catsmate
No longer the 1
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One slight change and I agree.
Grace Millane murder - do we believe the accused?
- Thread starter Rolfe
- Start date
Matthew Best
Penultimate Amazing
Just like this case, then?
Matthew Best
Penultimate Amazing
Grace Millane murderer launches appeal against conviction and sentence [The Guardian]
The man who murdered British backpacker Grace Millane in Auckland, New Zealand, has begun an appeal against his guilty verdict and jail term.
Grace Millane murder: Accused's actions 'inexcusable' but trial process 'miscarried' [New Zealand Herald]
The man convicted of murdering Grace Millane acted inexcusably after her death but the trial that found him guilty was flawed, an appeal has heard today.
His legal team have argued that the jury was not properly directed when it came to considering the issue of consent - nor were they equipped to properly analyse expert evidence.
And they say errors were made in the 17-year sentence handed down, making it too harsh and unjust.
The man who murdered British backpacker Grace Millane in Auckland, New Zealand, has begun an appeal against his guilty verdict and jail term.
Grace Millane murder: Accused's actions 'inexcusable' but trial process 'miscarried' [New Zealand Herald]
The man convicted of murdering Grace Millane acted inexcusably after her death but the trial that found him guilty was flawed, an appeal has heard today.
His legal team have argued that the jury was not properly directed when it came to considering the issue of consent - nor were they equipped to properly analyse expert evidence.
And they say errors were made in the 17-year sentence handed down, making it too harsh and unjust.
The two men on the judging panel demonstrated grave lincompetence in the Lundy debacle, any pleas will fall on deaf ears regardless of merit in my opinion.
LondonJohn
Penultimate Amazing
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I predict that his appeal will certainly fail on the issue of the conviction, but that he might possibly get a slight reduction in his sentence.
That’s where my money is.
Matthew Best
Penultimate Amazing
Why isn't Grace Millane's killer Jesse Kempson being named in New Zealand? The reason for his anonymity
The TL/DR is that we don't know.
"The order remains in place until the judge lifts it. The legal reasons for Justice Moore's decision have been given in court but this too is being kept secret."
The TL/DR is that we don't know.
"The order remains in place until the judge lifts it. The legal reasons for Justice Moore's decision have been given in court but this too is being kept secret."
The reason is possibly that his father may be a very senior member of the New Zealand police.
However it seems an odd reason.
Any ideas from other jurisdictions?
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Matthew Best
Penultimate Amazing
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-55361640
A man who murdered a British backpacker he met on a dating app in New Zealand has lost an appeal against his conviction and prison sentence.
The Court of Appeal in New Zealand found on Friday that the murder was "committed with a high degree of callousness", due to Miss Millane's killer failing "to call for assistance, searching on the internet for methods of body disposal ... taking steps preparatory to disposing of the body and going on another date while Miss Millane's body remained in his room".
The three judges who considered the case also found his sentence was not "manifestly unjust".
If other women have come forward with allegations against him due to the initial publicity, it's possible that further charges will be brought. Keeping his name a secret, and even the knowledge that other cases will be forthcoming, may be necessary to avoid any suggestion of a mistrial in those cases due to adverse publicity.
LondonJohn
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What a toxic, disgusting piece of ****. And the extreme nature of his previous form would definitely have helped to inform the sentence he received for the Millane murder. It sounds like an awful lot of work will have to be done with him before he's anywhere near being considered safe to allow back into the community.
17 years no parole is obviously absurd.
Grace Millane was a willing participant in extreme sex, so Kempson has a legitimate defence. Actions after are realistically explained by panic. The other convictions are propensity evidence of extreme sexual need, not homicide.
At some point you hang em highers should be realistic about the need for extreme sentences.
Matthew Best
Penultimate Amazing
I don't find it obvious at all.
Participating in sex isn't an excuse for murder
Sexual need isn't an excuse for rape
This isn't extreme, and he's not being hanged.
Agreed, it does seem rather short to me.
For murder? You have to be kidding.
What, filming the corpse, and going out for another Tinder date straight afterwards?
Get serious. Rape and forcing someone to have sex at knifepoint are signs of more than sexual need.
I’m opposed to the death penalty, but I have no problem with a long sentence in this instance.
Ridiculously short. A failure of the NZ legal system.
LondonJohn
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I have no idea how you're arriving at those beliefs.
Firstly, you (and I) have no idea what was and was not consented to by Millane in that hotel room with Kempson. You only have Kempson's own claims - claims which have been fundamentally contradicted by the evidence in many respects.
And in any case, irrespective of what Millane may or may not have consented to, all notions of consent go out of the window the moment she goes unconscious. There is zero chance that Kempson could somehow have missed observing that Millane had gone limp, had stopped interacting in any way, and had closed her eyes. Yet he must have continued holding his hands to her neck for a considerable period of time beyond that point, in order for her to have experienced brain death at his hands.
Secondly: as for your "actions after are realistically explained by panic" claim, I fundamentally disagree - as did the court. I've explained previously in this thread precisely how/why I (and the court) fundamentally disagree with your view here.
Thirdly, it's a generally-accepted psychiatric belief that wrt crimes committed by males against females in the areas of rape, sexual assault and domestic violence, these are expressions of power, control and dominance first and foremost. Any sexual elements are subordinate. So I don't think you'd be able to find a single respected expert in this field who would profess the opinion that "extreme sexual need" was at the core of any of Kempson's offending.
And lastly, I most certainly don't regard myself as one of the "hang them high brigade". Kempson committed a string of crimes which were right up at the top end of the tariff for seriousness and extremity, at the top of which was the Millane murder. I am personally wholly satisfied that Kempson was correctly convicted of the Millane murder (though I do not know enough about his other convictions for rape and sexual/physical assault to form an opinion on their safety). I think Kempson got the correct sentence for the Millane murder (and I mean "correct" in two ways: 1) in the sense of the sentencing structure of the NZ criminal justice system, and 2) in the sense of what is deemed appropriate by jurisprudence views in modern liberalised democracies).
