Talk:Murder of Sherri Rasmussen/Archive 1

Archive 1

rename

I would suggest strongly that this be moved to Murder of Sherri Rasmussen. The former Det. Lazarus is only notable for this crime; the killing and investigation is what's notable here. Daniel Case (talk) 23:30, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree, this page should be moved and rewritten to focus on the crime, not the perpetrator. Robofish (talk) 23:14, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Will do now. Thanks. Seems to be no argument from page creator, who doesn't edit much anyway. Daniel Case (talk) 19:11, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Change in prison location

The article states the wrong prison for Stephanie Lazarus. I met her just two days ago at the California Institution for Women in Corona, but I realize that changing the prison name would amount to an improper edit since the change would be based on personal knowledge. The information can be verified through a search of http://inmatelocator.cdcr.ca.gov, but I don't know how to cite that site either. So I thought I'd try out the talk page. (My apologies if I have done so improperly.) 70.211.133.179 (talk) 19:23, 28 July 2015 (UTC)Phil

This checks out. I will change the article appropriately (that was based on something reported in one of the articles I used as as a source) Thanks for doing things the right way! Daniel Case (talk) 20:35, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

 Done Interesting note—per the article on the California Institution for Women, it's actually in Chino (Corona is just its mailing address). Daniel Case (talk) 20:41, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Mr. Case, Thanks for updating the page. I'm glad the way I approached the issue was "the right way." Oh, and regarding the prison's location, it may be in Chino and have a Corona mailing address, but that's not the end of matters. It's on Chino-Corona Road. 70.197.78.195 (talk) Phil — Preceding undated comment added 03:35, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Oops, it's still wrong. The article identifies the incorrect prison later.70.211.130.153 (talk)Phil — Preceding undated comment added 06:39, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

 Done Fixed now, too. Daniel Case (talk) 03:32, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Original research

All those references to this site are simply Original research and serve solely to beef up this article with stuff that was never reported by independent sources. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 17:18, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

@BeenAroundAWhile:Hmm? I don't even think you've got the tag right. Citing material reported by other sources isn't OR; you can say you think it's not reliable information, but it isn't OR.

This poor understanding of policy on your part does not encourage me to take your argument seriously even if you had properly identified the perceived violation. While BLPPRIMARY says we can't use certain public records, including some court documents, as sources for details about a living person such as their birthdate, home address, whatsoever, there has been some discussion about how absolutely that policy should be construed. I would adduce two arguments as to why it's perfectly fine to use the California appellate decision as a source for facts about this case:

• First, the article is about an event, not a person. The court decision is not reporting any facts about Ms. Lazarus personally; this article is not a biography of her.
• Second, this is an appellate decision. Lazarus had been convicted of the murder by that point; it is a matter of established judicial fact and our treatment of that as a fact is beyond dispute since a trier of fact found that it was.

  And this means that, in order for the California Courts of Appeal to hear the case, both Lazarus and the state had to agree on the facts in the record for the court to consider (Appeals courts can hear claims of a factual dispute, but the bar for even getting to make the argument that the lower court got it wrong is very high). There was no indication in the appellate brief that Lazarus challenged any of the trial court's finding of facts (Of course, I'm sure she disagreed greatly—and probably still does—with the jury's verdict). The appellate decision, the product of a trial to which both sides contributed evidence and made arguments as to what should and shouldn't be put in front of the jury, a product which was then further augmented by briefs and arguments before the appeals court, leading to a decision which three judges had to sign off on, certainly IMO meets our standards for oversight and reliability. Much more than an affidavit submitted in a lawsuit settled or dismissed long before trial would.

Put it this way: the state of California relied on the appellate decision to decide whether Lazarus has a decent shot at getting out of jail in her lifetime or not. If that's not reliability, I don't know what is. Daniel Case (talk) 20:55, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Lead image

The topic is about the murder, Daniel, not the person herself. It helps readers identify the person but not the murder. I added the corpse image at Death of Alan Kurdi and then added the pre-death image of the victim into the background. There must be an image of her corpse where the police or someone else found her. Well, suicide of Tyler Clementi uses the infobox at the top, but I wonder whether the infobox should be pushed down or changed. Anyway, I am uncertain whether the current lead image is appropriate as lead image per WP:LEADIMAGE. --George Ho (talk) 18:09, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

@George Ho: I just don't see any wording in the linked section that suggests we must use a picture related to the event rather than one of the decedent. I agree that a crime scene pic would be most apropos, but very rarely are those free (to be fair, most pictures of dead or missing persons that we use aren't, either), outside of those taken by U.S. federal agencies, and they're harder to find as they are not always made public for perfectly obvious reasons.

