Diver Indicted in 2003 GBR mishap

[K_girl]

First - I've never said that my suppositions should be "reliable". They are just that - total speculation. Some people have not read far enough back into the thread because I have also made statements like - if the defense is able to show this or that.. and I were on the jury - I would have to change my vote to not guilty, even if, in my heart I thought he was guilty. I am not the media, so this is not "trial by media." This is just a discussion based on - what if this or that reported fact is proven true, what would happen? You have this kind of discussion go on all the time on TV because things like witness statements are leaked by the police - as was Gabe's entire interview. Actually, I think if someone were to get a fair trial, absolutely no information should be leaked or reported by the police. But this is always weighed against the public's right to know. The question is - is it for our entertainment or is it because we really have a right to know? And because the "right to know" has been the paradigm for more than a century - it naturally begets speculation. You cannot stop it. And that has always angered some people to say - you should never, never speculate because you don't have all the information. You should wait for trial. As long as the information is leaked by police and courts, and as long as witnesses speak to reporters - people will speculate and people will form opinions. Even when the trial is over - these people of the same mind will say - you weren't there, you didn't see the evidence, so you have no right to an opinion. People said this about the O.J. trial even though every minute of the trial was broadcast and there were people who watched it all.

As for how I came to the idea that Watson is guilty - that is based upon incredibly minute examination of the information available which I have been doing for over a year now. I have to say, that I started with the belief that even a highly experienced diver can panic and do the wrong things - and that Watson might not be guilty. The first thing that caught my attention was that in his statement, Watson had said that his computer beeped at him when the battery was in backwards. That really started me thinking he might be guilty. However, I decided to go further and learned through reading Watson's statement that he had a wireless wrist computer and he made statements about how it wasn't communicating with the first stage unit. I began to think that may be a possible explanation, maybe he is innocent, so I examined it further. However, I found a story where an investigator reported that they had tested Watson's equipment and the computer battery situation the way he had explained it, and still found that it would not beep. Not only that, but the investigator reported that it did record that first aborted dive where Watson said the computer was beeping at him and not communicating with the first stage device. That full examination is in my list of issues.

So my conclusion that Watson is most likely guilty evolved through a great deal of time and effort that I don't think anyone else has matched. My conclusion is based on cumulation of everything that I have minutely examined. There are many people on this thread who said that they think he is guilty because of one or two particular items. You look back on this thread, you will find that people are not all the same on what their key point is that makes them think he is guilty. The fact that someone can find one thing that makes them think Watson is guilty, based on one key item that they think is important, which is based the same information I have examined - and then turn-around and nail me to the wall for attempting to look at everything - is a hypocrit in my book.

Almost every fact in this case or any case will be looked at through a juror's own experience in some fashion. They will think about what it is like to swim and how it feels to be weightless in the water. They will ask themselves, what would I do in that situation? Is it possible I may have done the same thing? Jurors will share those kinds of experiences with each other when they deliberate. You can't say that life experience will not be applied - because it will. Obama announced today that his nomination to the Supreme Court will be able to apply her life experience as being raised by a single mother in a poor neighborhood. In justice, applying life experience is not a bad thing. But here, I have racked over the coals for doing it. In the last post on the Issues thread, I applied my own experience of my dive instructor reaching over my shoulder to turn my air off and on and it appeared not to be a problem. I had no other reference, so I applied my own experience. Something I believe many of you have done and will continue to do, and most especially because you are divers and I think it will be natural for you all to do so. And I think anyone who says they think someone is guilty or innocent based strictly on the facts and have not applied their own personal experience in some way is fooling themselves. The reason being, you will put yourself in the defendant's shoes and try to invision what happened. If you decide to ponder the case, and think about the possibility of guilt or innocence, this is something you should do. Fact is, you will, and if you still say no you don't, you only think of the facts - then I think you are a hypocrit.

