This documentary covers the case of Krishna Maharaj sympathetically, a sympathy this cold-blooded killer does not deserve, and having the fingerprints of Clive Stafford Smith all over it, it is naturally riddled with errors, misrepresentations and outright lies.
Maharaj murdered a father and son in a Miami hotel room, a double murder that was motivated more by revenge and obsession than by financial gain. The case against him was and remains overwhelming. Where to begin?
Maharaj is not "from England" as claimed here, he is a British citizen and lived for sometime in the UK where having amassed considerable wealth he rubbed shoulders with the great and the good. The British Government did not ask Stafford Smith to investigate the case as claimed here, although the Conservative MP Peter Bottomley - now Sir Peter Bottomley - spoke on his behalf via video link at a court hearing, the one which resulted in his death sentence being commuted to life without parole.
Stafford Smith says when he first met him, Maharaj insisted on giving him "an A to Z lecture" on his innocence - that is Zed not Zee! Unfortunately, the time to do that was at his trial at which he was advised not to testify, and for whatever reason, he took that advice. Had he taken the stand he would have been asked some extremely inconvenient questions. How would the verdict have been different?
This case was a slam dunk, there was even an eyewitness to the crime, Neville Butler. In the UK, Butler might well have ended up in the dock with him, but here he was the star prosecution witness. Butler did not fail a polygraph as claimed. In the first place, polygraphs are junk science, but in any case, according to the judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida, November 20, 2000, Butler was found to have been deceptive regarding "one" of eleven questions he was asked. Two of his answers were found to be inconclusive. How does that constitute failure?
It is claimed here that Maharaj had 7 alibi witnesses. So why were these not called? Well, according to Stafford Smith, it was because the lawyer was incompetent, but according to the aforementioned judgment, it was because they were not credible. Maharaj had attempted to fabricate an alibi; a defense attorney is first and foremost an officer of the court, and he is not permitted to present knowingly perjured testimony. Maharaj was arrested within twenty-four hours of the crime, and had he truly been thirty or so miles away at the time it was committed, he would have told the police, they would have checked it out, and he would have been back on the street within a couple of days at most. There is a lot more here, but that is surely enough to persuade even the most die-hard skeptics that this documentary is a wilful attempt to deceive the public. Maharaj fainted like a woman in a Victorian melodrama when the jury sentenced him to death, and we are shown the actual footage here. What a pathetic loser.
After "Murder In Miami" was screened, Stafford Smith succeeded in duping a Florida judge into giving him an evidentiary hearing. In its response to his petition, the State called his new "evidence" an example of the theory of six degrees of separation. They might more accurately have called it "Stafford In Wonderland". At any rate, the court agreed, so that is effectively the end of the road for this ludicrous pantomime of concocted conspiracies, and Maharaj will deservedly die in prison.
0 out of 8 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
