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?

For the record, there's now an AIBU thread about the non-admissible evidence.

I never argued that only one side of the case should be listened to.

I argued (and I stand by that argument) that Tabak's testimony was worthless because he was a proven liar who had reason to lie.

"The unemotional testing of e evidence is almost verbatim what the trial judge said was required."

LOL Edith, do you think you're on the jury? You're not you know. This is a thread on Mumsnet, a thread where a murdered woman deserved better than a bunch of people helping the defense of the guy who killed her. A thread where you'd think the people who had been repeating a lying killer's defense claims as if they were valid and truthful, might be feeling just a little bit ashamed now they know the full truth. But apparently not. Those of us who could see through him were apparently "speculating", I think the correct word there would in fact be "right".

I think people confuse objective and dispassionate with allowing men who commit crimes to get away with it and finding reasons to justify it. They aren't the same thing.

Actually it was Edith who argued that arguments from the prosecution should be ignored. She set full store by one of the defense witnesses though.

thunder, I am not sure whether or not I am one of the people of whom you are referring but frankly I find your 'crowing' about being 'right' wholly innappropriate.

Thank you so much to those of you on the thread who were prepared to discuss your ideas on the evidence as is was being was presented. Being able to 'talk it over' really helped me to deal with the emotions that a case like this can highlight.

I don't know whose posts they were, I wasn't trying to single anyone out pickledsiblings. There appeared to be a whole chunk of the thread devoted to why Tabak couldn't have meant it, when he strangled Joanna Yeates to death with his bare hands.

But if you were one of those repeating Tabak's defense as if it was valid, then I think you need to find other ways to deal with your feelings. There are more important things at work here.

Also I don't think it's crowing to point out I was right. I got called a troll for my views and was told I was derailing and missing the point. So anybody feeling I need to be nice in return is simply being unreasonable.

Thunders: now you're being silly.

And of course I know I'm not on the Jury. And I know there's an important difference between pre and post verdict.

Oh actually you were helping to make excuses for him pickledsiblings:

"you can hold your breath for more than 20 seconds with no dire consequences...maybe he held her throat until she stopped making a sound but didn't equate that with meaning that she would die"

Must be tough to know you said that, now the strangulation fantasies have come out.

I do think you need to find other ways of dealing with your feelings apart from finding excuses as to why a man killed a woman.

No one was repeating VT's defence as if it was valid, we were discussing the evidence as it was presented. The validity or not of VT's defence was for a jury to decide based on all of the evidence and expert witness that they had at their disposal.

What are the more important things that are at work here thunders?

Actually your argument there if you'd repeated it in a jury room and stood by it would have let him off the hook pickledsiblings. Doesn't it bother you that you were so willing to find excuses for a murderer?

The more important things are the massive amounts of male violence against women and the fact that men who commit these acts generally get away with them becuase they are continually defended or excused as "not having meant it". There is also the memory of Joanna Yeates who did deserve better than internet sprites giving credence to her killer's claims, claims which we now know were lies.

If you were in a jury room this sort of behaviour might be approriate, but turning something like this into a legal game by people who have no stake in the verdict is distasteful.

Edith you having been acting as though you are the judge though, can almost hear your gavel rapping bring us all to order.

thunders: if you re-read the thread, you will see that the poster was confused because she took strangulation in it's frequent vocabulary sense of suffocation. In this case, that was wrong and it was pointed out that the compression of the neck led to a catastrophic vascular/cardiac event, so breath holding was not a relevant test. This was all corrected up thread, and I really cannot see what is achieved by repeating an unrepresentative pre-verdict post.

Pickledsibling: I agree.

I don't think analysing the defence case was 'helping' the defense 'make excuses'.

We were being told what he said. We were trying to work out whether or not it could possibly have any credence, by a more protracted method that those who were able to discount it without a moment;s analysis or thought.

No one presented it as fact.

I think you're being unreasonably angry with the people on this thread tbh.

I guess if any of you who had been playing this game had any shame you wouldn't have been playing it in the first place.

What do they call it - barrack room lawyers?

thunderboltsandlightning Fri 28-Oct-11 19:26:37
Actually your argument there if you'd repeated it in a jury room and stood by it would have let him off the hook pickledsiblings. Doesn't it bother you that you were so willing to find excuses for a murderer?

__

At the time Pickled didn't know if he was a murderer or not, and neither did you. Or the jury. Or anyone else except himself and possibly his defence team (I think that's correct).

It is ridiculous to suggest the entire jury would have been swayed by one member's questioning of the plausibility of a piece of evidence given...I imagine that's what's been going on in that room for however many hours they were out.

