to my mind, looks like a lot more than just six swings of the pipe.

[00:02:33] Speaker 00:
It seems like a pretty brutal event.

[00:02:35] Speaker 00:
So perhaps it's reasonable to infer that the assault continued, but only 10 droplets of blood were on the front porch.

[00:02:44] Speaker 00:
Mr. Batiste's body was found Saturday morning behind the mobile home in an area that is very exposed and public and accessible.

[00:02:54] Speaker 00:
And there was not a trail of evidence leading from the front porch to the back area.

[00:03:01] Speaker 00:
Also, the blood evidence was different in its character.

[00:03:05] Speaker 00:
There were smears of blood on the PVC pipes and also on the wooden plank that were near Mr. Baptiste back there.

[00:03:13] Speaker 00:
Again, he wasn't covered.

[00:03:15] Speaker 04:
You're not contending that he had to die on the front porch for the conviction to occur?

[00:03:21] Speaker 00:
Correct.

[00:03:21] Speaker 00:
I am not contending that he had to die then, but in order for us to believe that those injuries then caused his death and that resulted in him being found on Saturday,

[00:03:32] Speaker 00:
there needs to be reasonable inferences that lead to that result.

[00:03:35] Speaker 04:
Well, he was decomposing.

[00:03:38] Speaker 00:
Correct.

[00:03:38] Speaker 04:
He had missed work the next day even though he was a regular attender of work.

[00:03:43] Speaker 00:
That is true.

[00:03:45] Speaker 00:
The medical examiner said there was deep green discoloration and there was maggot activity, but we don't know from the medical examiner's testimony what is fair to draw from that.

[00:03:55] Speaker 04:
Well, and you've seen the pictures, the autopsy pictures of the crack across his entire skull.

[00:04:01] Speaker 00:
Yes, and that crack was not consistent with the side of a pipe.

[00:04:05] Speaker 00:
The medical examiner thought it could have been possibly consistent with the edge of a pipe or some other instrument creating that tool mark laceration in the skull.

[00:04:16] Speaker 00:
Again, that is not what Miss Jones said that she saw as she was leaving Mr. Kaufman's home.

[00:04:21] Speaker 00:
And the Joneses came back.

[00:04:22] Speaker 00:
Just a few hours after this assault that they witnessed, they came back and hung out and stayed at Mr. Kaufman's house throughout most of the night.

[00:04:31] Speaker 04:
Let me ask you one piece of evidence, and you can correct me on it.

[00:04:35] Speaker 04:
My understanding is Mr. Norris, who lived in the trailer behind the house, had lent the defendant a flashlight after the assault, heard the thump-thump, some sort of thump-thump, a gurgling of, please stop, yells, and then maybe 20 minutes later saw the flashlight and the defendant in the backyard near where the body was ultimately found.

[00:05:01] Speaker 00:
That's correct.

[00:05:02] Speaker 00:
By the Norris' account, they arrived back at Kaufman's property sometime after 10 p.m.

[00:05:09] Speaker 04:
that night.

[00:05:09] Speaker 04:
But that's not enough?

[00:05:11] Speaker 00:
That's not enough because it's a different event.

[00:05:13] Speaker 00:
What the Joneses saw was around 7 p.m.

[00:05:16] Speaker 04:
Well, how about he's just drugged the victim back to the backyard and he has a flashlight trying to locate a good place to put them?

[00:05:24] Speaker 04:
Why would the jury not be entitled to infer that?

[00:05:28] Speaker 00:
I would submit that that inference is not reasonable because it would tend to mean that there must have been some premeditation.

[00:05:36] Speaker 00:
If there is a voicing stop stop by Batiste and three hours after the earlier assault, Mr. Kaufman then beats him and drags him over there.

[00:05:47] Speaker 04:
What is the version that the jury should be compelled to believe then?

[00:05:52] Speaker 04:
That he was struck with the pipe multiple times

[00:05:56] Speaker 04:
There was this gurgling sound after the flashlight.

