Somebody woke up on Christmas morning knowing he was the one who strangled young Garrett Phillips to death in Potsdam two months earlier.

Maybe he watched his own children wake up early and run to open their presents on Christmas morning. Maybe he hugged them gently as they waved the new Wii controller they just pulled from the box under the tree while shouting excitedly: “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh ... we love you daddy, we love you daddy.”

Maybe he helped them get ready to go to church to celebrate the birth of Christ. Maybe he smiled broadly at how cute his children looked in their new Christmas sweater or dress.

Somebody woke up Christmas morning and celebrated life while knowing his hands had forever robbed a young boy’s family of that same joyous opportunity.

Just another holiday in the life of a sociopath.

Police have been virtually silent throughout the investigation to find this killer. If they know who this sociopath is, they are not telling.

Their silence leads to speculation. Some people think it means the police and prosecutor don’t have enough evidence to charge someone. Some think it means the police screwed up and the killer will never be caught.

About the only thing police have said publicly about this investigation is they are collecting evidence. Reasonable people I know say it is taking too long for them to name a suspect, to charge a child killer. In lieu of no information, each passing day brings speculation that something in the investigation has gone horribly wrong.

That is not something I want to believe. In lieu of no information, I would rather speculate that the police are moving slowly and methodically to carefully build a case that increases the chances of conviction once they haul the killer into court. How long it takes to arrest somebody is not nearly as important as making sure they have the evidence that will lead to conviction.

I have covered two deaths in my newspaper career where people were shot by an unknown killer. Both of those stories had two things in common: The families of the victim screamed for justice. The public screamed that it wanted protection from a killer on the loose.

In Potsdam we have silence. That says that the people who should be afraid – parents of young children, for example – are not afraid. It says the family of Garrett Phillips is satisfied with the work police are doing to catch the killer. It says the police know this was not a random murder and, if not publicly, have privately conveyed this message to people who most need to know.

The lack of uproar about this murder – the silence of the families and others – speaks volumes.

The police are not looking for a killer. They know who did this horrible crime. Now it is a matter of taking as much time as needed to put together the evidence to get a conviction.

The killer knows this. The killer also knows that years ago there was a lot of evidence showing that O.J. Simpson slashed his wife’s throat. He knows O.J. walked away from trial a free man. The killer knows that in the summer Casey Anthony was acquitted of killing her young child and dumping her in a Florida marsh despite evidence that most everyone in America except 12 jurors thought was enough to lock her up for life.

The killer of Garrett Phillips knows that justice in America is an imperfect science.

So he quietly lives his life – his lie – fooling friends, co-workers, family with his facade of innocence. Waiting. Waiting for it all to blow up. Waiting for the day he gets to play his act of innocence out in front of a jury. Waiting to see if they buy what he knows isn’t true.

Just another day in the life of a sociopath.

I am going to vote to eliminate the village of Potsdam because common sense says that one government could do the job as effectively and more efficiently than the two we have now.

But I have never expected common sense to win when it comes to the issue of getting rid of the village. I told Steve Warr that a couple of years ago when he won a trustee seat in Potsdam running on a platform of dissolving the village. I still believe it today.

Here is the math that will kill the effort to get rid of the village:

■ The amount of money per month that an average property owner in the village would likely save through dissolution is chump change for X number of voters who make enough money to afford two governments.

■ X number of voters don't own property and don't get a village tax bill. They get the milk without having to buy the cow. Why would they vote for change?

■ X number of voters have village jobs or know someone close to them who does. They are not going to vote for the chance of collecting unemployment benefits.

■ X number of residents are elitists who don't think that town officials could handle the task given them by dissolution. In layman's terms that they would never say publicly: They aren't about to hand over control to folks they think are doofuses.

All those Xs will add up to defeat of dissolution. No study, prediction, projection, blog or lawn sign related to dissolution is going to impact the vote as much as the bulleted items above. This vote isn't about facts, it's about feelings.

Common sense says one government would be as effective and more efficient than having two. But that's not a fact.

Common sense says you don't need to spend $2.2 million for village police protection to cover 4.4 square miles where crimes only occasionally get more violent than someone talking on a cell phone while driving. But that's not a fact.

There are very few facts when it comes to dissolution. And it is hard to prove opinions.

Seneca Falls is in its transition year after voting to dissolve the village in 2010. The people down there who were against dissolution before the vote are still against it. They are barnstorming the state with the message that dissolution is a mistake.