Stop attacking people on here when it's not them you're really angry with

VT was never going to get off the hook. He was most likely going to go to jail for a long time based on the undisputed facts of what happened after he murdered Joanna Yeates. The events leading up to her death were not indisputable (except of course to VT who chose not to share them with the court).

"The more important things are the massive amounts of male violence against women and the fact that men who commit these acts generally get away with them" not on this thread they're not. If you want to go and argue about male acts of violence there's a whole feminist topic for you to go and do just that.

"I guess if any of you who had been playing this game had any shame you wouldn't have been playing it in the first place." so what, you're advocating accused being given no defense then? It' ok for you to speculate about what happened because you knew he was guilty, but anyone who might have looked at both sides and conceded (not known but conceded) that there might have been a chance that someone could have strangled someone without necessarily intending to kill them, while at the same time acknowledging that what they did was still horrific and worthy of a harsh sentence.

In this instance VT was found guilty of murder and will be spending a long time in prison for it. As it was, he was already going to be spending a long time in prison due to his having admitted killing Joanna in the first place, so anyone talking about the intent was not "defending a murderer" as you put it - people are entitled to not see things in black and white as you clearly do. If we never question and never take other opinions on board then we run the risk of going down very dodgy ground.

There are cases where it would seem obvious that someone was guilty of murder and they have turned out not to be. Such as women who have lost three or more children to sids - the probability of losing that many children in such unfortunate circumstances would seem implausible to many people, and yet women have been wrongly convicted of murder when actually the implausible has turned out to be highly plausible.

"Actually your argument there if you'd repeated it in a jury room and stood by it would have let him off the hook pickledsiblings. Doesn't it bother you
that you were so willing to find excuses for a murderer?" What a ridiculous statement. Do you honestly think that the jury haven't been discussing this exact senario? What exactly do you think they've been doing in there for the past two and a half days? Bearing in mind that a jury is no more qualified than you or I to come to a conclusion - a jury is made up of ordinary people. trials are public knowledge, nothing has been disclosed in the trial that wasn't disclosed on twitter/the newspapers etc apart from perhaps photographic evidence which obviously wouldn't be published.

Nobody has been defending murderers. At that point nobody knew for certain whether he was guilty of murder or not (we already knew he was a killer)

Having been found guilty of murder doesn't mean that anyone who did not take the prosecution evidence as black and white should feel shame. In the same way that those who ridiculed Amanda Knox should not have to feel shame now that her conviction has been quashed.

Thanks for that, wannabe

I've been pondering (do that a lot, hence name) what thunderbolts has been saying & wanting to challenge it - you've done it better than I ever could

Reasonable doubt. That's the real difficulty. You have to be sure.

Wow you're really invested in this aren't you Wannabe. That's a long post.

The feminist topic is not the only place to talk about male violence against women. In a thread about a man who has committed a horrible crime against a woman, a crime that reflected the porn he used, it's absolutely reasonable to talk about that issue. But I supposed you think pickledsiblings feelings are what matters here.

As for the jury stuff, I already said that it's appropriate to weigh the evidence in that situation. On a thread on Mumsnet, finding defenses for a lying killer just looks bad really.

Oh and Jane, don't tell me who I'm angry at. I've found so many of the posts on this thread disgusting finding excuses for Tabak and supporting his defense.
Once again there is a culture that surrounds male violence against women that is about finding excuses for men who commit that violence. It's been in evidence on this thread.

I've found so many of the posts on this thread disgusting finding excuses for Tabak and supporting his defense.

well don't hold back, thunderbolts - find them, post them, name & shame

(I know I will be one of the disgusting ones for daring to give consideration to courtroom evidence)

But I don't agree with you about that. I don't think anyone here has been trying to defend him. We've been discussing his defence. That's not the same.

Why was it any less appropriate to discuss the defence case than the prosecution on here? Had he been found not guilty, would you have bollocked us all like this? Or would you have insisted that the jury was wrong and that we were still wrong even to look at the evidence as it was reported?

Given of course that no one would have known about the pornography aspect had he been found not guilty, I imagine...well I don't know about that.

It looks like you're reading a different thread to the rest of us, it's really weird. Just because you were able to process the info that was published and come to a decision really quickly, all on your own, without discussing it on here, doesn't mean your conclusion was any more valid than the conclusions we were trying to reach albeit more slowly and deliberately.

You just decided he was guilty straight away, it looks like. Fair enough but No One Knew until this evening.

No Ponders, you doubted his claims right throughout the thread. If you made any excuses for Tabak or supported his defense I missed that. Your first post was that you didn't see how he could claim it was unintentional. I completely agree with that.

WE all knew he did it, some of us were persuaded by his defense or thought the jury would be. I think most thought he was an evil bastard, but nobody knew.