Julie Ramage's mother wept silently on her husband's shoulder yesterday when she heard the verdict: "Manslaughter." But she was unable to stifle her sobs as the jury left the courtroom. And she was unable to restrain her rage as she left, passing her son-in-law, the man who had killed her daughter.
"Bastard," she hissed.
His head was bowed, as it had been since the verdict was announced. He did not reply.
After two days of deliberation, a jury of seven men and five women had concluded that James Stuart Ramage should not be convicted for murder over the killing last year of his estranged wife, Julie, who had separated from him a month earlier.
The defence had argued that Ramage should be convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter because Julie had provoked him with verbal taunting and gestures in the moments before Ramage "lost it", punched her to the ground and throttled the life out of her on their family-room floor.
The prosecution had argued that she would never have taunted him because she feared him - he had been verbally and physically violent to her before.
Outside the court, her distressed parents called for the law of provocation to be ditched.
"I just feel that there's no justice," said her trembling mother, Patricia Garrett. "Any woman that's in a relationship where she feels threatened, I tell her not to stay for the sake of the children. Get out . . . My daughter stayed for the children, and she's paid the ultimate price: she's dead."
She said Julie's teenage son and daughter "have got no mother now".
