The children were five and six years old. A bloody nightshirt, a serrated bread knife, the wrong words spoken in a frantic telephone call to the police all led to the conviction of their mother for the murders. Darlie Routier was to all appearances a normal, loving person in the prime of her life. The cumulative impact of evidence, which was solely circumstantial, was enough to overcome an initial presumption of innocence in the case. Circumstantial evidence is the type of evidence that requires the use of reason to reach a conclusion. In the Routier case, no eyewitness ever appeared to support any portion of the prosecution’s story, and yet she was convicted, sentenced to die by injection, and now waits on death row. Even advances in DNA raised on appeal have not changed the status of the jury’s decision as of this date. Her family believes in her innocence; they maintain hope that somehow, some way, she can still be proven not guilty. The burden of proof has now shifted, however; at this point, without the introduction of relevant new evidence, she will face the executioner.1 Darlie Routier, like many others, was convicted solely on circumstantial evidence.