I have also given potential defenses and what I really wanted was someone to argue the potential defenses - then we could have a real discussion. I have tried to start discussions from fresh, new and interesting perspectives. I fully understand that I may not be right. To me, being right is not the point - the point is through the discussion, we learn more about the case, more about diving principles and from each other. But instead, as new readers join the conversation, it becomes vicious attack on what I've tried to do. That is the reason I've decided that it is time for me to give up. I'm tired of trying to explain it over and over again. I would love to just discuss the case, rather than feeling like I need to defend myself and the process of examining this case I've tried to get this community involved in. I spent three long months examining every aspect I could think of before I finally put things together last year with my first post to the Issues thread. Then I spent countless hours over the last year continuing that examination - then having it described as offensive (by a non-certified diver, no less) - is the nail in the coffin for me.

That being said, I have to say it has been an interesting experience for me. I have learned a lot about people and diving in the process.

Thanks to those of you who have understood my purpose. I am sorry there are others who don't understand. Maybe there will be someone else who will have the energy to continue to try, but I don't.

 

[livinoz]

I have read and responded to various posts in this thread from the beginning.

You state:"As for how I came to the idea that Watson is guilty - that is based upon incredibly minute examination of the information available" Exactly. Please, we do not have all the information, so what I and others have been saying to you is that you have tried this guy and found him guilty through "minute examination" of "media reports". I have a real problem with that, as properly researched and unbiased reporting seems to have been replaced by the need for sensationalism and this case is a perfect example. As for you wanting people to "argue for the defence", in my opinion a full and meaningful discussion can only be had when everyone is in possession of all the available facts, otherwise it becomes pointless; you cannot base a proper "discussion" on media speculation and hype, you can merely speculate. Yes, I agree, people bring their own experiences to any given situation, but that does not mean they disregard the facts and evidence of the case presented to them. And as any juror will be in possession of ALL the facts I'll still leave the verdict up to the legal system here and not try Watson in the media again.

 

[K_girl]

I do think there is a differentiation of quality of media reports where you have witnesses and investigators who are involved in the case who are quoted in media reports and appear on TV and speak in their own words, compared to media reporters who paraphrase what they think they heard. In several cases, we have seen where witnesses' and investigators' quoted statements and interviews have become evidence in a case. i.e. Scott Peterson's TV and newspaper interviews. If those quoted statements and interviews are not consistent with the facts, they will cause harm to the side those witnesses and investigators are testifying for.

Not all of what I have examined in media reports have been the paraphrasing work of a reporter. And not everything I have examined is strictly media reports. The photograph is evidence, Watson's interview is evidence, the portion of video of Watson's interview is evidence. The video of the police re-enactment will be evidence. The Corner's Report, as incomplete as it is does provide some information.

I personally think that in order to have a fair trial for any defendant, there should be no release of full-text defendant interrogations or police re-enactment video-tapes or investigator or witness interviews. No one from either side should be talking to the press in attempt to sway the jury pool - ever. There should be a trial, we find out the results and that is the end of that. But that is not the world we live in.

I am not a Court TV junkie. Actually, I don't watch it at all. This case has caught my attention because it is the first scuba death where there is a lot of information that has been made available. I'm sure this case has caught the attention of many other divers for the same reason. So many times on this board you hear - stop speculating about what happened, because nobody really knows. You hear the this argument in return - we speculate on what may have potentially gone wrong because we want to learn to be better divers. Those who do speculate, probe the possibilities of what may have happened, and someone presents a theory. Someone else may say - I think your theory may be right or wrong because of this experience I have had. They are glad to have the discussion because they learn something, whether or not they are right or wrong. But you hear the "don't-speculate" faction and the "I-want-to-speculate" factions argue over and over and over again on this accident board. I think it has come down to something similar to the abortion issue - there will never be agreement - never.

I belong to the "I-want-to-speculate-because-I-want-to-learn" crowd. So, I am not going to apologize for what I have speculated on. But as I've said before - I'm tired of arguing about it. So hopefully, everyone has said their piece about me and feel it not necessary to discuss me anymore. In terms of discussing the case, I think there is nothing more to discuss if you don't have an opinion to share other than - everyone else shouldn't have one.

