Watson Murder Case - Discussion

[alohagal]

"You spared Tina's family the ordeal of a trial, and saved the community the expense of a trial."

I find this remark by the judge to be very telling and partially disingenuous. The family did not want to be "spared", but I have no doubt the local community in Australia certainly did. Those two notions should not be linked together.

As for justice. I would rather see a guilty man go free than an innocent man punished. I have no clear certainty as to the guilt or innocence of Gabe Watson. That's why a trial was so important. He will forever live with the spector of his "perceived" guilt based on his actions during the incident.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

"You spared Tina's family the ordeal of a trial, and saved the community the expense of a trial."

I find this remark by the judge to be very telling and partially disingenuous. The family did not want to be "spared", but I have no doubt the local community in Australia certainly did. Those two notions should not be linked together.

As for justice. I would rather see a guilty man go free than an innocent man punished. I have no clear certainty as to the guilt or innocence of Gabe Watson. That's why a trial was so important. He will forever live with the spector of his "perceived" guilt based on his actions during the incident.

Sadly there were never going to be any winners here. Nothing can bring Tina back or take away what she felt in her last moments that is the tragedy of it.

Nothing will give her loved ones a feeling of justice. I am not sure I would feel any different. They are party to more info than we ever were going to be and have made up their minds.... right or wrong (I am not qualified to decide) nothing but finding Gabe Guilty of Murder is likely to be accepted by them.

Gabe's family has gone through a horrific time as well.... do you expect them to do other than support their loved one? Nothing other than an innocent finding would seem right to them.

The police and judicial system have dedicated a lot of time (and yes $) to this case.... we can not presume to judge what they would think is right or even if their perceptions are coloured by personal issues.

I am not convinced I could find Gabe guilty of murder based on what I have seen either. If he did it on purpose well I can only hope he suffers guilt feelings the rest of his life. If he is guilty of incompetence I think the sentence with consideration of the years of stress dealing with the press, investigators and legal system may be adequate.

I am not sure that a media circus of a trail would have been a kindness to any of the innocent parties... remember that includes Tina's loved ones Gabe's loved ones and the people whose holidays were ruined by this event as well people standing on the jury and the tax payers.

The sad reality is that the lynch mobs are never satisfied, the bleeding hearts are never satisfied, the victims are never satisfied and the dead do not return. The Judicial System is a flawed system dealing with human flaws. We can only try to get dispassionate decisions from non biased (but flawed) humans.

The system is meant to discourage anti social behaviour/acts. News flash folks.. the true psychopaths will always believe they can outsmart the law... that's why we need to lock them up... so they don't re-offend... to protect society. Those that are unlikely to reoffend need appropriate punshment to discourage others from similar acts. I doubt this will ever become a popular activity.. Marry a beautiful young woman, convince her to get a C card, convince her to do a dive and kill her and hope no one sees....

 

[Dadvocate]

The the caption under this photo in the paper I saw stated that it was Gabe Wilson

If that is true, they even got his name wrong. I’d buy a new paper if I were you.

He will forever live with the spector of his "perceived" guilt based on his actions during the incident.

By some others perhaps, but not everyone. If the specter, or scarlet letter, or what have you exists at all, it will be ambiguous, pretty much like everything else surrounding this monstrous case. Some will simply choose to avoid claiming outright certainty based on the fact that nothing more than media reports has been publicly levied to date. The truth is it might still be a contested issue even if Gabe were convicted after a trial given the same uncertainties. As has been said before, we know too little still to be able to tell.

Alabama's Attorney-General, Troy King, will lead a mission to Queensland to lobby for an appeal, his office told The Sun-Herald yesterday. If that isn't successful, he will push "America's legal boundaries to the limit" and attempt to charge Watson with murder, for the second time, when he is deported back to the US upon his release.

Yes, there you have it. The ends justify the means if the AG is not happy with the outcome. And saying this is his agenda openly also shows that he is willing to stretch credibility quite a ways to get what he wants. It is too bad he has openly admitted this because he has now given Gabe’s team ample cause to fight that extradition with a fervor once he gets out.

Interesting point here:

It is a fact that he would have received at least 20 years here, probably life without parole, because we can demonstrate he killed for the money.

And in other countries he might have been able to bribe his way out of it altogether given his family’s wealth (assuming Jeepbrew’s comments on the family wealth are true). So how is this comment germane? This is not in the jurisdiction of the US. Where would he be tried and on whose dime, would it be state or federal coffers picking up the check?

As of right now, we don’t even know if it can be established that Gabe even killed her beyond reasonable doubt. To assert that this would be the outcome based on greed is very nice chest pounding but a tough one to back up under the circumstances. And how sure can we be that the conviction wouldn’t have been one come to based on all the hype? It seems to have been enough for people here on SB to come to conclusions. Is it a stretch to see this ideal conviction being somewhat slanted given the media circus going on? Perhaps Gabe was smarter than I thought he was going back there when he did.