[00:06:00] Speaker 04:
There was the stop, stop.

[00:06:03] Speaker 04:
And then the victim wandered off and someone else assaulted the victim and also hit him with blunt force trauma resulting in death.

[00:06:13] Speaker 04:
That's the version the jury would be compelled to believe.

[00:06:17] Speaker 00:
No, because again, there's a great difference of time between what Mr. Norris heard and the lending of the flashlight and when the assault happened.

[00:06:26] Speaker 00:
And the jury did reject premeditation.

[00:06:29] Speaker 00:
So we do know that they rejected that first degree murder charge.

[00:06:33] Speaker 00:
Now, Mr. Norris and his wife both testified they came back, you know, after 10 p.m.

[00:06:39] Speaker 00:
The Joneses saw what they saw.

[00:06:40] Speaker 00:
They say around 7 p.m.

[00:06:42] Speaker 00:
because it was still light before there was dust.

[00:06:45] Speaker 00:
Now, Mr. Norris knew that Kauffman used those PVC pipes for drainage from his property.

[00:06:52] Speaker 00:
They were part of the sewer system.

[00:06:54] Speaker 00:
And so at

[00:06:55] Speaker 00:
Sometime between 10, 11 at night, Mr. Kaufman borrows the flashlight, he goes to the front of the property, and then they see him 20 minutes later in the back.

[00:07:07] Speaker 00:
There is this yelling of stop, stop.

[00:07:10] Speaker 00:
Could have been Mr. Kaufman, could have been someone else.

[00:07:12] Speaker 00:
Mr. Norris says after he learns about Mr. Baptiste, oh, I think it was Mr. Baptiste who says that.

[00:07:18] Speaker 00:
And so I think we do have to credit that that's what Mr. Norris believes he heard.

[00:07:23] Speaker 03:
Sort of sort through the pile of evidence.

[00:07:25] Speaker 03:
What about the statements Mr. Kaufman made?

[00:07:27] Speaker 03:
One, when regards to the trailer being set afire, and as I understand the record, essentially confirming when asked, are you trying to destroy evidence?

[00:07:39] Speaker 03:
And then later, after he's arrested in the police car, I think, where he calls to Mr. Norris, I think, and says, I messed up.

[00:07:49] Speaker 03:
I really messed up.

[00:07:50] Speaker 03:
I mean, as we're evaluating for sufficiency purposes, this sort of pile of evidence, aren't Mr. Kaufman's statements extremely relevant as well?

[00:07:59] Speaker 00:
So they are relevant, but I think it places a lot of weight to put on those statements to infer from I messed up after his home caught on fire and a body was found in his backyard that he is necessarily admitting to the guilt of having caused that death.

[00:08:17] Speaker 00:
It's not clear to me that he was actually arrested at that point.

[00:08:20] Speaker 00:
He did somehow have his cell phone, if we're to believe Mr. Norris' statement, the police were investigating matters.

[00:08:26] Speaker 00:
Because of course, Mr. Kaufman, after this assault happened on Thursday evening, calls the police for them to come back out to the property.

[00:08:34] Speaker 00:
Officer Walden arrives at the property around 1045, not clear if the Norrises were there or not at this time, and talks to Mr. Mooney, talks to Mr. Kaufman, sees droplets of blood,

[00:08:47] Speaker 00:
and doesn't think much of it.

[00:08:48] Speaker 00:
Mr. Kaufman, if he were to have moved the body, which I assume is a possible theory for the government, for some reason moved it to the side of his home where you can see the road, where you can see the Norris's camper, leave it uncovered, when pictures of the property show that there's a wooded area not very far from where the body was left.

[00:09:12] Speaker 00:
Seems like it would have been a much more reasonable choice to have hidden that body in the wooden area if that was in fact what Mr. Kaufman was trying to do.

[00:09:21] Speaker 02:
Could a reasonable jury have convicted on this basis?

