Grace Millane murder - do we believe the accused?

Matthew Best said:
You seem to be having trouble using the "quote" function. Most of what you've written here was already said by a previous poster.
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:D

(Except the final three paragraphs, which appear to be both incomprehensible and, well, shall we say, not exactly much to do with the argumentation within this thread..... :rolleyes:)
 
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Samson said:
In summing up, Moore j said if the jury believes she consented to pressure on the neck they must acquit. What happened to that?...
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Does the jury have to believe either the prosecution or the defense's story? If they make a decision that some people think flies in the face of the facts, does the prosecution or defense get a do-over?

In the last jury I was on the case was a slam dunk, but the rest of the jurors found a tiny bit of wiggle room to let the guilty party off (big mistake, as the judge told us shortly afterwards). And another perp walked free because 90% of the jurors were morons.

I disagree with murder despite the enthusiastic application of form of law on thread.
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I disagree with murder too. I think it was accidental death due to ignorance. And I think he did panic - for about 2 seconds. But everything after that was premeditated. If I was on the jury I would not have made a serious effort to persuade the others to choose manslaughter over murder, and I wouldn't lose any sleep over knowing that he got a more severe punishment than he 'deserved'. It can be difficult enough getting the jury even close to the correct verdict.
 
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I've got to say, I really am wondering why this man's defence team never even raised the possibility of instantaneous death from carotid sinus stimulation.

Because if a) they had done so, and b) it really existed, then this would have been a rather useful defence for the man - after all, if they could claim that Millane consented to being choked in an erotic-asphyxiation sex game, at which point the man got Millane into a choke hold of some sort, at which point Millane died more-or-less instantaneously, at which point the man panicked etc etc. It's not a perfect defence, but without doubt it would have been a far, far better defence than the one he actually offered.

So we truly are left with only two possibilities here:

1) Instantaneous death from carotid sinus stimulation is a medically provable phenomenon which is common enough to have been at least a reasonable likelihood in this case..... but this man's lawyers somehow failed badly in their duty to offer this up as a defence;

or

2) There's actually no scientific evidence supporting the notion of instantaneous death from carotid sinus stimulation..... which is precisely why this man's lawyers did not propose it in his defence.


I wonder which of these two options might be the correct one.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Does the jury have to believe either the prosecution or the defense's story? If they make a decision that some people think flies in the face of the facts, does the prosecution or defense get a do-over?

In the last jury I was on the case was a slam dunk, but the rest of the jurors found a tiny bit of wiggle room to let the guilty party off (big mistake, as the judge told us shortly afterwards). And another perp walked free because 90% of the jurors were morons.


I disagree with murder too. I think it was accidental death due to ignorance. And I think he did panic - for about 2 seconds. But everything after that was premeditated. If I was on the jury I would not have made a serious effort to persuade the others to choose manslaughter over murder, and I wouldn't lose any sleep over knowing that he got a more severe punishment than he 'deserved'. It can be difficult enough getting the jury even close to the correct verdict.
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But this case hinges on two crucial factors:

1) The additional time that this man MUST have taken to continue choking Millane to death - above and beyond the time he took to choke her into unconsciousness - would have amounted to several tens of seconds at the very least (and more than a few minutes at most). So the jury had to consider that this man carried on choking Millane for all that time after she'd gone limp, unresponsive, uncommunicative and with her eyes closed. Why would a man whose only sincere intent was to assist Millane in consensual erotic asphyxiation have done that? Especially given that Millane would have, by definition, have been unable to give either explicit or implicit consent to this man's further actions once she fell into unconsciousness. The jury concluded - entirely correctly in my view - that this man's actions on this matter were solely compatible with intent on his part to seriously injure or kill Millane. And given that he did kill her, this therefore meets the very definition of murder.