Honesty, even for the people who are reasonably sure that Gabe is guilty, is this a precedent you want set in order to get him, that our own government may opt to try an American citizen a second time when he or she returns home if and when the case becomes politically expedient in some pundit’s eyes? This is dangerous language, far more so than any references to the precedent set in calling Gabe’s liability “negligence” in my opinion.

The US already has enough challenges to our perception of the rule of law going on right now. This kind of thing is exactly what we don’t need in my humble opinion.

Cheers!

 

[Under-Exposed]

I won't pretend to be an expert in American Jurisprudence, but there does seem to be some scope to re-prosecute Gabe Watson in the US. The US Supreme Court has previously held that double jeopardy does not prevent a person acquitted of an offence (sorry guys - using the Australian spelling!) being re-tried for conspiracy to commit that offence. And of course the police officers involved in the Rodney King beating were acquitted of the local criminal charges but subsequently tried and convicted under Federal Civil Rights laws. So the same act can give rise to different charges and subsequent convictions notwithstanding double jeopardy. Having said that, murder and manslaughter are two species of unlawful killing, so may not be sufficiently different to enable Watson to be tried a second time. There is, of course, nothing to prevent the civil suit a la OJ Simpson, but as the applicable law will be the law of Queensland it is unlikely to be worth very much (certainly not of OJ Simpson proportions).

 

[Under-Exposed]

One further thing - while at common law the traditional position was that criminal laws did not have extra-territorial reach (with piracy being a notable exception), most jurisdictions' criminal laws to some extent assert some extra-territorial reach, if only in their application either to conduct of the citizens of a particular country, or to conduct directed towards the citizens of a country (so, for example, Australia and its states criminalise certain conduct by Australians committed overseas which would be a crime if committed in Australia, whether or not it is a crime in the country in which it is committed. It also criminalises certain conduct, whether by Australians or foreigners, committed against Australians whilst overseas).

 

[livinoz]

Thanks Under-Exposed for clarifying that.

 

[livinoz]

If the US has extradition relations with Australia, that in part implies that our respective judicial systems meet mutual criteria in both countries. We wouldn't send one of our citizens there if we felt he or she were going to be sent to a kangaroo court of some kind.

Yes, I did see this bon mot, and it's very amusing! Thanks Dadvocate, it gave me a well needed laugh!

 

[Dadvocate]

[M]ost jurisdictions' criminal laws to some extent assert some extra-territorial reach, if only in their application either to conduct of the citizens of a particular country, or to conduct directed towards the citizens of a country (so, for example, Australia and its states criminalise certain conduct by Australians committed overseas which would be a crime if committed in Australia, whether or not it is a crime in the country in which it is committed. It also criminalises certain conduct, whether by Australians or foreigners, committed against Australians whilst overseas).

Thanks, Under-Exposed

Please correct me if I am wrong here. These extraterritorial laws are usually tied to broader issues like terrorism, pedophilia, drug or human trafficking, and the like, are they not?

For instance, Australia would be keen to apply these laws to individuals proven to be connected with the attacks on Australian citizens in the Bali bombings. This would be the context of “attacks” in the clarification you make, and not say a murder on the streets of New York. Is this correct?

For an isolated case of a crime such as murder (which also tends to be illegal in other places), where does the precedence lie for Australia? Also, are these statutes fluid in the sense that it is easy to tack on cases as the government sees fit, or do the crimes that fall under this umbrella (such as the above) need to be spelled out ahead of time in order to apply the extraterritorial scope in a case for prosecution? In other words, is the application of the laws fixed or can their validity be tested on a case by case basis?

I understand that whatever the realities are for Australia may not be the case in the US.

I recall that under the Bush administration several laws were put in place to track down, extradite, and prosecute pedophiles who made their way to the Philippines. A woman I was dating at the time who worked for UNICEF talked at length about how the US government used charity donations and other perks to entice the Philippines to allow these US citizens to be easily extradited and tried in the US. They also worked closely with UNICEF to target certain individuals who fell outside any jurisdiction the UN had. I believe that Germany followed suit soon thereafter, but I could be wrong.

Cheers!

 

[Under-Exposed]

Finally, for those who are interested, the Queensland Criminal Code has a fairly standard definition of murder (ie unlawful killing with intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm (plus some other immaterial circumstances)) and then manslaughter is any unlawful killing that is not murder. This includes manslaughter by criminal negligence, which is according to the common law a high degree of negligence amounting to recklessness; mere neglect, being an act of omission, which is wilful only in the sense of not being inadvertent is ordinarily not sufficient. Bizarre co-incidence....the leading authority on punishment for manslaughter by criminal negligence is a case from 1960 called.......R v Watson!!!

 

[bowlofpetunias]

One thing that was mentioned earlier is extradition to the States after he serves his term. It seems to me that while Gabe is going to spend some times in OZ he will not qualify to stay in the country any longer than his visa allows .. interesting to think of a visa for goal!

Anyway a few years back an American Citizen was arrested in Canada but resisted extradition for years based on the fact that he was sentenced to death in the States. The Death Sentence is not allowable in Canada so his claim was that Canada would be basically sentencing him to Death if they sent him back. I think they finally did work some kind of deal to ship him back. I wonder if this issue would apply here too.