Guilt By Typo

Among the questionable tactics the prosecutor used in Jason’s trial was to pick apart his alibi with clerical errors in police reports. In 1993 officers wrote their notes on pads and then typed them up at the station house. Even when they taped interviews, they had no help with the transcription. While Jason previously told police that a cousin drove him to a trailer park across town from where Rayna was abducted, one report had him saying a friend was the driver. As the prosecutor proclaimed in court, this friend had been working at Dairy Queen. But two other police reports quoted Jason accurately about his cousin. However, Jason’s lawyers did not attempt to refute the confusion. Worse yet, in transcribing an interview, a detective typed “Rayna” instead of “Ray” when Jason said he did not know Ray’s last name. This, the prosecutor charged, was concrete evidence that Jason was trying to hide his association with Rayna.