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Grace Millane murder - do we believe the accused?

Rolfe

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Rolfe
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Grace Millane was on a round-the-world backpacking trip following her graduation. By December last year she was in New Zealand. It was her 22nd birthday and she hooked up with a guy (the unnamed accused) and they went on a pub-crawl. Later they went back to his flat for (he claimed) consensual sex.

He strangled her.

He took photos of her dead body, he watched pornography, and he carried out some internet searches apparently relating to disposal of the body. He hired a carpet cleaner, and a car, and bought cleaning products. He also hooked up with someone else on Tinder for a date later that day. He got her body into the suitcase and buried it somewhere in the bush.

His initial story was that she asked him to strangle her and he didn't realise she was dead and thought she had left the flat. He only found her body when he woke up in the morning. At what point in this saga the photographing is supposed to have happened I'm not sure.

He's obviously complete scum. I don't think anybody is going to believe that he didn't realise she was dead until the morning. His behaviour suggests a complete psychopath, with no sign of distress at the death of his date. But I'm curious. Did he really take her home intending to kill her, or did he simply push his penchant for abusive sex futher than he intended? I also wonder at what point this moves from culpable homicide to murder.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...l-new-zealand-court-uk-backpacker-tinder-date
 
Even if we believe him, it shouldn't be a defense. This "sex game gone wrong" loophole for murder needs to be closed. If you're choking someone "consensually," it's your ******* duty to make sure you don't kill them. If they say "harder," there's no reason you can't reply, "no, that's hard enough."

I don't believe him, for what it's worth, but my opinion doesn't matter in that regard.I believe he got off on murdering her. He may not have set out with a plan to do that, but he got excited and crossed the line at some point. I base this theory on his unconscionable behavior afterward.
 
Belz... said:
Wait, there are such loopholes? Why???
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I don't think they are officially written in, but people have gotten softer sentences as a result of using the "she wanted it, rough sex" defense. Here's the example from last year that started me researching the trend.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...nolly-rough-sex-john-broadhurst-a8678001.html

That guy got convicted of manslaughter. He got 3 years and 8 months. Read the details of what he did to her.


ETA - Here's another article commenting on the general problem. It's from New Zealand, and focuses more on rape cases than murder. It's the same idea, though, and I have other relevant murder cases bookmarked somewhere in my messy list. I will post them later. I'm supposed to be working. https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/104216482/is-rough-sex-the-new-rape-defence
 
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I'm not sure that's a loophole. It seems to me that the law should provide for people doing risky stuff consensually, and seeing it go wrong, without having to call it murder.

Why is it important to you that we treat risky but consensual sex games as attempted murder?
 
theprestige said:
I'm not sure that's a loophole. It seems to me that the law should provide for people doing risky stuff consensually, and seeing it go wrong, without having to call it murder.

Why is it important to you that we treat risky but consensual sex games as attempted murder?
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There are several reasons, some of which are probably more debatable than others, depending on one's own views. The primary reason is that I believe it is the "dom's" duty in these instances to pay attention to what he/she is doing. If you're going to inflict insanely rough BDSM on a sexual partner, you have an extra duty of care. You must go out of your way to make sure you aren't going too far. I don't care how horny you are. Their life is your hands. Act like it. I believe the law should reflect that.

In some of these cases, however, I simply don't believe it was ever consensual to begin with. I believe some of these cases were intentional brutal murders. But that's not actually relevant to my main reasoning, so treat it as the side note it is.

ETA - What I mean by that last bit is, if the law treated that duty of care in BDSM as basically sacrosanct, then "rough sex gone wrong" wouldn't be any kind of defense for intentional murder anyway.
 
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theprestige said:
I'm not sure that's a loophole. It seems to me that the law should provide for people doing risky stuff consensually, and seeing it go wrong, without having to call it murder.

Why is it important to you that we treat risky but consensual sex games as attempted murder?
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Because it would allow people to get away with murder.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Because it would allow people to get away with murder.
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Any time an intentional death looks sufficiently accidental, someone gets away with murder. What makes rough sex a special case, compared to any other risky pastime that people commonly engage in consensually?

Do we need to close the similar "loophole" in workplace accidents? When a patient dies on an operating table, is there a loophole there that needs to be closed?
 
theprestige said:
Any time an intentional death looks sufficiently accidental, someone gets away with murder. What makes rough sex a special case, compared to any other risky pastime that people commonly engage in consensually?

Do we need to close the similar "loophole" in workplace accidents? When a patient dies on an operating table, is there a loophole there that needs to be closed?
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Okay, if you don't see a difference then you don't see a difference. I'm surprised, but I don't feel like continuing to discuss it. I think I explained my reasoning. Some will agree, and some apparently won't.
 
isissxn said:
In some of these cases, however, I simply don't believe it was ever consensual to begin with.
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I don't know. In the first case you linked to the former wife seem to confirm that they were into that kind of stuff. It's clear that it's criminal negligeance, but it's not clear to me that it was murder.

The OP, however, is a different story.
 
Belz... said:
I don't know. In the first case you linked to the former wife seem to confirm that they were into that kind of stuff. It's clear that it's criminal negligeance, but it's not clear to me that it was murder.

The OP, however, is a different story.
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I guess I just think that no matter what you are into, you can't be punching someone repeatedly and shoving bottles of cleaning fluid up their ass and then say it was an accident when they died. I guess I'm just a prude.
 