You might or might not also have noticed the final sentence of my post: I wrote "It sounds like an awful lot of work will have to be done with him before he's anywhere near being considered safe to allow back into the community." In my opinion, this man's convictions show that he is a very great danger to the public (and specifically young adult women). Part of the rationale for incarceration of offenders is public protection, and I would say that Kempson would rank as one of the most dangerous people currently in prison in NZ. But there's still the possibility of him being provided with the right sort of counselling and offender management while he's in prison, such that he might eventually return to the general population as a productive and law-abiding member of society. I think it will probably take many, many years of expert work to even get close to that point. But I certainly don't advocate anything akin to a "lock him up and throw away the key" approach.
DuvalHMFIC
Graduate Poster
Agreed, this guy should have gotten a more extreme sentence. 17 years was not enough.
Concurrent is usual in the UK and, I assume, New Zealand. The USA is unusual in, as far as I’ve seen, generally opting for consecutive sentences. I have no idea what non-English-speaking countries normally do.
One argument against consecutive sentences is that if there’s several significant ones, the prospect of probation rapidly recedes beyond the bounds of possibility (that may be viewed as an advantage in some cases, of course).
Foster Zygote
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Yeah, actions like recording images of her dead body and finding another sex partner on Tinder while her corpse was still in his home just scream "panic", don't they?
If I am defending, I say photographs are needed to support the death being misadventure rather than murder.
The victim was experienced in this practice it is claimed by other witnesses.
Clearly a jail term is necessary for all that happened after the death. I consider 17 years long in the context of other sentencing in NZ. He can be denied parole with any life sentence, 10 years statutory minimum. If he needs 17 years, keep him in, but the penal system should have nobler goals.
Foster Zygote
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He was so panicked that he decided to take photos of her body to support his eventual claim that her death was accidental (because, of course, you can so easily see the difference between intentional and unintentional strangulation in a photo) before researching corpse disposal, getting laid again, and then burying the evidence in a suitcase.
Butter!
Rough Around the Edges
You gotta be trolling this time, Samson. You just have to be. Please say you are.
Foster Zygote
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I find it more disturbing that he downplayed rape as "extreme sexual need".
It is a cheap trick to put me on the stand, and disappointing for the integrity of the forum.
The trial judge in sentencing found no evidence at all of premeditation in this homicide, and the victim was compliant in the initial stages by propensity evidence.
This does not add up to any conclusion about anyone's dissertation on sexual violence.
However, open discussion in society is obviously a thing of the past.
The trial judge in sentencing found no evidence at all of premeditation in this homicide, and the victim was compliant in the initial stages by propensity evidence.
This does not add up to any conclusion about anyone's dissertation on sexual violence.
However, open discussion in society is obviously a thing of the past.
You put forward a dubious theory about Millane's murder being an accident, now when we discover that the killer had a history of violence against women you still try to defend his actions, it's your attempt to defend Grace Millane's killer and downplay his actions that are on the stand. Do you at least accept that this new information proves that the killer did attack women and commit acts of violence against them?
Yes. I went to the trial for a day and listened at great length to at least one of these women. She testified convincingly she thought she was going to die, because he sat on her face, and she was essentially incapacitated and unable to speak. But this does not mean he was homicidal. He was clearly a lethal presence in both these cases, so I am not questioning the dire need for his incarceration to protect hapless females. I can say that 17 years surprised me in the context of plenty of other New Zealand murders where death was premeditated and completely intentional.
I also listened to the pathologist, and the injury was completely localised to a part of the neck, so no general assault, and no defensive injuries were recorded to Kempson.
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Butter!
Rough Around the Edges
That was the point at which I decided he's surely trolling.
I need to believe that, and nothing can dissuade me from doing so. *plugs ears* Lalala! Everything's fine.
Butter!
Rough Around the Edges
There's this super-handy life-hack you can try to deal with extreme sexual need, actually. It's so cool! And the best part is, it's free. It's called playing with yourself. You can imagine whatever depraved **** gets you off, experience an orgasm, and then not go to jail! The one weird trick jail wardens and wicked prosecuters of the west don't want you to know.
The subject is essentially crime and punishment. Sometimes it is not clear exactly what the crime is. For example a manslaughter verdict is allowed but for some reason the defence took this off the table if I recall, so clearly imagined that a full not guilty was possible. Given that this was not a whodunnit, there is thus some debate about exactly what the crime was, but this thread has become pretty monochrome on the subject, so discussion seems futile.
What is futile is taking a position that every guilty verdict is faulty and every crime is mitigated.
Foster Zygote
Dental Floss Tycoon
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Auf Wiedersehen.
To paraphrase Conan Doyle, you heard but you did not understand. You have decided this killer was hard done by and even in the face of evidence that he was a serial violent offender you still remain unmoved.
Reformed Offlian
Graduate Poster
Crucial qualification: whether you end up in jail depends on where you do it.
I just watched a Netflix video on this called The Lie. It had a lot of footage of his interrogation. His lies were comprehensive, and were exposed by CCTV.
What I was a little surprised about was the extent of CCTV in Auckland. It seems as well covered as London.
Anyway, nothing in the show mitigated his guilt.
I did like the spontaneous hake performed by a group of young people after Grace’s body was found. Well worth the 90 minutes to watch the show.
What I was a little surprised about was the extent of CCTV in Auckland. It seems as well covered as London.
Anyway, nothing in the show mitigated his guilt.
I did like the spontaneous hake performed by a group of young people after Grace’s body was found. Well worth the 90 minutes to watch the show.