Man’s “Fat Defense” Falls Flat; Doesn’t Carry Any “Weight” With The Jury

From the UK Telegraph

A jury on Friday convicted a man of murdering his former son-in-law, rejecting the man’s defense that he was too fat to have run up and down a flight of stairs to commit the crime and make a quick getaway.

Edward Ates used the "fat defense," but the jury doesn't "bite."

Edward Ates looked down and shook his head in court as he was found guilty of murder and weapons counts for killing Paul Duncsak, who was shot six times at his home in Ramsey, about 25 miles north-west of New York.

Ates’ “too fat to kill” defense provided an angle to the trial that attracted attention from the news media but didn’t sway the jury of eight women and four men, who reached a verdict on their second day of deliberations after a six-week trial.

Some of Duncsak’s family members cried softly after the verdict was read. Ate’s wife, Dottie, sobbed in the gallery as he was handcuffed and led away by court deputies.

“It doesn’t bring him back, but at least he won’t get away with it,” said Duncsak’s sister-in-law, Barbara Duncsak. “It’s satisfying. It was a long time coming.”

Ates had argued he did not have the energy to accurately shoot Duncsak from a perch on the staircase at Duncsak’s home in August 2006. He was 62 years old and 285 pounds at the time of the murder.

Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Wayne Mello termed Ates’ defense “nonsense” and credited dogged work by investigators, particularly Det. Sgt. Russ Christiana, that built a circumstantial case around cell phone records and computer forensics.

“This was a complicated case, and it was good old-fashioned police work combined with new technology,” Mello said.

Prosecutors contended Ates drove from Florida to New Jersey, climbed a staircase and shot the 40-year-old Duncsak, a pharmaceutical executive who was embroiled in a bitter custody dispute with Ates’ daughter after their divorce.

Ates then drove 21 hours to his mother’s house in Louisiana, prosecutors said. The last evidence the jurors reviewed in court on Friday was videotaped testimony from Ates’ sister in which she admitted that she lied to authorities about when he arrived in Louisiana, per his request.  (Read more.)

B.S. Report–This is Ates version of the twinkie defense but this time, fortunately, it was unsuccessful.  When a fat man is “hungry” enough (pardon the pun) it’s not so hard to walk up and down a flight of stairs.  Especially when your goal is to murder your son-in-law. Besides, he was “only” 285 pounds–it’s not like he weighed 400 pounds.  This guy moves pretty well and he’s much heavier.