 

[livinoz]

I'll have to disagree with you. I believe there is a lot of difference between discussion and speculation on the causes of an accident or an incident and speculation about a possible murder, where someone is going to trial. Yes people will always have an opinion on the accused's guilt or innocence and may even hold to those views when the verdict goes against what they believe to be true. But this is the justice system we have and although it is not perfect it is better than that in some other countries.

As for the photograph, it is evidence of what exactly? That there is a person lying on the ocean floor? As I have said before the veracity of Watson's statements and any other "evidence" have yet to be tested in a court of law. Also some of the "evidence" you allude to may or may not be admissible, and that too is up to the court.

I have nothing else to say really. But please, go ahead and speculate and postulate all you want. I prefer not to do that as I don't believe it adds anything to the discussion.

 

[Dadvocate]

This martyrdom of yours is wholly unbecoming and completely without warrant, K-Girl. No one is arguing that you shouldn’t say anything at all. This, on top of your other fallacies to date, is what is called straw man argumentation. All one needs to do is ignore what is actually said, twist comments into some unsavory light or affront, and then attack that affront as if it were as easy as knocking over a “straw man”.

All that has been requested of you is that you acknowledge that you have come to this conclusion about Gabe’s guilt from media reports, which comprise an incomplete picture of the whole case as it is. In so doing, we advise you or anyone else thinking about his actual guilt to take pause and let the wheels of justice take hold.

As I am sure you noted, the coroner’s report is not complete. You are also aware that wrapping comments someone has made inside quotation marks is in no way a guarantee that the information presented is complete or contextualized, right? How can we know what to believe? Well the caveat I would offer is that we all need to see all of the evidence before anyone can come to a definitive conclusion (in legal terms at least). Personal opinions are always fine if they are qualified as such.

Livinoz puts the hammer on the head quite nicely here:

The Coroner's published findings that you make reference to are also incomplete; the whole record can only be obtained via an application to the Queensland Coroner's Court once an investigation has been closed.

She also references the missing exhibits from this report as a poignant example of the caliber of information we are not privy to. What newspaper article, pray tell, no matter how favored by any reader, can make up for this inaccessible information? None, I would argue. Too many agendas being met. Too much maneuvering going on to say for sure.

Livinoz makes this point as well:

Also, we have no way of knowing if the transcripts of the police investigation have been published in their entirety despite the Townsville Bulletin stating that, or if they have been edited in any way. I would be very surprised if Watson's lawyer would have allowed them to be published in full, as both he and Watson would have had first access to the transcripts under the Police Powers and Responsibilities Act (2000).

Acknowledging that I don’t know all of the ins and outs related to Livinoz’s claim that the defense might have blocked some of these transcripts, I still think this is an important point. If what she is saying is true, then there might be a lot that explains what appears to be 16 different stories the police claim he is making. I know that Gabe’s initial team claimed that the police were twisting “added detail” to mean “a new version” as the interrogation went on. Who knows or will know until the whole story comes out?

And I think this has to be said, especially since you had the audacity to accuse others of hypocrisy:

The fact that someone can find one thing that makes them think Watson is guilty, based on one key item that they think is important, which is based the same information I have examined - and then turn-around and nail me to the wall for attempting to look at everything - is a hypocrit in my book.

Firstly, if someone is saying they think Gabe is guilty and they acknowledge that this is of the gut instinct kind and then they call you to your own gut instincts about the same thing awash a sea of media reports, they are not being hypocritical. They note that they are basing their ideas on feelings they have from media reports and they call you out for doing the same, albeit with more cited examples of media reports. You seem to have vacillated a bit from your earlier certainty about Gabe’s guilt, so I am not sure if you are still claiming to know anything outright at this juncture. But that is neither here nor there.

You chose to take Bsee to task in this way:

I spent three long months examining every aspect I could think of before I finally put things together last year with my first post to the Issues thread. Then I spent countless hours over the last year continuing that examination - then having it described as offensive (by a non-certified diver, no less) - is the nail in the coffin for me.

