As I said in my first post there is a far bit of dung flying around in here, so its time to lift the lid and help you see the truth.
Summary of the Gable Tostee Case
The acquittal of Tostee is not by any accident. Every criminal practitioner in Qld knew that this case has pretty well zero chance of succeeding based on the complete lack of evidence. The recording actually works in favour of the defence, not the prosecution. Such serious charges came far too quickly - too little detective work, and too much wishful thinking from the DPP.
Late 2014 the full audio was available for download for some weeks . Listening to it proved to me it would acquit Tostee unequivocally. Plus the fact the police had no evidence other than the recording, this stuck out like a sore thumb throughout the whole saga.
Despite all the sensationally immoral headlines such as "Tinder killer throws date off balcony and orders pizza", the sequence of events in this incident are much more mundane and ubiquitous than that.
- NZ tourist and Australian guy make contact via Tinder
- he texts her "I am a pornstar after 3 drinks" she replies "great"
- she meets him at 9 pm , and is in his apartment within 8 mins
- they have sex
- after midnight she starts acting erratic, so he starts an audio recording at 12:40 am for protection.
- her behaviour gets progressively worse. She continually hits him, he has fresh wounds as forensic exam shows.
- she throws rocks at him.
- at 2:13 am Tostee has had enough , restrains her and tells her she has to leave.
- Wright acts compliant and says "ok its all good", but when they get up she grabs a metal clamp and tries to hit him with it.
- he is forced to restrain her again and force her to drop the object.
- she holds on to the object for almost 2 minutes despite being restrained. She has a lot of fight and defiance in her, contrary to the "she was so drunkenly helpless" argument we hear.
- During this episode she makes gargling sounds. It was suggested that he choked her, but pathology results disproved this.
- Tostee now realises he has a deranged person on his hands.
- He admonishes her verbally, but instead of leaving the apartment there, she continues her violent behaviour.
- They somehow progress from the living room out to the balcony.
- Some type of altercation occurs on the balcony, furniture is being moved about , this is what attracts the neighbour's attention.
after admonishing her verbally again , and struggling for nearly a minute, Tostee gives up and retires back inside, closing the balcony door behind him, in an attempt to de-escalate the situation via separation.
- within 12 seconds of that door latch clicking closed, she was strong enough to scale the railing, and hang off the building long enough to be told by the neighbour downstairs to go back. Again, contrary to the whole "she was so drunkenly helpless" argument.
- at 2:21am her final scream is heard and Wright falls , exactly 12 secs after the balcony door closed.
All of this is evident on the recording.
The recording
does not establish the proofs for the offence of murder - namely that there was an intent to cause her harm.
The recording
does not establish the proofs for the offence of manslaughter - namely that there was an action that caused her to fall to her death.
The default argument of those who still believe Tostee should be convicted of murder is that
- he owed her a duty of care to restrict her alcohol intake,
- he should not have used any force and called police,
- locking her on the balcony is imprisonment.
- he should have been able to physically subdue her and push her out the front door.
None of these arguments are valid for the following reasons
- Wright was an adult responsible for her own actions, including the consumption of alcohol. Tostee owed her no legal duty of care as though he was somehow in charge of her well being.
- if assaulted or your property is being damaged, anyone has the right to prevent that using reasonable force. Calling police is optional
- detaining someone when they act violently in a 20sq metre area for 12 secs, 1 minute, or even 5 minutes, does not amount to imprisonment. The proofs for that offence were not satisfied
All these things are readily known by practitioners of criminal law. The jury struggled to work all this out over 3 days.
Another furphy that needs to be put to rest is that Tostee was supposed to be a bodybuilder. All he did was tone his arms and chest, he had no muscular bulk. It is interesting to note how females give opinions on how a man should handle themselves in a fight, yet fighting is something 99% of women have no knowledge of. If you dont have an aggressive attitude and a knowledge of arm locking techniques, it isn't a straightforward matter to remove a female without harming them. Remember police undergo training to deal with these very situations. Plenty of drunken women have caused damage to bouncers who handled them with kid gloves. Clearly this is what Tostee was doing with her. He is obviously from that school that still thinks you treat women like ladies, not men. Another thing people don't understand is , that tall people are usually non violent, as they have seldom been the target of bullies, and thus have no need to learn to fight or be aggressive. Expecting someone like that to take control and bundle up a violent female is asking too much.
This was a tenuous case from the start. The first strong indication of this was when Tostee was granted bail. The burden is on the accused to show why bail should be granted. There must be exceptional circumstances for a person accused of murder to be released on bail. Inadequacies in a weak Crown case is a common reason. Very few accused murderers ever get bail, mainly because the evidence is usually strong when such serious charges are being brought. Here bail was granted because the charges were very weak.
The second indication was when the defence elected for a no contest pre committal. Most commonly it is when there is a belief that the Crown case is either
- very strong and it would ultimately proceed to trial irrespective any any argument the defence put up, or
- if the Crown case is seen to be deficient in some manner and that is intended to be exploited strategically.
Proceeding straight to trial was a sign of confidence on the part of the defence team to exploit a weak Crown case.