2) This man's actions and methodical planning in the immediate aftermath of Millane's death and in the ensuing 36-48 hours are not compatible with the notion of a man who claims to have been "panicking". They ARE, however, compatible with the notion of a man who was trying to dispose of Millane's body in a manner in which he hoped would leave no possibility of even connecting him with Millane's death in any way. I'd add two further horribly damning elements here: 1) the relative middle-of-the-night timings of a) this man's internet search into the area where he ended up dumping Millane's body and b) certain photos he took of Millane's body, make it a near certainty that those photos were of Millane's naked dead body: why would an innocent "panicking" man take photos of the naked dead body of the girl who had just "accidentally died? 2) this man went on another Tinder date the very next evening after Millane's death.... while Millane's dead body was lying in his hotel room; again, why would any innocent "panicking" man even conceive of doing such a thing?


I think this man was safely and properly convicted of Millane's murder.
 
Oh and by the way, "accidental death due to ignorance" does not equate to manslaughter. in any case. Manslaughter never involves "accident" of any variety.
 
LondonJohn said:
I've got to say, I really am wondering why this man's defence team never even raised the possibility of instantaneous death from carotid sinus stimulation.

Because if a) they had done so, and b) it really existed, then this would have been a rather useful defence for the man - after all, if they could claim that Millane consented to being choked in an erotic-asphyxiation sex game, at which point the man got Millane into a choke hold of some sort, at which point Millane died more-or-less instantaneously, at which point the man panicked etc etc. It's not a perfect defence, but without doubt it would have been a far, far better defence than the one he actually offered.

So we truly are left with only two possibilities here:

1) Instantaneous death from carotid sinus stimulation is a medically provable phenomenon which is common enough to have been at least a reasonable likelihood in this case..... but this man's lawyers somehow failed badly in their duty to offer this up as a defence;

or

2) There's actually no scientific evidence supporting the notion of instantaneous death from carotid sinus stimulation..... which is precisely why this man's lawyers did not propose it in his defence.


I wonder which of these two options might be the correct one.
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You're making a fool of yourself denying what Bernard Knight says, playing with the word stimulation rather than obstruction, blocking or pressure is ridiculous.
 
LondonJohn said:
:D

(Except the final three paragraphs, which appear to be both incomprehensible and, well, shall we say, not exactly much to do with the argumentation within this thread..... :rolleyes:)
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You may well roll your eyes. But the fact is Bernard Knight is correct and your reliance on mma as an example contradicting Knight's accepted view is school boy stuff.
 
As for whether the defence was complete I don't know because I wasn't there (at Court) and don't have a record of the defence. I did read/hear that there was no evidence of strangulation to death. I did not hear a defence as to how long pressure on the neck was applied - the convicted man saying in his 2nd statement that he had applied pressure at Grace's request. That he may have somehow known that was something that she practiced is unlikely, and that a defence could arise of of that is even more unlikely. Had he, an immediate call for help may have been made. His defence was that he panicked.
As I've written before had police not had a pre-planned response as how to close the 2nd interview, and if thinking on their feet - could have asked for details of the pressure the convicted man applied once he for the first time admitted it. Once speaking on that subject he should have been kept talking and if stopped by the lawyer would have impacted on his credibility at that point - rather than just earlier when he lied in the 1st interview.
I am ignoring the 1 person here who denies that carotid pressure can result in instant death to say that it did not have to be instant death in this case but also did not have to be the 10 minutes or so that both the Crown and Defence pathologists said mightbe the duration of 'strangling' required generally speaking. One hypothetical estimate does not exclude the possibility of instant death because instant death did not have to be on the 1st application of pressure or many others that may have followed. In fact it could have followed 'shallow breathing' something offered in evidence as being part of the recovery from stopped breathing, or close to stopped breathing.
There are certain 'wild cards' in this case. The alcohol consumed. The report at autopsy of bruising found on only 1 side of the neck internally is another. That there was evidence of Grace enjoying 'breath play' as I now know it is called. The issue of shallow breathing and the recovery from such a situation or the peril of possible death at the point if pressure was replied including the way Grace may have been lying does not seem to have canvassed. There is literature about different recovery positions where full breathing is less difficult to achieve.
If you when sitting, turn your head sharply to the left and deep breathe you should notice a restriction that results in a noise in the nostrils which doesn't happen with the head straight forward and you may wish to repeat that on the right.
In terms of the carotid sinus or arteries it's logical that pressure on one reduces the blood flow in the other much like a tape on a large pipe - but consideration of that has been lost here.
As I've said I have no idea if these things were topical at the trial, if they weren't or were only partly mentioned that could go to lack of a fair trial. Even the over emphasis on the maximum pressure time on the neck if minimum time was also not discussed.
It's correct that determination postmortem of strangulation is difficult, no doubt more so several days post death after the body had been buried.
I think that the duel needed here, should have been over the pathology by experienced persons. I doubt we have 1 in NZ because of the lack of frequency here - particularly with fatal results. Also not hearing in detail for the sex expert about the detail of sex play I don't know that was said - also don't know if the 2 pathologists were asked to comment on what that expert had to say. It's the one area that needed a full analysis - the death.
It appears in many jurisdictions possible death by strangulation to death is missed.
 
