Joanna Yeates case - why is this happening at all?

[Ponders]

It seems clear that he did kill her, & I don't see how he can claim it was unintentional, so why do her poor parents have to be put through such harrowing evidence?

Thanks Perce.

probably something really mundane like the barrister is stuck in traffic or something.

I don't think the the use of the term 'compression of the neck' is a euphemism designed to let woman-killers off the hook. Maybe the term 'strangulation' isn't precise enough to prove murder however much people would want the CPS to use it.

Can someone who knows shed any light?

There's no suggestion from anyone that Joanna wouldn't have died if VT hadn't put his hands around her neck. Not even VT himself.

Maybe the CPS is less worried about the niceties of language than getting a conviction for murder that sticks rather than fails on appeal.

x-posted with percy from yesterday.

"But the result of strangulation is suffocation. Joanna did not die of suffocation and the cause of death is not strangulation."

Thanks for clearing that up for me wannabe. I really should read the whole of the thread before asking questions.

"If strangulation persists, brain death will occur in 4-5 minutes."

And I should have read your post too thunderbolts.

I now see why the CPS is going for the term 'compression of the neck' rather than 'strangulation'.

Whatever you may know to be true about strangulation, many people may believe it results in death by several minutes of suffocation not, as in Joanna's case, more rapid death from heart failure.

I suppose VT's lawyers concentrate so much on the claim that he gripped her throat for only 20 seconds to introduce the reasonable doubt in the jurors' heads that VT definitely realised he would kill Joanna. I bet they've all tried holding their breath for 20 seconds since the case started.

Talking about 'compression of the neck' is an opportunity to tell the jurors that there if you press someone's throat there are faster means of killing her than suffocation and VT might have known that.

"you don't wake up a murderer one day"

:o

No, nobody ever commits a murder who hasn't committed one before.

:o

PS you don't know he has no previous, you only know that you don't know of any previous.

PPS even if there is no previous, that is irrelevant for the purposes of determining guilt (as would previous, in fact. Unless there are striking similarities, even a criminal record for murder would not be admissible).

I love that you are giving out to other people for speculating, when you keep referring to something irrelevant, and unknown, as though it is an established, salient fact.

I think the reason that people are questioning Tabak's defence is that, while he is innocent until proven guilty, some people seem to listen to his story and accept it at face value.

Lying doesn't always mean obvious 'plot' holes - if a clever man puts his mind to it, he knows to agree to what's proven, and then bullshit the rest of it.

Just because his version could've happened, doesn't mean for sure that it did. And hopefully if he is lying the prosecution will make that clear.

It's an interesting case and I am glad I'm not on the jury, but I do question how you strangle someone for even 'only' 20 seconds without realising that they might die.

And I don't think a sociopath or similar (just as an example, I have no idea if Tabak might have any kind of disorder), would necessarily have previous. Some people do just decide to suddenly step things up one day.

shecut I specifically said that he has no known previous. There is a vast difference between that and some of the statements from others saying things like "he definitely intended to" And "well he and were both Dutch" as if somehow being dutch makes one more likely to be a murderer?

And no, on the whole someone who has no known history of violence does not generally wake up and go out and kill someone. Yes he may have some previous violent history but evidence hasn't pointed to that. And yes, the law was changed after Ian Huntley's conviction to take previous relevant history into account.

So if there is no previous history then one surely has to wonder how it is that a 32 year old man who was seemingly not violent suddenly killed a woman within the space of twenty seconds and apparently intended to do so.

If everyone just blindly accepted all prosecution evidence without questioning that perhaps the defense could be right, then there would be no need for any trials at all.

I'm not saying nor have I ever said that I believe Tabak is not guilty of murder. I have said that given the evidence I have heard, I don't know, and that I can see how a verdict of not guilty of murder might be reached.

Sometimes it is possible to be utterly convinced that someone committed a crime and it turns out they didn't. Equally sometimes it is entirely possible to believe that someone didn't commit a crime and it turns out that they did. Amanda Knox springs to mind - people are utterly divided on that issue.

I do think it's important to question the prosecution too, I am simply unconvinced by Tabak at the moment - but who knows, could change my mind. I completely changed my opinion with the Knox case once I read more into it.