Others in that town, whether proponents of dissolution or just people forced to deal with the transition, say that making the change is a challenge but that Seneca Falls residents will be better off when the dust settles.

Time will tell which of the opinions about the dissolution of Seneca Falls is closest to the mark. The only fact that exists now is that voters there were not afraid of change. The majority ignored the natural fear of the unknown. They voted with common sense.

It would be nice if that happened in Potsdam. I just don't think it will. The people against dissolution have done a pretty good job of disguising speculation as fact in their campaign to keep the status quo.

I would never begrudge people for voting against dissolution – no matter what their reason. And I am grateful to Mr. Warr and others for pushing to give residents the chance to vote yea or nay.

The vote may not end up eliminating what I think is an unnecessary layer of government. But discussion during the last few years about eliminating the village has forced everyone to look at spending, to talk about making government more efficient and less costly. That's a good thing.

The future of Potsdam is going to be different – better – as a result of that discourse, whether the village as we know it survives or not. That's a fact. Well, maybe not, but it is surely something I hope ends up being true.

SUNY Central kicked off its cost-cutting efforts recently by paying SUNY Canton President Joseph L. Kennedy not to work.

Call it trickle-dumb economics.

They paid him to resign. I am not sure how the brain trust in Albany came up with the kooky idea that spending more than a half-million dollars on Mr. Kennedy’s severance package was the thing to do at a time when its goal was to find ways to save money.

Maybe they didn’t care. Maybe they just wanted him out. That’s puzzling.

Mr. Kennedy has been a workhorse since becoming president in 1993. He’s worked to improve the campus. He’s worked to improve the curriculum. And he wanted to keep working.

So why did SUNY Central want to give him the boot?

It could be the ‘Roos.

For all the good Mr. Kennedy has done at the school, it was on his watch that SUNY Canton adopted a kangaroo as its mascot. A fierce-looking kangaroo as far as kangaroos go, but a kangaroo nonetheless.

I can just imagine the SUNY Central board room when trustees got the news about the mascot switch.

Trustee #1: “A kanga-dang-roo? What was Kennedy thinking up there at SUNY Canton?”

Trustee #2: “Who’s Kennedy?”

Trustee #3: “We gotta college in Canton?”

Trustee #4: “Where’s Canton?”

Could be that the unusual mascot choice brought attention to the campus. And somehow the attention led to suggestions of cuts that don’t appear to benefit the campus – one that since 1993 has quietly been turning itself into a four-year college under Mr. Kennedy’s leadership.

That’s just speculation.

I am sure most of the SUNY Central trustees know about the successes of the longest-serving president in their system. When the decision was made to have one president run SUNY Potsdam and SUNY Canton, Mr. Kennedy’s track record should have made him as good a choice as any.

There has to be a reason they didn’t consider him in any discussion about who will lead the merged campuses into the future.

Maybe it was all about image.

There’s nothing glamorous about being the head of a working class school that a lot of old-timers up here still call Canton Tech or ATC. SUNY Canton churns out nurses and cops. SUNY Potsdam graduates opera stars.

So Mr. Kennedy was kicked to the curb and SUNY Potsdam President John F. Schwaller appears the frontrunner to lead the schools when whatever shared services operation shakes out of Albany.

SUNY Central officials were probably shocked when they found out that ousting the locally popular Mr. Kennedy wasn’t going to be as easy as they thought. They backtracked on their original “resign or be fired” plan that would have had Mr. Kennedy living off his severance package in September.

They massaged the deal and now the plan is to let him retire as president in the spring but remain in the SUNY system after that as a consultant.

So everyone is happy now. Well, not so much.

The revised plan only shines when compared to the first one. Neither are very good.

SUNY Central is looking at consolidating colleges to save money. Here is the problem: When Mr. Kennedy offered up several ideas for consolidating services between the colleges in the last year, Mr. Schwaller shot them all down.

So if you are to believe the man who might be king, the only real money that will be saved in this whole effort is Mr. Kennedy’s salary.

Here’s another problem: Since it was announced that Mr. Kennedy and his position wasn’t needed anymore, the SUNY Canton College Foundation has seen some $330,000 in scheduled donations delayed. Logic tells you those delays will turn into cancellations if the SUNY Central train keeps rolling on its announced track.

Let’s do the math. Save $185,000 by losing the SUNY Canton presidential salary. Lose $330,000 by eliminating the presidential post. That would be a net gain of $145,000 in the wrong direction.