Samson said:
I am sure this is wrong, as in for example drunk driving resulting in a fatal accident.
EG

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/cr...-convicted-of-manslaughter-isnt-going-to-jail

A very hasty post and just wrong. :confused:
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Nope. My post was neither hasty nor wrong. Manslaughter is never an accidental death. Check out the proper definition of manslaughter.


(NB Newspaper reports using the colloquial term "accident" are of zero relevance when dealing with the actual legal definition of manslaughter.....)
 
Fixit said:
You're making a fool of yourself denying what Bernard Knight says, playing with the word stimulation rather than obstruction, blocking or pressure is ridiculous.
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Use any term you want (but the correct medical term is stimulation - you'd realise that if you understood the mechanism of operation of the carotid sinus).

If it makes a difference to you, I'll happily employ the (incorrect) terms of obstruction. Or blocking. Or pressure. Because there's never been any actual empirical evidence found that any of those things applied to the carotid sinus will result in instantaneous death.


I recently attended the memorial service of an MMA fighter who suffered a tragic instantaneous death inside the octagon when his opponent put him in a choke hold and stimulated/obstructed/blocked/put pressure upon his carotid sinuses. Hundreds of his MMA colleagues were there, many of them openly weeping at the instantaneous loss of a well-loved fighter after no more than seconds in exactly the type of choke hold they all regularly used on their opponents. And the organisational bodies (and outside regulators) immediately ordered an outright ban on choke holds in MMA fights - this was the 14th such instantaneous death from a choke hold in the past decade (albeit from well over 25,000 MMA fights over that time period), and enough was enough. You must have seen coverage of this guy's tragic death, and the consequent total ban on choke holds in MMA fights, on TV or in news reports. Right? :)
 
I do have to agree wholeheartedly that "in many jurisdictions possible death by strangulation to death is missed"........
 
Metullus said:
What is the rational behind protecting this guy's identity?
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I think it’s likely that he’s facing another trial for a similar offence which the judiciary and prosecutors don’t want to prejudice.
 
Dragon said:
I think it’s likely that he’s facing another trial for a similar offence which the judiciary and prosecutors don’t want to prejudice.
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The difficulty with name suppression is it is taken very seriously in our crooked little country, while serious murders are not investigated.
The Swedish tourists, the Crewe husband and wife, Margaret Bell, The Bain family, the Sounds murders, the Lundy murders, the murder of Scott Guy, Mark Roderique, Susan Burdett, in all those cases the murderers roam free or are deceased and never spent one day in jail for those crimes except the killer of Susan Burdett by a police informant, after 27 years when the cops had nowhere left to hide. Not bad for a country of 4 million over 4 decades. The real killers are known in most of these.
But:
Thou shalt not breach name suppression of the man involved in this death by drunken misadventure as Leo Molloy has found.

His father may well be a high ranking police officer.
 
