Words Fail Me.....

[Gettingagrip]

Man kills wife over roast beef dinner

I know someone who committed armed robbery but was let off on the grounds he went to a good (expensive) private school, so obviously they didn't really mean it and it was a bit of a lad's joke... If they had been unemployed lads who had not gone to a very famous private school I'm sure they would have gone to prison. So the class and gender thing really works in men's favour.

I wonder how often he used to hit her and she obviously said nothing about it...

Dittany, I do agree with you, but you have to remember, it is scary just how EASY it is to kill someone. FOr example, if you trip over and object and fall to the ground, you have around a 1 in 6500 chance of being killed.

THis is one reason why i think that manslaughter and serious assult need to be given the same sentence: If its only luck that stopped you from killing someone, your ass should be treated as if you did.

OOps correction on last post: 1/6500 is the chance of falling over being enough to kill a person. sorry bout that

You know verm, there is a foolproof way of avoiding killing yer wife - not hitting her head being pretty much instrumental.

that is a f*cking disgrace.

that judge clearly isn't fit to work from the garbage he spewed during that case.

a tiff???!!!

oh yeah and it's ok becase it was inside the house. so what happens behind closed doors is alright then???

makes me sick.

oh yeah and what's with the "a punch or slap"

surely he confessed to it. why is the judge making out like they are two similar things? ('punch, slap - same difference' is how that reads) a punch can do a hell of a lot more damage than a slap.

violence is violence is violence. regardless of whether you are white middle class male or not. the crime is the same as if you weren't. background shouldn't even have been a factor unless it was a background of mental health issues that affected behaviour.

yes the "scratch my eyes" thing got me aswell. he's making her out to be the cliché screeching banshee woman, 'she was hysterical, I had to slap her to calm her down'. yeah right.

Urgh. I read this story yesterday and was rather appalled that the attitude of the judge seemed to be "You're a decent, well off man - therefore you couldn't do any real harm" Because a punch in the face (one hard enough to fucking kill her) is nothing

a neighbour attacked their dp after a drunken night out - stabbed with a carving fork actually, (because the dp wouldn't fetch them a glass of water). then called the neighbours, yelling down the phone 'you'd better get round here, i'm going to f'ing kill x'. x crawled off and was found bleeding on the street (by the neighbour who had been called, who drove x straight to a&e). the stab wounds were 1cm from the heart - a slightly different drunken lunge would have been fatal.

the cops were called, kids taken into care for a couple of weeks whilst lives were saved, etc etc. cops wanted to press charges for attempted murder.

essentially she's about to get off without a custodial sentence because she's been going to anger management classes. it was only dv after all. and the kids were returned to her after two weeks. the victim had to leave the family home.

not right to punch/ stab whatever sex you are tbh, and in this case it seems immaterial. (stafrosty/ dittany - just because he is a man doesn't mean he is a liar. it doesn't mean he isn't, but it doesn't mean he is, lol. we all have different experiences of dv, you can't canonise the dead wife just by virtue of being a woman.)

the judge seems to be a bit of an old-boys club man . but the sentence itself wouldn't have been any different if it had been my sil who had heard the case, tbh. (i asked her). nothing to do with his background at all. she did say it was likely that if it had been the other way round the woman would probably have had a more lenient sentence though. dead husband and all.

I noticed the "I thought she'd scratch my eyes out" thing too. He doesn't mean it literally (of course), he wasn't actually afraid of coming to harm - even assuming his story is true. So it wasn't self-defence, he could have just walked out of the room, she wasn't going to do anything harmful to him. It's just blatantly playing up to this: "she was acting like a crazy woman, and we all know how crazy women can get amiright? So I just decided to slap/punch/beat her, just like the guys in the old movies (did i mention I work in the media). Job done."

vermdum
It is NOT easy to kill someone. If it was easy all of us on here would have accidentally killed someone. If it was easy you wouldn't be able to get through your life without killing someone. How is it that so many women and men manage to make it to 70 without killing someone?

Because they don't hit another human being so hard that it kills them.

Simples.