Why the poke about him not being a certified diver when his issue with your position is not related to diving per se but instead to your approach to the information presented? I don’t know why he should find your posts borderline offensive truth be told, but his points on your bias are relevant nonetheless. So, after all of the presumed attacks on your character or on you as a person that you have leveled but never really showed to be true, you turn right around and demonstrate the very language and insult you claim to disdain in others. That, K-Girl, makes you the hypocrite in my book.

And with that you can feel free to have the last word on this topic.

Cheers!

 

[peterbj7]

I find this thread quite amusing. The only information in the public domain is by definition what's available to journalists. I can't believe anyone involved with the legal process of this case would read this stuff, let alone actually post. So the audience here is self-limiting, and no conclusions can possibly be drawn.

I find it entertaining (sometimes) speculation, but please don't take it too seriously!

 

[K_girl]

I think I have said everything I need to say in defense of myself. I concede and have said all along, that information in the public domain will not necessarily be the same as presented at trial. That said, I still do not apologize for discussing and speculating on the information in the public domain nor for saying that if that information is proven true - I do think Watson is guilty. We are not a cable TV program or a newspaper - where we have the capability to influence a significant amount of people who could potentially serve in a jury pool. The only way for a jury pool to find this discussion would be for them to search for it on the Internet - and this board would not be the first "hit" they would find. And if potential jury members have researched this case on the Internet, they should not be on the jury. So I don't see the discussion on this board as harming Watson's rights to a fair trial, which I think is the ultimate objection people are trying to raise. As far as being baited to extend the discussion of the case any further than I have already done - I said I am done with that.

 

[bsee65]

You chose to take Bsee to task in this way:



Why the poke about him not being a certified diver when his issue with your position is not related to diving per se but instead to your approach to the information presented? I donÃÕ know why he should find your posts borderline offensive truth be told, but his points on your bias are relevant nonetheless. So, after all of the presumed attacks on your character or on you as a person that you have leveled but never really showed to be true, you turn right around and demonstrate the very language and insult you claim to disdain in others. That, K-Girl, makes you the hypocrite in my book.

And with that you can feel free to have the last word on this topic.

Cheers!

I don't find K_girl's posts offensive, or her opinion that Watson is guilty. What I object to is the idea of having a separate "clean" thread on which only K_girl is entitled to speculate about the meaning of the facts. If she wanted to provide two or three possible interpretations for each "fact" as a record of this more cumbersome discussion, that would be cool and even appreciated. That was what I thought her original intent was with that thread. Over time, the thread remains solely her version of a prosecution case to convict Watson with no rebuttal allowed. I'm not sure if that is because others who would like to reply have honored her request not to, or if this has been enforced in some fashion through moderation. Either way, it is presumptuous for someone to use this forum as a personal blog. This would be a unique situation relative to the purposes and policies of this board, and that's the only part that I object to. K_girl, in my book, is free to have and present whatever opinions she likes in open discussion here. People will agree or disagree as their own opinions dictate, and I don't think anyone gets away with too much of a bogus conclusion without being called on it. Where there is equality and discourse, things have a way of working themselves out.

K_girl, if you really want to have a discussion of the issues, then you're going to need a forum just for this case and a separate thread to discuss each "issue". Maybe the operators here will provide you one, or maybe you should put up and set up your own website on the topic. I suspect some people might stop by to discuss things with you. We have a few facts here that can be discussed from a pure diving perspective. The water conditions, the close contact/bear hug, the eye-witness testimony and pics, Gabe's statements, the position of the victim relative to the path of the dive profile, the status of her gear when she was found, and the cause of death from autopsy. I may have missed something, but just about every other "issue" presented is about motive or state of mind rather than the "accident" itself. All the issues can be discussed, and just about every one can have more than one possible explanation. They might even have more than one reasonable explanation, and they all should be represented fairly in a listing of the issues. It is near impossible to treat them all fairly and keep them straight in a 1000+ post thread, so the separate listing would have value if objectively tended.