Samson said:
The difficulty with name suppression is it is taken very seriously in our crooked little country, while serious murders are not investigated.
The Swedish tourists, the Crewe husband and wife, Margaret Bell, The Bain family, the Sounds murders, the Lundy murders, the murder of Scott Guy, Mark Roderique, Susan Burdett, in all those cases the murderers roam free or are deceased and never spent one day in jail for those crimes except the killer of Susan Burdett by a police informant, after 27 years when the cops had nowhere left to hide. Not bad for a country of 4 million over 4 decades. The real killers are known in most of these.
But:
Thou shalt not breach name suppression of the man involved in this death by drunken misadventure as Leo Molloy has found.

His father may well be a high ranking police officer.
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What annoys me about posts like this is your utter inability to recognise that you could just be wrong.

This verdict and sentence has been almost universally welcomed, yet you stubbornly insist, against the evidence, judgement, forensic science and a suppression order that largely worked that is was a drunken misadventure.

You will not change this behaviour, but I think it’s disgraceful. Disagree with the verdict by all means, but stop crap like the highlighted.
 
lionking said:
What annoys me about posts like this is your utter inability to recognise that you could just be wrong.

This verdict and sentence has been almost universally welcomed, yet you stubbornly insist, against the evidence, judgement, forensic science and a suppression order that largely worked that is was a drunken misadventure.

You will not change this behaviour, but I think it’s disgraceful. Disagree with the verdict by all means, but stop crap like the highlighted.
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The finding was they were drunk and the death was not premeditated. There was absolutely no motive. No tears will be shed because everything after was the body of work of a thoroughly bad human being, but missing in the reasoning was reference to her known predilection for this type of stimulation and that tinder appears to match that way.
The villagers won the day, but the sentence was draconian and that is my view.
 
Samson said:
The finding was they were drunk and the death was not premeditated. There was absolutely no motive. No tears will be shed because everything after was the body of work of a thoroughly bad human being, but missing in the reasoning was reference to her known predilection for this type of stimulation and that tinder appears to match that way.
The villagers won the day, but the sentence was draconian and that is my view.
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Goodness me, is that all you have? You realise that prosecution doesn’t have to provide, let alone prove, a motive, don’t you?
 
LondonJohn said:
Use any term you want (but the correct medical term is stimulation - you'd realise that if you understood the mechanism of operation of the carotid sinus).

If it makes a difference to you, I'll happily employ the (incorrect) terms of obstruction. Or blocking. Or pressure. Because there's never been any actual empirical evidence found that any of those things applied to the carotid sinus will result in instantaneous death."


"instantaneous death inside the octagon when his opponent put him in a choke hold and stimulated/obstructed/blocked/put pressure upon his carotid sinuses."

Thanks for the confirmation, glad that you finally agree with Bernard Knight.:blush:
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And it may happen up to a week later:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8635763

It's become a touchy topic in NZ. Any version of 'breath play', being spoken about reveals those that many maintain that it is no one else's business, shouldn't be mentioned and is not relevant to consideration in a case like the one we have discussed.
I would have thought it highly relevant in the interest of safety, skating on thin ice and so on. That, as in 'tinder' dating although it appears, and I'm no expert, that it is generally well accepted by those in the dating game.
 
Matthew Best said:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-51939561

The killer of British backpacker Grace Millane has begun the process of appealing against his murder conviction and jail sentence, his barrister said.

Auckland-based Rachael Reed QC confirmed that an appeal had been filed in the New Zealand Court of Appeal.
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The sentence was clearly excessive and the verdict probably wrong.
He may have taken photos in anticipation of needing them to verify his narrative.

There are issues to appeal and I hope he gets a fair hearing.

Still at least the process was not profoundly corrupt as in Lundy and many others.
 
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Samson said:
The sentence was clearly excessive and the verdict probably wrong.
He may have taken photos in anticipation of needing them to verify his narrative.

There are issues to appeal and I hope he gets a fair hearing.

Still at least the process was not profoundly corrupt as in Lundy and many others.
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Disgusting.

You are hopeless. You seem like you can't recognize evil unless it comes from the prosecution/cops' side. No sentence is excessive for what this monster did. The verdict wasn't wrong.

Even if some slimy lawyer manages to get something changed on appeal (unlikely), it doesn't change the fact that the verdict wasn't wrong.
 
isissxn said:
Disgusting.