In fact, on that note, I actually believe LEADIMAGE would argue against using graphic corpse or crime-scene pics, even if available: "Lead images should be selected to be of least shock value; if an alternative image exists that still is an accurate representation of the topic but without shock value, it should always be preferred." IMO a picture of the victim is an accurate representation of the topic because it shows the life lost.

In any event, given the vast amount of articles we have about deaths, whether homicides or not, this interpretation of policy should be discussed at a level higher than individual articles' talk pages before being applied. Daniel Case (talk) 22:31, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Would exceptions apply per WP:GUIDES, Mr. Case (or Daniel if you want me to)? George Ho (talk) 02:05, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

@George Ho: Daniel is fine; perhaps we will get to meet in person someday. I suppose if you want to treat it that way (as an exception to a guideline) it's fine, although I maintain there's no exception needed because I don't read the guideline that broadly. Daniel Case (talk) 00:41, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

For the record (how do you call it?), Daniel, the pre-death image of Alan Kurdi was nominated for deletion because the corpse image is already used. Fortunately, the image is kept, but the corpse image is a better lead image despite its disturbing nature. Recently, I changed the infobox of "suicide of Tyler Clementi" to {{infobox event}} and pushed the image down to Background. George Ho (talk) 02:56, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

@George Ho: In the case of the Kurdi image, it is important to remember that his death became a worldwide event in no small reason because of a photograph of his corpse on the beach. The shocking image is part and parcel of notability there.

I would make that exception for other cases of people photographed after their deaths where their death was what was notable and we do not have articles on them as individuals (i.e., Jeffrey Miller and the other victims of the Kent State shootings, where that iconic photograph of a distraught Mary Ann Vecchio over his corpse is the lead image). Daniel Case (talk) 03:25, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Addendum: But see Nguyễn Văn Lém. However, in that case, I'd bet the iconic photograph of his death is the only one anyone can find. Daniel Case (talk) 03:30, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I haven't pinged you yet because you will likely read my response here. I started an RM discussion about the naming of the Nguyen page. Before that, I was going to mention that, before Trayvon Martin was converted to an article in 18 September 2013, the Shooting of Trayvon Martin page did not use either Trayvon or Zimmerman image as lead image. Ooh, look: a pre-death image of Eric Garner (which I uploaded) was pushed down from the lead image. Wanna ask that person why? George Ho (talk) 04:11, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

@George Ho: This sort of change would affect a lot of articles, actually, and I think we are better off opening this up on the MOS:IMAGE talk page, where we can get some sort of stronger consensus as to whether a lead image of the decedent while alive would be "natural and appropriate visual representations of the topic" as well as "the type of image that is used for similar purposes in high-quality reference works, and therefore what our readers will expect to see" in articles about those deaths (I maintain that it would be).

Another thing to keep in mind is that most of these pictures of these people are not free images; instead they are third-party copyrighted and thus come under our fair use policies. The contextual requirements of Fair use criterion 8 have long been interpreted to require that any fair-use image in an article have not only a rationale on its image page, but sourced commentary on that image in the article itself, as close as possible to the image in the text. Take it from one of the ... oh, about 40 or so people on Wikipedia who really understand that policy and how it is implemented: it is much easier to justify a fair-use image in an article infobox, especially of a dead person for whom it is unlikely that new images will be able to be created, than it is when it's allowed to float freely in the article. As it is, the Eric Garner picture could be deleted as an insufficiently-justified non-free image, for instance. Daniel Case (talk) 05:50, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Why would the Garner image be deleted, while the pre-death Kurdi image was decided to be kept for now? George Ho (talk) 05:52, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Because, I think, Deryck was being generous. The original nominator was coldly correct about the image of the living boy not adding anything encyclopedic to the article. And it doesn't seem to me like there was really a lot of discussion. Had I been part of it, I would have voted regretful delete. Daniel Case (talk) 06:09, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Re-nominate it if you want. --George Ho (talk) 07:01, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Also, central discussion is a little too soon. No proof yet that case-by-case method is inadequate. Maybe nominate another pre-death image of a victim, and see the results. Kurdi's case is not sufficient enough for central discussion. You can nominate either Garner image or Parker and Ward image for deletion at FFD, so you might prove that case-by-case is not adequate any longer. George Ho (talk) 05:58, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I just hate doing things that way.

