Boogie Man
New Member
- Joined
- May 25, 2018
- Messages
- 537
You're making a bit of a false equivalence here. The bar is set quite high when we are finding someone guilty of a crime, as it should be, it needs to be beyond reasonable doubt. Judging guilt by someone's looks simply will not do in a British court (and you'd hope in any court). And the burden of proof is on the prosecution here to find guilt, and they'd normally be expected to produce evidence of motive, means & opportunity. The defence doesn't actually have to do anything, it doesn't even have to prove innocence, although a good defence should be picking holes at the prosecution's case. If the prosecution is going to put forward a case, then they are really going to want to show motive. Now I don't know all the psychological conditions that would cause a person to kill 8 babies, but if, for example, the prosecution tried to claim the defendant was some kind of crazy attention seeker, then the defence could then show these photos to the jury, and pose the question "does this social profile really look the work of an attention seeking murderess to you, or is it more likely, the social profile of an ordinary 28yo nurse".We had national service at the time although I think Dennis extended his service, my father in law and my old man both did military service around the same time as him as would every other able bodied male in the UK.
People are not easy to judge at face value or through a cursory glance at their background. As Penna has mentioned, the old guy originally suspected of Joanna Yeats' murder was absolutely crucified in the press because he looked a bit weird and was the stereotypical loner who just happened to have been her landlord and the press had to pay out a fortune in compensation for their defamation of him when it turned out to be somebody else who to all intents and purposes was a normal looking young bloke who lived nearby with his girlfriend.
On the housing estate I grew up on there was a bloke with mild Downs Syndrome maybe 10 years older than us who lived on the other side of the main road to the bus stop we took to school and he would always get shit off the rougher kids in terms of name calling and occasionally physical abuse. In my early 20s I was working on Bury market during Uni holidays and one morning the bus station was on complete lockdown with police tape everywhere, turns out this blokes elderly mother (Shirley Leach) had been to visit her daughter in Cheadle and after getting off the bus was raped and brutally murdered in the station toilets. He was the instant suspect and although there was no evidence and charges his life was ruined and I believe he ended up in a care home on the other side of Manchester near his sister. Fast forward 12 years and a normal looking family man from our estate was in a crash and suspected of drinking so along with the breathalyser they took a routine DNA swab at which point he was arrested for the unsolved murder he committed in his early 20s.
What you are doing is the reverse of this, it's impossible to declare somebody innocent because you find them normal looking and can't see any of the telltale signs all killers have. Those telltale signs are a media fiction concocted in hindsight most of the time but unfortunately for Chris Jefferies sometimes with an absence of foresight.
Wouldn't be the be all and end all of the case, we still don't know what the prosecution are going with here, or whether they even have a case, I think people are getting a bit bogged down to appearance here, but it could be a factor and a card the defence may want to play.