To think that the jo yeats jury should have been told about his strangling during sex fetish?

[pippala]

pleased for Joanna's family that he has been found quilty, their ordeal is hardly over though.
Min 20 years, so he will be 53 when he comes out, with still half his life left.
Now it appears he watch porn that involved strangulation, had sex with prostitutes and like choking them!
I have heard about better orgasms when you can't breath, Isn't that how Mike Hutchence died?
I can not understand why this was withheld from the jury.
I was on jury service and put away a pedo for 33years. at sentancing we were told he had done it before to 3 other girls! I can understand that we were not to know as we were hearing only that case but in Tabaks case he hadn't killed before,as far as we know but his personality was not the one portrayed by the defence.

Gordy that remark is incredibly distasteful. Would you consider having it deleted.

I don't know, it's just that legally and emotionally I think two very different things.

Take the case of the man on trial for sexual abuse, and not knowing he had previously raped a 3 year old.

Legally I understand not telling the jury about the prior offence, because they may want to find him guilty just based on that.

But emotionally, I don't really have a problem with them doing that, because I think anyone who rapes a 3 year old should rot in jail for the rest of their life anyway.

This is why I never became a lawyer.

Another lawyer. It's so good of you all to come on here and share your legal expertise. Where do you practice member?

Oh thanks member that's very interesting

Graham Coutts' use of strangulation pornography was admitted into his trial. He also used the "I didn't mean it defense".

Given that Tabak claimed to have strangled Joanna Yeates to silence her screams, the prosecution should have been allowed to provide evidence for a different motivation.

Also I said on the other thread, if it's hard for people to separate motivation from intent, then it's the job of the judge to guide them in that, not to hide the evidence from them.

I am just so glad that because it was ruled inadmissable it is unlikely he can appeal.

But still, my gut instinct agrees with the poster who wrote this:
'So how is the defence allowed to tell a pack of lies about Tabak's character but the prosecution is not allowed to refute those lies with evidence because it has been ruled inadmissible? This does not seem right to me at all.'

It was relevant to the case that he used prostitutes because he had presented himself as very sexually naive (no girlfriend till the age of 29). Also, the fact that after the event he was watching news footage about JY's disappearance and then switching within a couple of minutes to watching porn, which supports the prosecution's idea that this was a sexually motivated crime. He was still getting off on her murder Without this evidence it seemed strange the prosecution were claiming a sexual element to the strangulation - it seemed like it was just conjecture. But it clearly wasn't.

I am so repulsed by this man and so sad for JY's poor family. I can't imagine their pain.

Gordylovessheep - the "prove he even watched it" argument was what Clegg used as the argument for not showing to the jury.

I'll reiterate, it's intent, not motive that is the defining difference between murder & manslaughter. Pre-meditation does NOT need to be shown for it to be murder.

What is your legal expertise member?

I think we're all well aware of the fact that intent is what makes the difference between murder and manslaughter. Tabak's defense was a classic example of the attempt to prove the difference. However once again, you're ignoring the fact that he claimed that his motivation for strangling Joanna Yeates was to stop her screaming, when we now know he had a sexual interest in strangulation. That's relevant.

I just can't stop thinking about her poor poor family, I don't know how they went to court or how they are they are living.

I'm sure I wouldn't be

They know that he watched the videos multiple times.

It's not about establishing cause and effect - if that were the standard, no evidence would be admissible for anything.

Just because strangulation porn doesn't cause you to strangle a woman to death doesn't mean that a taste for strangulation porn is irrelevant when considering what motivated a man who we know has strangled a woman to death.

And it's clear that a man attacking and strangling a woman to deprive her of breath because it turns him on, intends to cause serious harm or death.

The Coutts case was somewhat different - his fetish for strangulation was introduced to the trial by the defence, which centred on consensual activity going badly wrong.

Great. I love the fact that violent porn is now so mainstream that it is deemed inadmissible evidence in a trial. It's just normal, isn't it, for a healthy red-blooded male to want to cause random women pain and fear. Why tell the jury? It's perfectly okay.

It's hardly the poor chap's fault that his victim had the audacity to die. It's the fault of the women in the films, obviously.

God this is very depressing

I absolutely do not agree that the jury should've been told.

Watching violent porn and having violent fantasies is not a cast-iron precursor to committing murder. Therefore revealing this to the jury would've done nothing more than assured Tabak of a retrial.

What happened in reality was that he was convicted of a murder on the evidence presented. Which is what should always have happened.

I simply don't understand.

I know near suffocation can bring a person to intense orgasm.
But how does strangling someone else bring the strangler to orgasm?

My formal legal expertise is zero though I don't think this precludes me from being interested in this trial & being able to look at the evidence in an objective manner? Rather than jump down other posters throats with emotionally-charged visceral arguments, I tend to research areas I'm unsure of.