But there might well be known previous that you don't know about because of the media restrictions that have been in place since he was charged.

"And no, on the whole someone who has no known history of violence does not generally wake up and go out and kill someone."

On what basis are you making this claim? You say it over and over, but what is your evidence for it. It's quite a bold claim, so I'm presume you have read some studies that indicate that people who have previously never been violent rarely commit murders.

He didn't just "wake up and go out and kill someone". He killed her in the evening, so presumably had been awake for many hours. If he murdered her (and I believe he did) he wasn't a murderer when he woke up. He became a murderer after he killed her. It's the act of murder that makes you a murderer.

The idea that murderers are just people wandering around looking for murders to commit is bizarre.

That he had no history of violence (if that is true) is irrelevant. As it would be if he had a long string of convictions for violence. Neither has anything to say about whether he committed this crime.

"Yes he may have some previous violent history but evidence hasn't pointed to that."

Evidence can't point to that. You can't make a case that someone is guilty by pointing to previous convictions. In very limited circumstances (e.g. if he had a history of killing strangers by strangling them) they might admit that into evidence. But there could well be a violent past that is not being brought into evidence because it is not admissible.

"how it is that a 32 year old man who was seemingly not violent suddenly killed a woman within the space of twenty seconds and apparently intended to do so."

Why did a 32 year old man who was "not violent" have his hand(s) around the throat of a woman he barely knew?

We know 2 things for sure about Vincent Tabak -

1. He certainly has the capacity for violence (as proven by his strangulation of Joanna Yeates)
2. He lies to get himself out of trouble

"on the whole someone who has no known history of violence does not generally wake up and go out and kill someone." On what basis are you making this claim? You say it over and over, but what is your evidence for it. It's quite a bold claim.

It's not a 'bold claim' at all. Only a very small percentage of people commit murder. Surely that's indisputable.

?But there might well be known previous that you don't know about because of the media restrictions that have been in place since he was charged.? Of course there might. But at the moment all we can base opinion on is what is known to us.

?On what basis are you making this claim? You say it over and over, but what is your evidence for it. It's quite a bold claim, so I'm presume you have read
some studies that indicate that people who have previously never been violent rarely commit murders.? Because the alternative is to presume that any individual can turn at any moment from non violent, placid person into violent murderer, and that is simply not the case. If we all have the capacity to turn like that then nobody is safe. Surely?

?That he had no history of violence (if that is true) is irrelevant. As it would be if he had a long string of convictions for violence. Neither has anything
to say about whether he committed this crime.? No, but it generally does have some bearing on someone?s personality and their capacity to commit such a crime. Someone accused of murder who has a history of sexual asalt against women is more likely to be of the personality type that would violently asalt and then kill someone than someone who has never shown any such trates. There are of course exceptions to any rule but on the whole it is not the norm for someone who has never previously displayed such trates to flip in such a manner. The exception to this might be someone suffering with a mental disorder, in which case the diminished responsibility argument would apply and again the murder conviction would reduce to manslaughter although possibly then the individual would be remanded under psychiatric licence. Tabak hasn?t afaik claimed diminished responsibility though

children lie to get themselves out of trouble, i'm not sure the fact that he lied tells us very much about him

But what is known to us is that we don't know his form. Not, as you keep claiming, that has no form. They are quite clearly not remotely the same thing.

You keep asserting that his alleged lack of form is some kind of proof that he is innocent. But it is nothing of the sort.

Your logic is:

1 we don't know about any history of violence
2 therefore there must be no history of violence (despite the laws that would make it illegal for any British media organisation to report on any such history, and the fact that such history is not admissible in the trial.)
3 (total non-sequitur) therefore he can't have intended to kill her

Yes, I do believe most people are capable of doing terrible things in the right circumstances. Believing that some people are "murderers" and most are non-violent saints incapable of doing wrong makes us a great deal less safe than knowing that most people are a mixture of good and bad.

Also I think lying to the extent of disposing of a dead body and leaving a family in fear and despair (possibly forever) tells you a good deal about whether we should believe anything Tabak has to say about the night he killed Joanna Yeates.