You are hopeless. You seem like you can't recognize evil unless it comes from the prosecution/cops' side. No sentence is excessive for what this monster did. The verdict wasn't wrong.

Even if some slimy lawyer manages to get something changed on appeal (unlikely), it doesn't change the fact that the verdict wasn't wrong.
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Long ago I gave up on Samson discussing crime. In his world there are no criminals, just people who are innocent and wrongly accused.
 
I cannot imagine how any photographs the accused might possess would result in a lesser sentence...
 
isissxn said:
Disgusting.

You are hopeless. You seem like you can't recognize evil unless it comes from the prosecution/cops' side. No sentence is excessive for what this monster did. The verdict wasn't wrong.

Even if some slimy lawyer manages to get something changed on appeal (unlikely), it doesn't change the fact that the verdict wasn't wrong.
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I restrict my interest to cases where I see a wrong verdict and this may be one of those but not necessarily. Your post feels like a personal attack.
In this case there is plenty of science showing a sudden death can occur. It is extremely rare for such a heavy sentence to be imposed where the victim was compliant at the outset, and there is no suggestion of premeditation. Maybe you have a parallel in mind.
 
Samson said:
I restrict my interest to cases where I see a wrong verdict and this may be one of those but not necessarily. Your post feels like a personal attack.
In this case there is plenty of science showing a sudden death can occur. It is extremely rare for such a heavy sentence to be imposed where the victim was compliant at the outset, and there is no suggestion of premeditation. Maybe you have a parallel in mind.
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But this is it: there's NOT "plenty of science showing a sudden death can occur" from what this man claims he did to Millane (i.e. manual choking). Heck, not even this man's own defence team (IIRC) tried to make the argument that Millane had died more-or-less instantaneously.

Instead, what all the reliable scientific evidence shows is that death from manual choking occurs only via two mechanisms: either a) constriction of one or both carotid arteries, causing starvation of oxygenated blood to the brain, leading to unconsciousness, coma, and death; or b) constriction of the trachea, causing insufficient (or no) air to get to the lungs, leading to asphyxiation and death. Mechanism (a) is relatively benign - the victim will cease struggling fairly quickly (sometimes a matter of seconds) as the brain responds to the sudden restriction or absence of oxygen by initiating unconsciousness; mechanism (b) is often violent and ugly, with the victim struggling often for well over a minute as they struggle to intake air. But - importantly - both mechanisms require well over a minimum of two minutes to cause death, and usually several minutes.

Put simply: this cannot have been an accidental death. If Millane had slipped into unconsciousness from constriction of her carotid artery/arteries, then - by both legal and ethical (and common-sense) definition - her consent immediately stopped at that point. And the man cannot have failed to notice that Millane had become unconscious: eyes closed, limp and unresponsive.

On top of all that, the entire purpose of these sexual breath-constriction "games" is to take the person to the point just before unconsciousness sets in, which is (apparently) the point at which maximum pleasure is derived. If the person falls into full unconsciousness, therefore, the "game" has necessarily gone too far. And what typically happens at that point is that the person doing the choking - having noticed that the person being choked has fallen unconscious - releases or relaxes the choke hold until the person regains consciousness. And then the process may be repeated. What the person doing the choking NEVER does is carry on with full pressure on the other person's neck for at least two, and as many as 6 or 7, minutes until the other person's brain has been so starved of oxygen that they die.

It's this man's right to apply to appeal both the verdict and the sentence. It's now up to the NZ Court of Appeal to adjudicate on whether he should be granted leave to appeal either or both of these things. I don't know what the man's defence team are arguing as grounds for appeal (verdict or sentence). One would hope the Court of Appeal will give proper consideration to his submission and return a fair and just adjudication as to whether or not he will be allowed to appeal.
 
Murder convicts have an automatic right to appeal here, we have worked through these issues and I certainly think the verdict may well be correct but not necessarily and I do not believe 17 years is just.
Normally that sentence applies where a similar US case would be death or LWOP
 
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