[00:09:26] Speaker 02:
Mrs. Jones saw him hit, saw Mr. Kaufman hit the victim six times in the head with a pipe.

[00:09:38] Speaker 02:
The victim didn't go to work the next day.

[00:09:41] Speaker 02:
and nobody saw the victim the next day, despite the fact that he didn't ever miss work.

[00:09:48] Speaker 02:
And they found his body the next day in a decomposing condition in the backyard.

[00:09:55] Speaker 00:
I think that gets closer because in that situation, Ms.

[00:10:04] Speaker 00:
Jones saw the hits to the head.

[00:10:07] Speaker 02:
Well, she did, didn't she?

[00:10:08] Speaker 00:
She saw the hits to Mr. Bautiste, and she heard clinks.

[00:10:13] Speaker 00:
She says she didn't know where he was hitting around, or certainly that all six were at the head.

[00:10:20] Speaker 00:
And the other part that I think that is important for this court's consideration is looking at the evidence in its entirety, not just the pieces of evidence that support

[00:10:33] Speaker 00:
the government's theory, but all the evidence that was presented.

[00:10:37] Speaker 00:
And that's what this court did in Summers.

[00:10:39] Speaker 02:
What's the exculpatory... I mean, if we're looking at other evidence, I mean, wouldn't we want to look and see... I mean, the idea would be we're going to look and see if there's any exculpatory evidence over what I told you the evidence was.

[00:10:51] Speaker 02:
So, I mean, what about things that have changed is exculpatory?

[00:10:56] Speaker 02:
So, not necessarily... That creates doubt.

[00:10:59] Speaker 00:
Right, exactly.

[00:11:00] Speaker 00:
So the evidence that creates doubt is, again, that this is a public area, that there are at least three others that we know had some sort of beef with Mr. Battiste.

[00:11:10] Speaker 00:
And that's Mr. Mooney and also the Joneses, because there was another altercation that Thursday evening before any assault by Mr. Coffin.

[00:11:19] Speaker 00:
And that was the altercation between Mr. Mooney and Battiste.

[00:11:23] Speaker 00:
And that was sparked because Mr. Battiste

[00:11:26] Speaker 00:
Got fresh, basically, with Miss Jones and Mr. Mooney took offense to that.

[00:11:32] Speaker 00:
Miss Jones had recently gotten married to Mr. Jones and those individuals all come and go from that trailer area and the camper area.

[00:11:44] Speaker 02:
Okay, but we have evidence that Mr. Kaufman hit him with a pipe.

[00:11:52] Speaker 02:
We have no evidence that any of the other people

[00:11:55] Speaker 02:
inflicted any kind of serious wounds on him.

[00:11:59] Speaker 02:
Fair.

[00:12:00] Speaker 00:
Almost.

[00:12:01] Speaker 00:
We do have some evidence that he suffered injuries from the altercation with Mr. Mooney.

[00:12:06] Speaker 00:
All right.

[00:12:07] Speaker 02:
You're not contending, though, that those injuries would have been life-threatening?

[00:12:11] Speaker 00:
No.

[00:12:11] Speaker 00:
I think that none of those injuries would have actually caused the death of Mr. Batiste.

[00:12:19] Speaker 02:
I'm just concerned that when we look at what you're talking about, it requires us to draw the inferences from the body of facts in favor of the defense.

[00:12:31] Speaker 00:
So the court's job would be to make sure that the inferences drawn from the evidence in light most favorable to the government are in favor of the verdict, but just that those inferences have to be reasonable.

[00:12:47] Speaker 00:
And that is the body of the law.

[00:12:51] Speaker 00:
But I think that reasonableness requirement is important because it's still the government's burden to prove that

[00:12:58] Speaker 00:
Mr. Kaufman killed Mr. Batiste beyond a reasonable doubt.

[00:13:02] Speaker 00:
And each element of that is important in this inquiry.

[00:13:09] Speaker 00:
And there is some limit to what sort of inferences can be drawn.