She was strangled until blood poured from her nose. So he must have noticed all was not well. As for his claim she had been into erotic strangulation with her ex-long term boyfriend: bring him to court to testify one way or another.
 
isissxn said:
I guess I just think that no matter what you are into, you can't be punching someone repeatedly and shoving bottles of cleaning fluid up their ass and then say it was an accident when they died. I guess I'm just a prude.
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Why not? People die from skydiving mishaps, and rock climbing mishaps. People die from workplace accidents. Why not from sex accidents? The only difference seems to be your prudishness. This is probably a bad reason to make a murder law about it.

Especially since it's not even murder in the sense of deliberate, intentionally killing. You're taking the heinousness of intentionally killing someone, and applying it to something else, because the something else makes you feel icky. I'd rather not expand the legal definition of murder, and the serious legal consequences of murder, to include other things that some people feel icky about.
 
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So you strangle someone to death and then just say it was a sex game gone wrong. Who is to gainsay you? the only witness is dead.
 
theprestige said:
Why not? People die from skydiving mishaps, and rock climbing mishaps. People die from workplace accidents. Why not from sex accidents? The only difference seems to be your prudishness. This is probably a bad reason to make a murder law about it.

Especially since it's not even murder in the sense of deliberate, intentionally killing. You're taking the heinousness of intentionally killing someone, and applying it to something else, because the something else makes you feel icky. I'd rather not expand the legal definition of murder, and the serious legal consequences of murder, to include other things that some people feel icky about.
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Do you think that it's possible to kill someone during a sex game without getting any indication that you're going too far beforehand? I don't, in most situations. Choking or beating someone to death is usually not an instantaneous process. I think the dom should be required to be aware of these things. I don't think they should get any special leeway if they fail to do so.

Now, if two people are enjoying some wild game that involves (say) a sex swing, and the swing breaks and the person cracks their head open, then I don't think their partner should be nailed to the wall. But we're talking about chokings and beatings. I'm sorry, but it's difficult for me to imagine how that can happen accidentally without the actor getting any indication that things are getting out of hand.

I think you know what I mean. Do you really not agree at all, even a little, in certain scenarios? What is your opinion?
 
Captain_Swoop said:
So you strangle someone to death and then just say it was a sex game gone wrong. Who is to gainsay you? the only witness is dead.
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So you mis-pack your buddy's parachute so he falls to his death, and then just say it was a skydiving accident. Who is to gainsay you?

It's a bad idea to call things murder just because you can't figure out whether it was murder or not.
 
Belz... said:
Wait, there are such loopholes? Why???
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It's been asserted in a previous murder:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Chambers_(criminal)

Police were given Chambers' name by patrons at Dorrian's Red Hand bar, who had seen him leaving with Levin. When authorities arrived to question him at his home, he had fresh scratches on his face and arms, which he initially said were "cat scratches". He was taken in for questioning.

Chambers changed his story several times: "his cat had been declawed"; he "didn't part from Levin immediately upon leaving the bar"; "she had parted from him to purchase cigarettes" (it was later discovered that Levin did not smoke). In the final version of his confession, he claimed that some time after he and Levin had left the bar, she had asked him for "rough sex", tied the 6 ft 5 in (196 cm) Chambers' hands with her panties, and hurt his genitals as she stimulated him, and that she had been killed accidentally when he freed his hands and pushed her off him.

...

Chambers was charged with, and tried for, two counts of second-degree murder. His defense was that Levin's death had occurred during "rough sex". He was defended by Jack T. Litman, who had previously used the temporary insanity defense on behalf of Richard Herrin for the murder of Yale University student Bonnie Garland. Prosecutor Linda Fairstein stated: "In more than 8,000 cases of reported assaults in the last 10 years, this is the first in which a male reported being sexually assaulted by a female."[7] The case popularized the strategy later colloquially termed the "rough sex defense". The defense sought to depict Levin as a promiscuous woman who kept a "sex diary"; however, no such diary existed. Levin, instead, kept a small notebook that contained the names and phone numbers of her friends and notations of ordinary appointments. Such tactics were met with public outrage, with protesters (some calling themselves "Justice for Jennifer") demonstrating outside the courtroom.

With the jury deadlocked for nine days, a plea bargain was struck in which Chambers pleaded guilty to the lesser crime of manslaughter in the first degree, and to one count of burglary for his thefts in 1986. He was sentenced to serve 5 to 15 years, with the sentence for burglary being served concurrently.
 
I've never understood the beating or strangling thing during sex. I always thought "rough sex" just meant unusually vigorous sex, but I guess I was wrong.

I can see both Prestige's and Isissxn points of view in a theoretical light.

In the US, the prosecution is supposed to prove the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. For murder, I guess part of that is intent. I'm not sure it's a good idea in the big picture to relax that requirement.

At the same time, It creates a path to murdering a significant other with a lesser sentence. Of course, using that defense would actually make it harder to completely get away with it.
 
isissxn said:
I guess I just think that no matter what you are into, you can't be punching someone repeatedly and shoving bottles of cleaning fluid up their ass and then say it was an accident when they died. I guess I'm just a prude.
Click to expand...

No need to be snarky. I'm saying that the idea that he wasn't trying to kill her isn't far-fetched.
 
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