The 3rd strongest indication was the line of questions from the jury once they had begun deliberating. At a guess, most jurors after hearing the evidence would be ready to acquit, with a small number of jurors, perhaps even only one, that were hanging onto the flimsiest pretext of holding out for a conviction. The nature of the questions indicated that the majority had already favoured a finding of not guilty very early on. The questions were outside of the directions the judge gave, indicating the juror/s holding out were making desperate attempts to find a reason not to be swayed. The same points argued in online forums are the same points that would have been argued during deliberation. It's likely that the convict/acquit camps s of the jury were drawn primarily down gender lines.
Manslaughter
hinges on cause, rather than intent. Did he cause her death? The men will likely take a factual, chronological approach where he de-escalated and separated, and after that, there is some onus on her to act reasonably, and he couldn't possibly have predicted that she would go over the railing.
The women will likely take a more emotional approach, whereby she was in fear, and his words and threats literally forced her over the railing. My guess is the question regarding if words can be construed as force most likely coming from a female juror/s refusing to acquit at that stage. Given that the judge said words are not force in the context of the offence, that undoubtedly strengthened the side that believed he didn't push her physically or by threats. Hence the final dissenting juror/s had to fall in line with the majority to achieve the required 12/12 unanimous verdict.
To the people who cannot accept the verdict, it is absolutely of no assistance in achieving a fair result, to start thinking way before the trial the accused is guilty, and then seek to justify that belief by fueling it with communal prejudice and mass hatred often freely shared in online forums. That will inevitably lead to the very disappointment females are obviously now experiencing who have invested considerable emotion in this trial. The real world of criminal justice just does not work that way. Understand three important tenets of our justice system
Tenet 1: Every person is innocent until proven guilty.
Tenet 2: That proof must be beyond reasonable doubt and based on admissible evidence given at the trial.
Tenet 3: If that evidence does reach the level of proof required, there must be a verdict of "Guilty." Otherwise "Not Guilty".
To those who are claiming that the system is broken because Tostee was found not guilty, the claim is made in ignorance of these important three tenets.
I believe the DPP had no expectation they would win after the pre committal hearing. So then why were these flimsy unsubstantiated charges brought? The most likely theory is that the prosecution had a lot of circumstantial evidence it was trying to get admitted, but was excluded in pre trial argument due to the Rules of Evidence . The sorts of evidence might be the Crown's interpretation of what was happening during the audio, online posts, etc. After that was all excluded, there was too much public pressure on them to secure a conviction, so the prosecution pushed on regardless despite knowing it would never secure one, in an act of placating public outrage created from the media's defamatory and otherwise untruthful reporting of this case..
There are some serious questions that need to be asked now, about whey this trial was ever allowed to happen, and waste the court's time, as well as taxpayers money, and to turn an innocent man's life upside down.
So what happens now?
1. The verdict is final and not appellable as a jury acquittal is absolute. The case cannot be re tried unless compelling new evidence is presented, and that seems impossible as it would have to contradict the recording.
2. The coroner will now mark the death certificate "accidental death" and the case marked resolved in that jurisdiction. Talk of a coronial enquiry is absurd since it has all the information it requires to reach its conclusions.
3. Some people are speculating that Wright's family might mount a civil trial but this is unlikely. Civil courts are very reluctant to reach a finding contrary to one reached by a criminal court. Civil litigation is expensive and it's extremely unlikely that anyone would touch this case without at least a substantial deposit. In civil cases you need a high chance of success, and a respondent of sufficient worth to cover your legal costs plus the anticipated settlement amount. It may well be that those factors would easily exceed Tostee's net worth in view of his assumed current substantial legal bill..
4. In my opinion we have not heard the last of this case by a long chalk. Tostee is sitting on a gold-mine. I suspect he will be feted right now for media appearances/interviews, the Sunday night 60 Mins interview of 13 Nov 2016 being a prime example ratings winner.
I also believe there is possibility for legal action to be taken against certain media outlets for defamation. One action against Ch 9 has already been lodged, but dropped because they were vying for his appearance on 60 mins. My guess is they paid him a substantial amount to drop the defamation, and possibly up to $200K for the 60 Mins appearance.
I also think he has possible grounds to mount a civil lawsuit against Qld Police and/or the Office of Dept of Public Prosecutions for malicious prosecution, particularly in view of being falsely incarcerated for three months because of a transcript which appeared to be 'doctored' with errors and cherry picked items designed to make him look guilty in the eyes of a bail judge. One has to remember that the DPP tried to plea bargain for Tostee to accept manslaughter back in Nov 2014, so clearly they had no conviction in the murder charge way back then.
This discussion is over, except now for the ongoing bleating of predominantly feminists and their attendant white knights who are unable to comprehend the legal process and how it correctly arrives at its conclusions. Their media-fuelled prejudice, inability to be logical and fair-minded, and refusal to take any accountability of the wrong doings committed by Warriena Wright that fateful night, sees them continuing with their 2+ year campaign to vilify Tostee as the nearby male who simply must pay for the sins of a female. They concoct inventive fables they've cobbled together in their communal man-hating minds - the 'Gable Fables'.
Gable Tostee has done nothing wrong. One cannot be called a murderer for leaving the scene of a death, or not calling an ambulance when there is no legal requirement to do so. One cannot be called a murderer for eating food at 3 am in the morning whilst being very hungry.
Warriena Wright caused he own death, and so decided the jury of 6 men and 6 women. Not guilty. It is time for the misandrist vilification to stop and leave Gable Tostee alone.