[00:13:14] Speaker 03:
Were the findings and the opinion of the medical examiner undisputed in this case?

[00:13:19] Speaker 00:
They were undisputed.

[00:13:21] Speaker 00:
There was no real contest about those medical findings.

[00:13:27] Speaker 00:
And again, those findings had lacerations and abrasions over the leg and all over Mr. Batiste's body.

[00:13:34] Speaker 00:
And it was the medical examiner's report coupled with Ms.

[00:13:38] Speaker 00:
Jones's testimony and Mr. Willison's testimony about motive that the court thought would be enough possibly for the jury to find first degree murder meditation and the jury

[00:13:50] Speaker 00:
rejected that.

[00:13:52] Speaker 00:
I'll reserve my time for rebuttal.

[00:13:54] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:14:09] Speaker 01:
May I proceed?

[00:14:10] Speaker 01:
Please.

[00:14:11] Speaker 01:
May I please the court?

[00:14:12] Speaker 01:
My name is Benjamin Traster, and I represent the United States.

[00:14:16] Speaker 01:
The defendant argues that the evidence presented at trial

[00:14:20] Speaker 01:
was insufficient for the jury to find defendant guilty of second degree murder, and to prove defendant was the proximate cause of the death of the victim.

[00:14:31] Speaker 01:
But the defendant's argument does not follow from the holdings and the reasoning by this court in other cases that discuss what's required for

[00:14:40] Speaker 01:
its sufficiency in the evidence, what the jury can do with circumstantial evidence, the inferences that the jury can make, and the logical and probabilistic reasoning that a jury is allowed to use and that's required for a jury to reach a verdict and a finding of guilt.

[00:15:01] Speaker 01:
The cases where this court has found that evidence was insufficient for a jury to find a defendant guilty all have essentially logical leaps in the inferences that the jury's able to make.

[00:15:13] Speaker 01:
And of course, that's what the defendant was just discussing a moment ago.

[00:15:17] Speaker 01:
The defendant was discussing the fact that you have to believe one witness one way or another, but the question is really whether or not a jury can make probabilistic and logical reasoning inferences

[00:15:29] Speaker 01:
in their reasoning at arriving at a guilty verdict.

[00:15:33] Speaker 01:
I want to point out one fact which I think permeates

[00:15:41] Speaker 01:
A lot of the argument here, which is that the defendant doesn't actually contest the fact that he was guilty on count two of the assault with a dangerous weapon with the intent to do bodily harm.

[00:15:50] Speaker 01:
He admits, in essence, that there was an assault outside of that camper, outside of the defendant Stuart Kaufman's camper.

[00:16:00] Speaker 01:
If there was that assault, the question becomes, did that assault cause the death?

[00:16:05] Speaker 01:
And I think that there's quite a bit of evidence for the jury to have been able to find the defendant guilty and reach the verdict that they reached.

[00:16:12] Speaker 01:
As this court pointed out, you had two witnesses, Tabitha and Anthony Quint Jones, who said that they heard, I'm sorry, this microphone, I apologize, it's squeaking for me.

[00:16:22] Speaker 01:
They saw the swinging of the pipe and they heard the pipe hitting the victim, Mr. Battiste.

[00:16:34] Speaker 01:
They also, I think they discount the testimony, the defendant discounts the testimony as well of Joseph Norris, who was living at the time with his wife in the nearby camper.

[00:16:45] Speaker 01:
Joseph Norris provided actually some background for the timing of all these events.

[00:16:50] Speaker 01:
He saw people outside on the front porch.

[00:16:53] Speaker 01:
He came home later that night.

[00:16:54] Speaker 01:
When he came home to his camper later that night, he heard a ruckus.

[00:17:00] Speaker 01:
And that might have been that initial assault where that would have likely a jury could have found that that was the initial assault involving Mr. Mooney, involving the victim, Mr. Battiste, and also later than the swinging of the pipe of Mr. Kaufman, the defendant, and Mr. Battiste.