You seem to be filling in a lot of blanks with your own prejudices Dittany, why not just discuss the case on the facts that were presented in court? It's not as though they paint him in a great light, simply making up your own however detracts from any salient points you may make.
You wouldn't accept it from someone defending the courts decision if they were to post similar to yourself when you posted
"The real reason is probably that she asked him to wash up, and he went mental because he's an entitled woman-hater. "
"He probably smashed the plates too."
"Thing is you can just imagine an angry man spoiling a celebration, getting angrier and angrier as the day went on as he got drunker. The thing about him accusing her overcooking the meat sounds like an abuser's excuse so he could attack her."
"I'm suspicious of this:

"Oh my God, what have I done? It should be me lying there. Just hit me with a blunt object"

I wonder if this is what he actually did. Liars often tell the truth in roundabout ways, particularly when they are lying about something as serious as killing. He left the house for 20 minutes whilst she lay dying. Plenty of time to dispose of a weapon."

You wouldn't accept any such leaps of logic or creative hypothesis in a rational argument defending the man. "I bet she provoked him/ She went for him and he was defending himself I'd imagine" So I don't see why anyone should accept such a line of argument from you?

MQ:

• he said that he was angry because she asked him to wash up

• you can't prove who smashed the plates, and since he was the one who witnesses had seen to be angry earlier in the day, I don't see why we should assume it was her.

• Other people saw him get angry, and we know he was drunk. And then he killed her. dittany's not making a massive leap of imagination to suggest that he got angrier after lunch. And before, you know, killing his wife.

• She's just speculating, we are allowed to do that you know. When it comes down to it, he killed her and was vague about the details (I would know whether I had slapped or punched somebody, wouldn't you? Either way he hit her with something) and used the lack of evidence of how she died to his advantage.

I don't get the "you hate men" thing like you do, dittany, everyone loves to chuck it around though. I think where we're talking about a case where a man killed his wife, it's a bit rich to be talking about man-hating. How many men a week are killed by their female partners again?

This case sickens me. The comments from the judge are shocking, the Husband's comments are deeply suspicious and frankly misogynist; he was obviously going for the "provocation" angle and he got away with it. He also sounds like he was jealous of her recent success at work and was bubbling under with rage. Sick, sick sick.

That vibrant, talented Woman in her prime has lost her LIFE, but hey, he was a successful working decent man after all

1- he said that he was angry because she asked him to wash up

didn't disagree with that point. disagreed with the conclusion of "and he went mental
because he's an entitled woman-hater."

2-you can't prove who smashed the plates, and since he was the one who witnesses had seen to be angry earlier in the day, I don't see why we should assume it was her.

I can't no. But if you are happy to take what was reported on the case when it supports your arguments as you did in point 1 (he said...) then it seems a little blinkered to ignore the points which you don't like or doesn't support your argument.

3- I didn't disagree that he got drunker or angry. From what we've been told they were arguing. What I would disagree with is the painting of him looking for an excuse to beat his wife as though it was premeditated."sounds like an abuser's excuse so he could attack her."
From all the reported evidence it's a one punch death in the mist of an argument which involved her throwing plates. from the report linked it didn't appear that the prosecution were questioning wether she had thrown the plates and there's nothing to suggest this was untrue (happy to be corrected,just didn't see anything myself.)

4- She's just speculating, we are allowed to do that you know.

Of course we are. My points on her speculations are that I doubt someone speculating these things would be prepared to accept an opposing speculation as being a worthy or valued argument because it is just that, speculation. A leap of reasoning based on no facts or hard evidence.
Sure you might feel it or think it, but it's pure unsupported guess work.

As for the "you're a man-hater" point I don't think I suggested that at all so I'm not sure if it's directed at me.

Grapeandmelon-
he was obviously going for the "provocation" angle and he got away with it.

How do you feel he has gotten away with it?It has been shown on this thread that similar one-punch death manslaughter convictions have been punished equally through case-law presented which is fairly compelling from a legal stand-point. Given the evidence we've been presented with it's difficult to see how they could have proceeded with a murder charge. I agree that there should be longer sentences for this type of crime but that's surely a problem with the sentencing rather than this specific man getting away with something or him getting away with it because it's viewed as a lesser crime to kill your wife. It's in line with the other case-law.