As far as my diving experience, I can't see how that would come into play. I am not questioning the plausibility of your interpretation of any events related to diving gear or things that occurred under water. As far as I would go in that direction is to consider some things said on other threads and put them forth for discussion. I wouldn't have the experience to declare any particular interpretation of a scenario as the one that is true, nor would I try to do so. On the other hand, I can't see how diving experience would in any way relate to interpreting Watson's behavior with regard to his late wife's gravesite. Of course, an uncertified diver wouldn't know if there were psych and criminology training involved in the PADI certification.

Technically, I should have made my posts on the "Issues" thread as that's the discussion to which they apply. I didn't because it seemed that it, for some reason, was a protected thread, and because I didn't want to dirty it up. Calling into question the whole premise of the thread just felt too much like a hijack, but maybe it would have been an appropriate rebuttal under the circumstances. At a minimum, that thread could use a disclaimer.

-bob

 

[livinoz]

I think I have said everything I need to say in defense of myself. I concede and have said all along, that information in the public domain will not necessarily be the same as presented at trial. That said, I still do not apologize for discussing and speculating on the information in the public domain nor for saying that if that information is proven true - I do think Watson is guilty. We are not a cable TV program or a newspaper - where we have the capability to influence a significant amount of people who could potentially serve in a jury pool. The only way for a jury pool to find this discussion would be for them to search for it on the Internet - and this board would not be the first "hit" they would find. And if potential jury members have researched this case on the Internet, they should not be on the jury. So I don't see the discussion on this board as harming Watson's rights to a fair trial, which I think is the ultimate objection people are trying to raise. As far as being baited to extend the discussion of the case any further than I have already done - I said I am done with that.

You truly don't get what many of us are saying do you? We are not concerned with a "potential" jury member reading this forum or that in itself harming Watson's rights to a "fair trial". What we are saying is that you are basing all your arguments and your assumption of guilt on media reports and incomplete articles in the public domain. That is fraught with problems. No-one is attacking you personally, but some of us do have a problem with the way you have reached your conclusions.

The problem arises when people in Queensland, and Townsville in particular, read and see the multitude of media reports about this case, which most could hardly have failed to do. It makes impartiality very difficult; in fact forming a jury could be quite an issue and no doubt something the defense will look at closely.

 

[K_girl]

bsee675 - I think you missed something on the first page of the thread. The purpose was to catch people up on the basic issue without huge numbers of posts for a good clean read so that people could catch-up with the basic issues in the case. I was trying to avoid the thread from getting too long with too much back-and-forth discussion, where the clean read would be lost. I never tried to bar people from posting to the thread, only to keep to the spirit of keeping a clean read. The idea being that argument and discussion is on this huge, lengthy thread, while the basic issues are stated only once on the Issues thread. Here is from the first page of the thread:

"I am starting this thread and submitting a series of posts, each post will be the focus of a single issue. Please DO NOT POST COMMENTS OR DISCUSSION OF THESE ISSUES HERE, but continue to post your opinions to the original thread of this case at "Diver Indicted in 2003 GBR mishap"

If you wish to post to this thread, please keep to the spirit and format of this thread which is to state the issue succinctly, statements, information that has been reported with the source in order to KEEP A CLEAN AND FAST READ ON THIS CASE.

***********

Since you have re-stated your point in a much less "offensive" way, I think you might be right, that a forum is not the right place for the "clean read." A blog might be a better place because then you could have each issue as an individual entry, and people can make comments on each issue. Then you can take comments that present something new (whether I disagree with it or not - that really is not what matters to me) and re-state it in the main blog issue in a concise way, to try and keep the read clean and fast. That way, you keep the voluminous back-and-forth banter down that will inevitably happen, but all sides get presented in a concise way. I will have to look into it. However, I am leaving on a dive vacation soon.

So -- you looking to learn how to dive? Lots of good people here to dive with.