Call it trickle-dumb economics.

When some folks read recently that I favor getting rid of the worthless piece of government called the village of Potsdam, they suggested I should take a closer look at all the things it does for its residents and I might reconsider my opinion.

So here are some of things I can think of that the village has done for its residents and taxpayers over the years:

■ It recently saved us from hordes of back-to-the-earth types who wanted to grow their own eggs for breakfast by raising chickens in their backyards. Well, maybe not hordes ... I think only one person asked if they could. No matter. It might have grown to hordes if the village didn't quash this idea before it got out of the barn.

Which it did, citing the possibility that chickens might attract varmints that don't belong in the village. And by “attracting varmints,” I am guessing the village trustees meant more hippies who wanted to grow their own eggs.

Next the village board is going to outlaw backyard gardens, which also attract wildlife and hippies. I can't give them credit for this yet, but I am sure it is coming.

■ The village saved us from having a Dunkin' Donuts on the corner of Market and Pleasant streets when it denied a businessman's request to zone the property for commercial use.

This was an important service, because without a village government there would have been no one to say that it didn't make sense to have a business at an intersection that had two businesses and a synagogue on the other three corners.

Oh, wait ... it DOES make sense to have a business on that corner next to other businesses. No matter. We pay our village board to make decisions. We don't necessarily pay them to make logical ones.

The key issue is the village did something for its residents. It got them a street corner that now has lots of toilets with flowers planted in them and a garish multi-color garage, which is how the businessman decorated the property once he couldn't get it rezoned.

■ The village saved us from toilets with plastic flowers planted in them when it brought the legal hammer down on the businessman who put them on his property. The village called the toilets dangerous to the health and safety of residents, not to mention the bees who try to suck nectar out of the plastic pansies.

Well, the village didn't actually save us from the killer toilets, because they have yet to win the battle in court. No matter. They are trying to solve a problem that they played a large role in creating. That's doing something for the residents.

In the meantime, the businessman has put up another display of toilets with flowers on a different piece of his property in the village. Credit the village leaders for promoting Potsdam as the cultural commode center of Northern New York.

■ The village in 2006 put up parking meters on its handicapped spaces. Now a lot of people might boo and hiss at the idea of the village telling handicapped people: “Look, you already get the best parking spots, you are not going to get them for free.” No matter. By now those meters have probably generated enough revenue to cover the $1,400 cost of installation, so every day they are pulling in maybe tens of dollars of pure profit into village coffers. Residents are benefiting one quarter at a time.

■ The village saved us from a guy growing wildflowers instead of a lawn at his house. At least it tried to save us. The pesky courts stepped in again to overrule our government officials. No matter. When the village attempts to come down hard on what it views as a wild man blighting up the neighborhood with flowers, you have to give it credit for looking out for its residents. Except, of course, for the resident who had to go to court to fight and win back his right to garden.

■ The village had the due diligence to send its then-administrator all the way to Canada to research a company with which it planned to do business on a new hydroelectric dam. When he got there he found that the company was embroiled in a legal battle with the town because it was way behind on the work it was hired to do.

So Administrator Michael Weil – as any official looking out for the best interest of residents he serves would do - came back and recommended that the village quit considering the troubled company for the job.

Or at least he should have said that. What he actually did was recommend hiring the sketchy company. Three years later and the village has spent $1.1 million on the project that is standing idle like a goose on the shore of the Raquette River. No matter. When you are looking at all a village does for its residents, you are bound to have some things that aren't so good.

There's plenty more the village does for its residents. It provides a police force we don't need. It plows our sidewalks and tears up our front lawns all in one motion during the winter. For a time it spent tax dollars enforcing a law that saved residents from downtown business owners who put up posters in their store windows that advertised things to do or places to shop in Potsdam.

So I will give you that the village does a lot for its residents - a lot that we could get by without just fine. And it offers nothing that the town couldn't provide – likely at a lower cost – if the village was eliminated.

That's what I see when I take a closer look.

The question of whether to dissolve the village of Potsdam has taken me back to the days when I was being fascinated by the lectures of economics professors in college.

One professor would convince me with sound logic and dazzling rhetoric that giving tax cuts to the rich was the road to economic prosperity. And I was convinced right up until a professor in another class used his own sound logic and dazzling rhetoric to show without question that taxing the rich and giving breaks to the middle class was the road to economic prosperity.