BTW, I would point out that, analogously, for articles about, say, transportation accidents where a decent free photograph of the accident or aftermath is not available, we have run pictures of the planes or trains involved if we had them (cf. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which, OK, no one knows what happened so we're not going to have a picture, but also consider 2014 Falcon 50 Vnukovo ground collision, an already-forgotten accident where we have a picture of one of the planes involved. To me that's the equivalent of having the picture of the murder victim while they were alive. Daniel Case (talk) 06:09, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Addendum: And just to take an example from a rail accident earlier this very year: Bad Aibling rail accident, which has a picture of one of the trains involved from shortly beforehand. Daniel Case (talk) 06:13, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Mass accidental deaths and one person's death are... not the same. How do they compare? Also, even when you hate the case-by-case, central discussion is not easy either. If images are a discussion's central issue, I don't think many would care much. Look at this discussion. Issue was raised, but nothing was resolved. Even I tried raising the issue about insufficient participation at WT:FFD without luck. What's going on with many people? George Ho (talk) 07:01, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

"Mass accidental deaths and one person's death are... not the same. How do they compare?" Well, they both involve death, for one thing. More seriously, I see lots of similarities—as I said, free pictures more directly related to the incident may very well not be available, and a picture of the decedent while alive or the vehicle before it was wrecked are easily the next best thing that still falls within the very vague criteria of LEADIMAGE.

No, no discussion method will ever always resolve the issue. But ... with case-by-case it often appears that someone has been doing it stealthily, creating facts on the ground so that any participants in the inevitable discussion that does start when someone gets upset about the changes are aware that a consensus that the change underway is against policy means it will have to be reverted in every article it's been applied to and thus an awful lot of work will have to be done, so people find reasons to approve said change even if it's not really supported by policy. Basically, it looks manipulative to people. Daniel Case (talk) 07:40, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

A person's death is treated as a huge sensation nowadays... or it has been. One death would make a difference. Mass deaths also make a huge difference. Speaking of case-by-case, I link a very tiny essay for you. You can expand the essay. Also, off-topic, but RMs at Talk:Chan Chi-chuen show an example of a bad case-by-case scenario. Also, look at a discussion about a non-free pre-death image of a person (or two); it can be a good example or bad example of case-by-case scenario. George Ho (talk) 08:33, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Response to third opinion request:

I am responding to a third opinion request for this page. I have made no previous edits on Murder of Sherri Rasmussen and have no known association with the editors involved in this discussion. The third opinion process is informal and I have no special powers or authority apart from being a fresh pair of eyes.

MOS:LEADIMAGE doesn't really have anything to say about this article, as no one is suggesting showing a corpse as the lead image. Looking at a variety of other articles may not be very helpful, as it doesn't help answer the question of what's best for this article. In my opinion, the lead image as used in this version is perfectly fine, and in a lot of ways is better than having no lead image at all. Bradv 20:55, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

In Popular Culture

There is a Law and Order SVU episode based on these events - Secrets Exhumed. Is that an appropriate section to add? I am not familiar with these types of pages. -Lciaccio (talk) 02:55, 16 December 2017 (UTC) Lciaccio (talk) 02:55, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

@Lciaccio: If you can find a reliable, independent third-party source saying this, yes (Funny that ... most people noticed the similarities to Cold Case, but I've never found anyone who I can cite saying that) Daniel Case (talk) 06:00, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

So far all I have seen is a Law and Order wiki, not a reliable source. I had searched for it because I noticed the similarities when reading about the case. -Lciaccio (talk) 18:34, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

This case has turned up just now on HLN in an episode of Beyond Reasonable Doubt. There is reference to "If I can't have John, no one else will." and now I got confused because I hear something like "no one else can have ___" but the person killed was not ___ but ___'s current significant other.

It seems that when Lazarus said that, she was determined to kill Sherri and move back in on John, as indeed she did, until (it seems) she naturally grew out of that relationship and moved on. Whoever said people that lovesick that they would kill someone think logically? Daniel Case (talk) 03:16, 17 July 2020 (UTC)