[00:17:20] Speaker 01:
But he said later after that that the defendant came to his house and got a flashlight.

[00:17:25] Speaker 01:
And then he heard a thump.

[00:17:27] Speaker 01:
He heard gurgling.

[00:17:28] Speaker 01:
He heard someone yelling, stop.

[00:17:30] Speaker 01:
And 20 minutes later, he heard or he saw actually the defendant standing behind his camper.

[00:17:36] Speaker 01:
And the fact of the matter is that at that point, that's circumstantial evidence of what was going on with the defendant and Mr. Baptiste at that time.

[00:17:44] Speaker 01:
There could be theories that the jury could have relied on that that body was hit a second time behind the camper, not in front of the camper, that Mr. Kaufman moved the body from the front of the camper to the back of the camper.

[00:17:57] Speaker 01:
And I would note that that's consistent with the amount of injuries that the victim suffered in this case, because it's not just that the victim suffered one lacerate, one fracture, for example, to his head.

[00:18:10] Speaker 01:
The medical examiner was clear, and it's in the record, I believe, of page 435, that the victim suffered one long fracture to his head, which is visible in the photographs, but he suffered a tool mark fracture, a second fracture to his head.

[00:18:24] Speaker 01:
There were lacerations to his head.

[00:18:26] Speaker 01:
But he also suffered extensive injuries to his legs.

[00:18:29] Speaker 01:
There were abrasions and lacerations to his legs.

[00:18:32] Speaker 01:
And I would note that he suffered fractures to both tibias in his legs.

[00:18:37] Speaker 01:
This was clearly not an assault that happened in a moment.

[00:18:40] Speaker 01:
And the timing that Joseph Norris provides in essentially unimpeached testimony about what happened in those 20 minutes, all of that is something that the jury could

[00:18:51] Speaker 01:
conclude was as a result of the defendant's actions.

[00:18:54] Speaker 01:
It is all circumstantial evidence.

[00:18:55] Speaker 01:
And again, the question is really only could the jury, through logical probabilistic reasoning, make those determinations?

[00:19:02] Speaker 03:
Counsel, how would you characterize the evidence supporting or being sufficient to support the element of malice aforethought?

[00:19:11] Speaker 01:
Well, I would first note that the defendant hasn't actually contested that element at all.

[00:19:16] Speaker 01:
But I would note without, and I apologize, without the pattern instruction in front of me, I think one of the ways that you could prove malice aforethought, and I would actually point out that one of the interesting parts about the district court's denial of the Rule 29 motion is that he struggled with the issue of premeditation of malice aforethought, not with the question of proximate cause of the death.

[00:19:38] Speaker 01:
But to go back, Judge Federico, to your question, I think the use of the weapon in and of itself is actually circumstantial evidence of malice of fourth thought.

[00:19:47] Speaker 01:
And I think the pattern jury instruction says that when you're using that weapon, when you...

[00:19:51] Speaker 01:
inflict the blows that he inflicted on Mr. Baptiste in the assault which the defendant has conceded.

[00:19:59] Speaker 01:
I think it's reasonable to find that there was malice at forethought.

[00:20:02] Speaker 01:
There was no accident.

[00:20:04] Speaker 01:
There was no excuse.

[00:20:05] Speaker 01:
There was no heat of passion that could have explained.

[00:20:10] Speaker 03:
Were there some statement evidence?

[00:20:14] Speaker 03:
about what Mr. Kaufman said to one of the couples as they were leaving the property before anyone saw a pipe about, you may not want to see this or leave if you don't want to see this.

[00:20:24] Speaker 03:
Am I remembering that?

[00:20:26] Speaker 01:
That's exactly right.

[00:20:27] Speaker 01:
Both Tabitha Jones and Anthony Quint Jones both testified and said, they testified that he said, in essence, you should probably go now unless you want to see this.

[00:20:37] Speaker 01:
They testified that they believed that something bad was about to happen.

[00:20:40] Speaker 01:
And of course, that is evidence of premeditation, but that doesn't explain.