In the end the only thing I learned was that economic theories are hard to wrap your head around. They are often filled with opinions about the future - which means they can’t be right or wrong.

In the last week I stumbled into discussions with two of my neighbors that at least for a short time had me thinking the issue of eliminating the village of Potsdam was a lot like those economics lectures from my college days. Two contrasting points of view. Two people who have passion and conviction for their arguments. Both trying to predict the future.

One of my neighbors is a village trustee who will explain - for as long as you want to listen - how getting rid of Potsdam is the right thing to do. He says doing so will save you some money without losing anything except a layer of government.

Another one of my neighbors is a village employee who will explain - for as long as you want to listen - how getting rid of Potsdam is the wrong thing to do. His argument is that crime will run rampant, sewers will back up, garbage will pile up in the streets and people will start raising chickens in their backyards if the village goes by the wayside. It won't be pretty.

This issue is a lot more black and white than any economic theory. The first guy is right. The second guy is wrong. And I don't say this because I can see into the future. I say it because I've seen the past and present.

There are lots of places in America where people live happily and safe, where roads are paved in the summer and plowed in the winter, where they have everything I have in Potsdam except an extra layer of government and the accompanying property tax bill.

Crime doesn't run rampant in these places. Sewers don't back up. Garbage gets collected regularly. Neighborhoods aren't run afoul by chickens.

Take Green Oak Township where a friend of mine lives in Michigan. He pays property taxes twice a year to the township and writes no checks to any other governmental body. The township has a police force and fire department, as well as a library, parks, recreational services and schools that he and his family get to use. The county he lives in keeps the roads in shape.

You might think his taxes to support all this are sky high. Truth is, his are 60 percent lower than mine. I pay about $2,800 in property taxes - and more than a third of that is to the village. If my house were in Green Oak Township, my tax bill would be $1,253 a year.

I only included that factoid because it amazes me. High property taxes in New York is a complaint different from whether the village of Potsdam should be taken off the map. That’s a column for another day.

My taxes will still be high if the village of Potsdam becomes a part of history ... but I will be paying less than I do now. And if you use Green Oak Township or any of the thousands of communities that don't have governments on every other street corner as models, the quality of my life won't suffer at all.

More is not necessarily better when it comes to governments. The fear mongers who tell you otherwise don't have models to support their argument. All they have is fear. Don't let them scare you.

We don't need the village of Potsdam to maintain our quality of life. We need one less property tax bill to pay each year.

Eliminating the village is the right thing to do. It's a simple matter of economics.

You could feel the emotion when James A. Farbotnik spoke a day after his wife had been found dead in a pond on the couple’s property in Massena.

But his wife and her mysterious death were not the topics most causing him to be on the edge of crying during the long and rambling phone interview.

He was very succinct - for a guy who has trouble being succinct - when he talked of his wife. He loved her. She was his best friend. He didn’t kill her.

Then he went on to the subjects that triggered his voice to rise, crackle and quiver: governmental corruption, asbestos in schools and a host of other things.

It was just hours since he found Virina Z. Farbotnik lying dead under a canoe. Just hours since he had been grilled by police about his wife’s death. Just hours since police ferreted his five children off his property and into foster care.

He pretty much had an A-list of things to set off his emotions. Things happening to him and his family right then. But he chose to rail about past squabbles with town officials, police, neighbors and state officials instead.

It was crazy.

At least that is what I thought at the time.

I haven’t been able to find a manual that outlines the proper way to act when your wife dies mysteriously. Or how to act when the mysterious death prompts police or reporters to ask, “Did you kill your wife?” Or how to act when the Department of Social Services takes your children from you after concluding you are a suspect in something that so far isn’t even a crime.

These are not the kinds of things you prepare yourself to deal with in life.

I came out of the interview he gave us via speakerphone at the Daily Courier-Observer office twirling my finger near my temple and mocking the man as crazy.

My finger isn’t twirling anymore, because I have had time to figure out that I have no idea how I would react if my Love Nugget died and the first question people asked me was, “Did you kill her?”

Crazy might be the most normal of reactions. Like I said, there is no manual, no website, that can guide you in such a moment.

That makes me - and everyone who hasn’t come close to walking in Mr. Farbotnik’s shoes - unqualified to judge his actions under such strange circumstances.

Mr. Farbotnik is in a tornado of strange circumstances. And he is the eye of the storm.

