SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - With all this new information and evidence in the Josh Powell case - many are wondering why police never arrested him? The short answer - according to legal experts - its not that simple.
Former prosecutor and current defense attorney Greg Skordas was surprised to learn about all the evidence the West Valley Police Department had. "They had statements from Josh that were clearly lies. They had information, from one of the boys, about Susan's whereabouts."
Skordas says the most surprising thing to him - the letter Susan had apparently left in a safe deposit box. He says that may seem like prosecutorial gold. But he says, it can be fools gold in court. "That's good stuff for a search warrant, but it's inadmissible court. You can use hearsay in a search warrant to get evidence, but you can't use hearsay in a court of law."
Still, many ask - why wasn't Josh behind bars? Why was he just a "person of interest" and not a suspect? Why wasn't he charged and prosecuted? Skordas says its not that easy. "They clearly could have charged. But could they have gotten a conviction? That's a harder question. And you certainly don't want to charge a case and get an acquittal because you just one or two items short of sealing the deal."
He says police were probably looking for that last item to move forward. However, he quickly adds - they already had a lot of evidence no one knew about. "They had a pretty strong case. Strong enough to take to a jury and find proof beyond a reasonable doubt - I don't know. But they had a pretty strong case. Much better than we expected."