[00:20:44] Speaker 01:
There may be many reasons why a jury decided there wasn't premeditation, but the fact that there wasn't premeditation doesn't mean that there wasn't sufficient evidence for the jury to infer from all the other facts that the defendant committed second-degree murder.

[00:21:05] Speaker 01:
I just want to point out, and I'll try to be brief, that in the other cases

[00:21:10] Speaker 01:
where this court has held that there was not sufficient evidence for the jury to make findings of guilt.

[00:21:18] Speaker 01:
The details of the case in the record were obviously very important, but it was in those cases where there was that logical leap.

[00:21:25] Speaker 01:
And so, for example, I would just point this court to the Summers case, the Woody case, which I believe is an unpublished case, but it's very similar.

[00:21:37] Speaker 01:
and the Jones case.

[00:21:38] Speaker 01:
But in each of those cases, there wasn't evidence that linked up as there is in this case.

[00:21:45] Speaker 01:
And for example, in the Summers case, the defendant was never actually seen in the car that left the bank in a bank robbery.

[00:21:53] Speaker 01:
In the Woody case, the defendant was seen kicking the victim, but the victim died by a stab wound.

[00:21:58] Speaker 01:
Here, and I just want to make the point that the injuries that the victim suffered were

[00:22:05] Speaker 01:
the medical examiner said they were consistent with a cylindrical pipe.

[00:22:09] Speaker 01:
And the jury could also make it a reasonable inference, a logical inference, that the end of the pipe was used potentially to create the tool mark in the jury.

[00:22:20] Speaker 01:
Unless the court has other questions, I guess I would just close and finish by saying that I don't believe that there's any logical gap that the jury had to stretch in order to find the defendant guilty.

[00:22:33] Speaker 01:
I tried to talk and stick to my argument mainly about the facts that were discovered, but I didn't really even get to the statements as, Judge Federico, I think maybe you had brought this up in counsel's argument, but there were also statements, including the defendant's statement to Mr. Norris saying, I F'd up.

[00:22:50] Speaker 01:
So there were statements that dovetail with the rest of the facts of the case.

[00:22:55] Speaker 01:
Thank you.

[00:23:03] Speaker 00:
Just to focus on what actually count to a conviction means, it was aggravated assault with a dangerous weapon with the intent to do bodily harm.

[00:23:12] Speaker 00:
And that can be proven just by the threat or attempt to scare somebody into thinking that there was going to be bodily harm.

[00:23:21] Speaker 00:
And that was the charge that was brought.

[00:23:23] Speaker 00:
Mr. Kaufman does not contest that.

[00:23:25] Speaker 00:
And of course, we cannot contest Mr. Tabitha Jones' testimony about what she saw.

[00:23:30] Speaker 00:
But we certainly don't admit that he actually caused serious bodily injury with the pipe.

[00:23:37] Speaker 00:
The Joneses saw what they said they saw.

[00:23:40] Speaker 00:
With Mr. Norris' testimony, I would just reiterate again

[00:23:43] Speaker 00:
His testimony is consistent that he is there much later than the assault that Tabitha and Anthony Jones testified about.

[00:23:51] Speaker 00:
And he didn't actually see Mr. Kaufman hit anybody or have a pipe in his hand.

[00:23:58] Speaker 02:
I mean, isn't his testimony consistent, though, with a theory that Mr. Kaufman dealt six strong blows on the porch and figured out later that

[00:24:13] Speaker 02:
the victim was in the backyard, but not quite finished off, and so he borrows a flashlight and goes out to finish it?

[00:24:21] Speaker 00:
It would be consistent with that, but inconsistent with the jury's verdict that he was not guilty of first degree murder.

[00:24:31] Speaker 00:
Thank you, Your Honors.

[00:24:32] Speaker 04:
Thank you.

[00:24:34] Speaker 04:
Case is submitted.

[00:24:35] Speaker 04:
Counselor excused.