He was allowed to return to his home and his business after police concluded searches of the properties. He got his children back after a court hearing in which the allegations of neglect were rejected. His children got back their computers that police had taken.

The family is slowly having their lives returned to them. Life without a wife. Life without a mother.

Life made crazy by a mysterious death.

A Northern New York Newspapers editor was recently criticized by a reader for writing an editorial about wind power without disclosing that her brother-in-law may benefit from development of turbine farms in the area.

That reader is full of hot air.

People who write editorials - whether under their own byline or as a collective view of the paper where they work - are not bound to disclose potential conflicts of interest.

Why? Because an editorial, by definition, is an opinion. And opinions, by definition, do not require a standard of fairness.

It simply isn’t necessary for an editorial writer to include in their work all the background they used to develop the belief they believe. That is process. It is the result of the process that matters.

If an editor, for instance, comes to the conclusion that abortion is wrong, they do not have to include that they think that because they are Catholic and that is what the pope told them to think. They could use that to support their argument if they wanted, but they are not bound to.

How they choose to support their opinion is up to them.

Ogdensburg Journal City Editor Elizabeth Lyons recently wrote an editorial about wind power that basically said the town needs to carefully weigh the arguments from the people for it, and the people against, before making any big decisions about regulating development of the industry in Hammond.

The opinion was hardly controversial. It didn’t support the fors or againsts. It just urged the town to proceed carefully.

That her brother-in-law might benefit from wind power development has as much relevance to her argument in the editorial as Doug Hoffman has to politics in the north country today. None. Zero. Zip.

But take it a step further: Let’s say she hated her brother-in-law because he stood to become a millionaire off of turbine development but had no plans to include her in on the, pun intended, windfall. And let’s say that fact alone prompted her to write an editorial saying that wind development is a bad idea in the north country.

She still has no ethical, moral or professional reason to disclose how or why she developed that opinion.

What she thinks is what is relevant to an editorial piece that, by design, tells you what a particular person thinks. How she came to think it, not so much.

In defense of the writer who criticized Mrs. Lyons, conflicts of interest are concerns in the journalism industry. Just not on the editorial page. So, the writer was almost right.

Had Mrs. Lyons been the reporter whose job it was to cover the issue of wind power development in Hammond, and had her brother-in-law had the interest with a developer that was pointed out by the writer, then Mrs. Lyons would not have been the reporter whose job it was to cover the issue of wind power development in Hammond. Someone else would have been moved into that beat.

Reporters, by definition, must present all sides of an issue in their stories as fairly and objectively as possible. There is no room for an opinion in a news story.

Readers are expected to form their own opinions by looking at what the fors and againsts said in the story. The reporter is required to remain neutral and just report the facts.

Anything that would make it appear the reporter could not do this - say having a brother-in-law with an interest in wind power - would disqualify them from covering the issue.

Mrs. Lyons would not be allowed to cover wind power meetings in Hammond as an objective reporter. But that doesn’t disqualify her from having an opinion on the subject to publish on the editorial pages as city editor of her paper.

That’s true whether she hates her brother-in-law or loves her brother-in-law.

But, in the interest of full-disclosure, I am told she thinks he is a pretty swell guy.

In case you didn't know: Gavin Regan is a loser.

I am not being derogatory. Just stating a fact. Regan has tried twice to be elected to the St. Lawrence County Board of Legislators. Twice he has lost.

Last week he set the wheels in motion for a third loss at elected office.

Regan is a candidate for the St. Lawrence County clerk job that opened up when Patty Ritchie moved on to bigger pastures in Albany this year. Our new governor, perhaps thinking it would bolster fellow Democrat Regan's chances of winning the seat in November, recently appointed him clerk.

Not a bad plan on its face. But Gov. Andrew Cuomo apparently didn't get the memo that Regan is a tested loser when it comes to politics.

The governor probably has heard about it by now.

Regan appears to have fashioned his campaign strategy after the old engineering design principle whose acronym is KISS, or "Keep it Simple, Stupid."

Except his "simple" is not the "basic, easy to follow" definition used by engineers following that principle. Regan is using the other definition of "simple." The one that is interchangeable with "stupid."

Again, I am not mudslinging. Just stating a fact.

Regan walked into his job last week and within a few hours fired Mary Lou Rupp, the woman who had been acting clerk after Ritchie left and before he was appointed. That's Stupid.