I never said he was innocent.

I said that it seems odd that someone who has no previous known form would suddenly murder someone in cold blood, intending to do so.

And yes of course previous can be brought up - it's called character witnessing.

Because while the media cannot report before the trial on previous offenses/character it is certainly possible for people to come forward who have a history with someone and for those people to be used as witnesses by either the prosecution or defense.

At rose West's trial her own daughter testified against her, for instance.

So if VT had a history of DV for instance or sexual violence a previous partner would be able to come forward and testify to that in court, which would in turn strengthen the case for the prosecution..

wannaBe: previous convictions cannot be introduced by the prosecution as character evidence, though if the defence case brings in evidence of good character then the prosecution may be able to use it in challenging that.

There does not appear to be any character evidence in the trial so far.

You seem to have confused sentencing hearings with trials.

no not previous convictions (although in fact a couple of weeks ago an accused previous convictions for murder were revealed in court).

But if you look at Rose West's trial for instance, as part of the prosecution her daughter was called as a witness. Not witness to the murders, but to testify that she had, as a child, been sexually abused by her mother. There hadn't been previous charges afaik it was a testimony gained to give the jury a picture of her character; of the type of life she had led; the type of treatment she had in fact subjected her own children to.

And I will reiterate as I have done numerous times on this thread, I am not saying that Tabak is innocent.

But I equally don't think that it is wrong to look at both sides of the case, because to just blindly accept one side over the other without actually taking into account what the other has to say is a slippery slope to go down if people are to ever have a fair trial (and any one of us could end up on a jury one day).

Incidentally there is another trial due to come up shortly of the man accused of murdering Sian O'Callaghan in Swindon and another girl about eight years ago. Iirc he has pleaded not guilty to all charges and yet he told police where to find the bodies.

On face value you have to think he did it. But he will get a defense too...

It's a case that's particularly close to home for me since I lived in Swindon until recently, he was a cab driver and there's every chance I've been in his cab. And he was arrested about 600 yards from where I used to live.

We know he did it, he's admitted to it because all the evidence pointed to him (it pointed to him because he did it). The question now is how much can he get away with using his defense. I thought his defense claims were unbelievable, but it turns out that there are quite a few people who are happy to give them credence.

Also compression to the neck is a euphemism. I can apply two fingers to my neck and press it, my neck has been compressed, but zero harm has been done. The term strangulation leaves no doubt about what happened. Other jurisdictions use the term "strangulation" and even frame laws around it (see the link above), so there's no reason why it shouldn't be used here. It's the accurate term, not the term that could mean other things than a life threatening action.

I'm also interested in the fact that people are happy to think that Tabak is telling the truth, when he's the only proven liar in this case. He has already lied about his actions, so why would there be any reason to think he's telling the truth now?

Indeed, thunder, I was wondering the same.

Exactly the same motivation (saving his own arse) exists for lying in court about what happened that night, as existed when he put Joanna Yeates's body into a cycling bag and drove it to where he dumped it.

His testimony has no credibility whatsoever.

The term compression of the neck is the precise one here - much commentary in the thread above. And it was first used on 28 December 2010 (in the official release on cause of death) before Tabak was even arrested, let alone build his case.

This thread has been about the actual evidence as presented in trial.

The ONLY people whose opinion on the veracity actually matters is the Jury, who have heard the full testimony, seen the evidence and also the demeanour of the various witnesses.

Percy: I've tried to ignore derailers who have changed the legal and evidence based tone of the majority of the thread. But the persistent nature of those who are posting assertion and speculation has taken over. Pity, but that's what happens.

I'd be extremely shocked if he does have a string of relevant convictions, because presumably if he did the cops would have pulled him
in instantly, which they didn't.

so do people think that accused should not be entitled to a trial then?

Evidence all points to them so despite what they say to the contrary they should just be sent to prison without the right of defense?

This particular case seems fairly straightforward because he has admitted killing her, but in fact, without the confession there is very little evidence other than a small amount of DNA.

Tabak is going to jail regardless and rightly so. But I suspect that had he not admitted to killing Joanna it would have been very difficult to convict...