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.

Oh, didn't at all think you were being chippy secondtime, I just hope you didn't think I was picking on you!

Yes, it is bloody depressing. Jo Yeates was just an ordinary girl who had the fatal misfortune of having this nutter live in the same building as her. It just doesn't bear thinking what she went through, and what her family are going to have to live with. It's just not fair. And I'd be the first bleeding heart liberal to bleat on about the right to redemption and repentence and so forth, but by God sometimes it's difficult.

The law isn't like maths, there are always options to get to any one outcome but each has own variable risks. Not admitting the porn evidence may seem ethically wrong, but also means that it cant be challenged as prejudicial later - you can easily see how that could be argued awhile after the emotion of the case has died down)

I think they played it well and got the right result in the safest way.

If only it were that easy to pass him off as a 'nutter' slubadub, he would have been assessed to see if he was fit to be prosecuted, meaning he didn't have any mental health problems.

Paying for sex does demonstrate that he was not (as he claimed) monogamous.

So it would have advanced the prosecution's case by reminding the jury that Tabak was a liar, and casting doubt on his "poor little confused innocent who just wanted a little kiss from a pretty girl" defence.

His parents would like capital punishment for him too.

Yes, it might have had that effect. But it would not have shown his intent to murder.

I think the case was better left to stand or fall on the events of that particular night, and I am glad it did, and think the outcome was right.

Acually whatmeworry I think that not allowing the porn evidence should have been legally wrong. The whole trial and what the jury were able to assess was skewed because it wasn't admitted. It demonstrated motive, and also proved he was a liar on a number of issues, including his claim that he didn't know what strangulation did to women. There is something wrong with the legal system if something as salient as that can be excluded by the defense, and the judge was only too happy to oblige.

Exactly Slubadub - a normal girl, living in a lovely area, with perfectly normal seeming neighbours. Goes out for a drink, comes home and this happens. That could have been me so many times in my life. It could be either of my daughters in the future. Makes me want to weep.

No him putting his hands around her neck and strangling her showed intent to murder, but that evidence was already in the trial.

Or maybe his confession to manslaughter should have been excluded in case it prejudiced his right to a fair trial when being accused of murder. You can see where this sort of nonsense takes us. Of course there will always be special pleading made to ignore some men's hideous woman-hating sexual impulses, that doesn't mean it should be pandered to.

It's not nonsense.

Wanting to see women strangled and choked is pure sadism. Whether someone goes on to commit murder or not is immaterial. It's wrong at every level, and the men who use it need to be judge most severely and socially ostracised if necessary.

Come off it thunder - of course it's not immaterial whether or not someone goes on to commit murder!

Watching this nasty stuff means you are a very nasty individual - but that's not a crime. Unlike murder. As for judging and ostracising them - fine if you can identify them, but it normally happens behind closed doors. How the hell of us do any of us knows what any of the people we see by day watch on their screens at night?

Do please explain why Edith.

The justice system is failing women at every turn at the moment.

Rape victims backgrounds are spread across court rooms so rapists regularly get away with it, but somehow when it comes to a man who strangled a woman to death his sexual interest in strangling women is ruled out of evidence. The judge has confused a fair trial with a trial where the accused doesn't have to face half the evidence against him.

I think you're misunderstanding me Andrew. There seems to be a belief about this kind of porn is that it's only harmful when someone goes on to commit murder and in fact not even then. The point is that even if this murder hadn't happened, this kind of violent sadistic pornography would still be abhorrent, and no man who uses it deserves defending. And if we do know who they are, they ought to be socially ostracised.

yet interestingly the prosecution didn't want details of his porn fantacies released to the press in case it prejudiced future trials.

So you are saying that the defence can bring up things that don't directly speak to his lack of intent to murder, but that make the case that he's a nice bloke and "not that kind of guy"?

But that the prosecution must confine themselves entirely to proving intent, and are not even allowed to challenge falsehoods made by the defence in their character testimony?

So basically, you think prosecution and defence should be held to entirely different standards of evidence?

Why bother with a trial at all? Just ask Tabak to tell us what happened, and we'll all believe him.

I'm not defending any man who uses such stuff, thunder, but it's a sad fact that it's only if they go on to be suspected of an offence which provides the police with a reason to inspect their homes and their computers that it comes to light. In which case if they are convicted the question of ostracising them becomes irrelevant. And if they are acquitted - well, I won't hide my view that the name of every defendant ought to be concealed unless there is a conviction.

I would like to see that kind of pornography made illegal so that people found to be in possession of it could not go on to sit on a jury in a rape, sexual assault of murder trial.

Agree smallwhite, it should be a crime.

Nope, not following what the relevance of what anything you've said there is to this thread Andrew.

That's the difficulty isn't it SCOTT - He didn't say "I'm a hideous, nasty person who uses prostitutes and who strangled a woman. I just didn't mean to seriously hurt her". He said "I am a nice upstanding member of the community who made a fatal mistake". It seems to be that the prosecution weren't allowed to challenge the "nice upstanding member of the community" bit because it wasn't relevant to intent. At a legal level I do understand the argument, but morally it still seems totally wrong that Tabak can spin a surrounding story to support the lack of intent, but the prosecution can't pick apart that surrounding story.

Still, most people find this stuff so abhorrent that there probably was a risk that the jury's conviction would have been later deemed unsafe.

Sorry, been away from thread.

I suspect the judge made some rather conservative calls on the evidence admitted that could have been used against VT to try to make the conviction unappealable. Because the last thing her family needs is to have an appeal and possible retrial because the judge went against VT on a borderline evidence call. And the result has shown that it wasn't needed to get a muder verdict anyway (although I do note that it was a 10 v 2 majority decision so obviously not that black and white).

Thunders actually I think your proposed approach would lead to more chance of an appeal and acquittal, as others have pointed out above - especially in emotive cases like this.

The guy got done for murder, minimum 20 years, what's not to like?