Then he said he made the move for "budgetary reasons" and expected the world to believe that he didn't fire her because she happens to be the Republican candidate running against him for the job in November. That's keeping it really stupid, stupid.

I have yet to find anyone - staunch Democrats included - who thinks that firing Rupp was a good idea. She has worked in the office for seven years, a couple of those as Ritchie's right-hand woman. She knows how things work and could very well have been an asset to Regan, whose experience in the county clerk's office before the appointment has been limited to things like getting his driver's license renewed.

If the smooth operation of the clerk's office during this transition period was his paramount concern, Regan would have recognized that keeping Rupp - even if it felt like he was living with his ex-wife following a divorce - was the right thing to do.

A thinking person cannot see firing Rupp as anything but a vindictive political move against an opponent. It's hard to see any positive outcome that Regan might have been hoping for when he chose to do it. Voters tend to frown on vindictive political moves cloaked as "budgetary concerns."

Maybe he didn't think before he did it. Or maybe he thought his appointment to the job might increase his chances of winning the election and would spoil his perfect record as a loser. If that was the case, he succeeded wildly.

The campaign has barely started and Regan has already managed to KISS goodbye any chance he had of winning. His record as a loser will remain intact.

And that means Rupp - who has never tried running for political office before this - is a winner.

There are times in this business when you report a story the best you can and come away thinking, "Yeah, but what's really going on here?"

The perjury case against Richard Cassara of Canton is one of those stories.

Cassara is charged with lying under oath during his trial for running a stop sign. Seriously. Perjury.

A cop says he didn't stop. He says he did.

Canton Village Judge William J. Galvin at the trial appeared to agree with Cassara and dismissed the traffic charge. That was fairly odd in itself. Cops usually tend to win the "he said, she said" argument in traffic cases that go to court. But it gets weirder.

The issue that got Cassara into hot water is "the line," not whether he stopped or didn’t stop. He says he stopped at a traffic line before the stop sign. After dismissing the charges against him, the judge drove out to the intersection where the "crime" occurred and found there was no line.

Why would a judge take the backwards approach of dismissing the charges and THEN start investigating the facts of the case? If the line somehow mattered, why didn't he load up his Volvo with the attorneys and defendant, drive out to the scene and figure it all out before issuing a ruling?

Second, what does it matter if there was a line painted on the road? The law says you must stop before the line if there is one. The law says you must stop before entering the intersection if there is a stop sign and no line. Line or no line, Cassara said he stopped. He wrongly said he stopped at a line ... but the bottom line is he said he stopped. Believe him and there is no crime. Believe the cop and levy the fine.

Or do what the judge did: Believe Cassara and then start questioning his story.

I told you this was odd. Makes you wonder what is really going on here.

Whatever it is, it led to the perjury charge against Cassara. He allegedly lied about a line that shouldn't have mattered in the first place. And he was jailed on $5,000 bail.

If it wasn't weird enough for you before now, think about that. Bail is meant to be a deterrent to suspects who might flee rather than fight the charges against them. Cassara is a 69-year-old Canton businessman who might have, depending on who you want to believe, run a stop sign. Then he either lied, imagined, assumed, or truly thought there was a line painted on the road where he says he stopped.

He's not giving Bonnie or Clyde a run for their money in the world of major crimes. And it is highly unlikely he would be running from such a dubious charge against him. No bail would have been a reasonable bail.

The judge in setting bail so high implied that he disagrees. It's a ridiculous position if you don't know what is really going on here. And the judge might be the only one who knows what is really going on here.

Those of us who don't know anything but what has been reported in the newspaper can only come away scratching our heads.

It is difficult to believe that Cassara is really going to be prosecuted for perjury. There are better ways of spending the prosecutor's time and taxpayer money than trying to prove that Cassara lied about a line on the road.

Honestly, where does the case go if he gets on the stand and says, "I stopped. That is a fact. I thought I stopped at a line on the road. I honestly thought there was a line on the road. It appears I was mistaken. But I swear I thought there was a line there."

I suppose the prosecutor could get up in his face and start screaming: "You THOUGHT you stopped at a line? You THOUGHT there was a line on the road? You SWEAR there was a line there? It APPEARS you were mistaken? Nothing further, your honor."

It's more likely this case will go by the wayside before the prosecutor gets to present her theatrical, but not much of, a case. It should go by the wayside. It would be odd if it didn't go by the wayside.

The facts that I can see make that a certainty. Of course, I have no idea what is really going on here.

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