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?

He also used prostitutes in trips abroad. That was ruled inadmissable too, despite the fact that he claimed to be in a monogamous relationship.

Joanna Yeates landlord was traduced by the press, but the man who killed her had his abuses of women kept from public eye and the jury's eyes by the courts.

I cannot believe that the 'strangulation porn' information was disallowed.
If the verdict had gone the other way... just

Thunderbolts - also in UK (Newcastle).

I am so, so glad that the people who were in the public gallery & heard the points of law discussion on Tuesday didn't blurt it all out online leading to possible mis-trial.

Absolutely the right verdict, touching to see how emotional Det Insp Phil Jones was afterwards but feels a bit of a "hollow victory" because of what the Yeates family & Greg will have to come to terms with for a very, very long time.

His entire defence rested on his claim to be sexually naive and inexperienced - hence his "misreading" of the signals and supposed panic at Joanna's reaction.

To allow him to make that defence and keep secret that he was a user of prostitutes is disgusting IMO.

I can see that his sexual activities might not necessarily have been relevant. But to THAT defence, they absolutely were.

I agree the right decision but his looking at strangulation porn happened AFTER the murder so I can see why it wasn't allowed to be used as evidence.

"what the Yeates family & Greg will have to come to terms with for a very, very long time."

:(

It's unimaginable for most of us.

I found it very hard to look at this case dispassionately after Tabak saying sorry for causing them "a week" of pain.

Um, you killed her, you bastard. You've cauased them all a lifetime of pain. Even if it was an accident.

I agree it was totally relevant. The bumbling panicking inexperienced neighbour was the only line of defence and he was anything but

No, he looked at strangulation pornography before he killed her, including on the morning of the murder.

It's just particularly sick that after he killed her he used to look at reports of the investigation and then go and watch strangulation porn.

Yes he looked at it before and after. After he alternated between the news of her and the porn site. He was a member of many porn sites

Death penalty.

Sorry, havnt read the whole thread just listened to the reports on the radio and the Death Penalty seems to me to be appropriate in this case.

police are now going to check his dna for any unsolved crimes

10-2. Can see why the jury system is under scrutiny then.

"12 men(?) and true......... And highly impressionable."

How could two folk consider he didn't mean to do it??

Someone who understands the law please explain... Why were the jury not informed of the strangulation pornography he had watched on his computer? Surely that is VERY relevant to the case?!

Well they were presented with a case for a bumbling inexperienced neighbour who misread signs and panicked which they may have believed in the absence of anything hardcore linking him to intentional murder. If they had known about his strangulation fetish porn the verdict would have been different and quicker and much kinder to her family and partner

I bet those two jurors feel like idiots now that the rest of the information has come out.

But, you know, they weren't idiots. They were doing their best with the information they were given.

And (although I firmly believed he was guilty and didn't buy the "accidental" strangulation story) the case for intent was not bulletproof.

Like Custard, I didn't buy the sexual turn on theory. I thought he just lost his temper because he was rebuffed.

I think the judge made a bad call by refusing to allow the prosecution to rebut the defence's claims about Tabak's character.

I guess in truth we can only really know why the porn was inadmissible if we know exactly what it contained (which none of us would want to know).

But presumably if, for instance, the images/videos/whatever it was were of someone being strangled but not dying as a result of being strangled, it would only prove the sexual element but still not the intent to kill, iyswim, in which case it might blur the case even more.

After all VT wasn't on trial for sexual asalt - he was on trial for murder. And while the porn on his computer certainly does show that he had a sexual fettish related to strangulation, we don't know how far those images went - if they hadn't gone as far as killing people then they wouldn't necessarily have been relevant to the trial - in fact the defense could quite possibly have argued then that it was just a fettish gone wrong, and made the possibility of manslaughter greater?

Captain, I don't think they are allowed to use this because it wasn't direct evidence, it was just citcumstantial. I know, it's crazy, but a lot of the law in the UK disregards things that should be relevant. Previous convictions, for example, are not stated in court because it has no relevance to the current case. It's really dodgy ground IMO.

Lenin - is that your blog?

I wonder who coined the term "accidental strangulation" as if it's an every day occurrence?