I am not so au fait with the Graham Coutts case but given there was a decomposing body found in a storage unit he rented & evidence of sexual assault pre & post mortem & witnesses who testified to being included in his strangulation fantasies, I would say that's a very different case. It is also a case in which an appeal was launched against the verdict.

Don't be silly, Witches. No ones saying it's mainstream, just that it's not evidence. There is a difference.

There's nothing wong with being interested in something member. I'm not sure why you'd think you're less subjective than anybody else mind you. Faux-authoritative posts do give the impression of objectivity though, even if they are anything but.

I think what this case shows again is that the legal system works against female victims of male violence and finds every single way to let men who commit violence against women off the hook. Luckily in this case he couldn't get past the jury but it doesn't always happen.

A rape victim will have her private life paraded in a court room in order to let her rapist walk free, but a man who was pretending he didn't know what strangulation did to a a woman, is able to hide his predilection for masturbation to women being strangled. Appalling.

I don't see what the fact that non-murderers watch violent images has to do with it not being included in the defence. Every day non-murderers throw pizza boxes in the bin, but that was still included in this trial.

The point is surely that if you were, for example, a keen player of cluedo and had played it many times, and then you accidently killed somebody with lead piping, it would be extremely odd behaviour for you then to play cluedo online while also watching news footage about your victim. And such behaviour would suggest a lack of empathy for your victim, and a linked interest in both her and a particular sort of violence, which would cast doubt on your stated intent to merely silence her.

I think you've got the reason why the prosecution didn't use it a bit muddled up Witches.

If somewhere along the time line of a persons life Moonlight, sex and strangulation have become combined in a persons mind, the person will then get something out of seeing it acted out.

First of all in fantasy, which can then progress onto real life.

It's power over another humans life, maybe akin to what a hunter gets from killing an animal?

I'm pretty sure the only lawyer on this thread thinks it should have been admitted as evidence.

The prosecution thought it was evidence.

The police thought it was evidence.

I have mixed feelings on whether it should have been admitted, but arguing that it isn't evidence because it's not "cast iron" proof is idiotic.

How, using that standard, could a prosecution ever suggest a motive for anything?

"The defendant stood to gain a lot of money in the event of the victim's death"

"No cause and effect - not evidence!"

I worked in the prison system for 18 years, 20 years is the amount he will serve before being considered for parole. He will then probably do at least another 5 to 8 years after that, and I would be very surprised if he got released at all (well hopefully he won't).

Really feel for Jo's family as it will never be enough for them

As member says. The key is intent. I may be motivated (eg by revenge) to do serious damage to someone who harms me or my nearest/dearest, but at no time would I ever intend to inflict such damage. (Crimes of passion are for another conversation). The vast majority of people in this world (including the Netherlands, incidentally) understand the difference between wanting to do something criminal and actually making it happen. We are not punished for thought crimes.

That Tabak may have a predeliction for viewing the type of pornographic material that depicted ultimately happened to J Yeates may (and only may - none of us are qualified to assume any degree of probability) indicate that he was motivated to inflict such injury on her, perhaps in an attempt to enact that pornographic material for himself. But it has nothing to do with his intentions. How many DHs view pornography that bears no relation to their RLs? And how many of those actually go out and make what they are looking at, happen? Would a wronged DW of such DH be able to 'convict' him for having strayed on the basis of him enjoying looking at such pornography? And how many of those DWs could honestly say that, in the absence of concrete or non-conflicting evidence, that he was 10% or 50% or 99% certain to have strayed on the basis of seemingly liking to look at whatever pornography?

The judge's decision on admissibility of this evidence, and his instructions to the jury, were absolutely correct. He could not risk the jury imputing intention from motivation. We are all human, and the temptation to do such a thing could have been insurmountable. He's not stupid, or heartless, and he is entrusted to administer the law as it stands. The law simply did not allow him to do otherwise.

And actually, that's a really good point, thunders, and has made up my mind for me:

The defence was permitted to base their case on Tabak's unfamiliarity with strangulation and its effects. That is a fucking disgrace when there was direct evidence contradicting that assertion.

If his defence hadn't specifically included that assertion, you could possibly claim irrelevance. But the defence went there, and the prosecution should have been allowed to respond with the facts about his keen interest in strangulation.

I do agree with you Tidy, you know more than I do, obviously, but I don't think that my point about violent porn is "silly" if taken in a wider context.

My beautiful DD (see profile) is eleven and I am really fearful about the next few years. My son is only four and I can only do what I can do with him. I can't help or parent the (damaged) boys she is growing up with and going to school with.

I have always wondered why there were no expected and incriminating "usual" signs of sexual assault, semen, other DNA etc but now it makes perfect sense.

Were his trousers and underpants ever examined or tested? Or was that inadmissible?