Posts by Emma Hart
-
Another thing: you and Bob are identical!
Word. At first glance I thought that top photo was an aged shot of Bob.
-
There is also cat porn. I checked.
One thing I really appreciate about the internet is its thoroughness.
Also, I would like my brain to STOP writing lolcat captions for porn now.
PS According to google, LOLporn isn't what I expected it to be.
-
Tell your partner this is my new favourite thing ever on the Internet.
Well okay, but as long as there's porn and pictures of grammatically-adorable cats, I'm not sure he's going to believe you.
-
Interclue told me I didn't want to click on that ...
Product placement!
I have a deep sense of ethics! In a box, just over here.
Regardless of who developed it (disclaimer: my partner), the thing I use it for most often is determining whether things people link to at System are going to piss me off for the rest of the day.
What's Stephen Franks' excuse?
Not the first time anyone's said that.
-
This would be what's behind that warning.
Interclue told me I didn't want to click on that, but I still did.
I am hoping the defence is going to be that he had some kind of psychotic episode, blacked out, whatever, rather than that Sophie Elliot in some way had it coming.
At the same time, the insinuation there that he's guilty and should hang because Sophie was pretty is also fairly discomforting.
-
Cripes.
She said if they had contributed anything about the case to any internet blog sites, they should also stand aside.
It meant they would not be able to bring independence and objectivity to the case.
-
Steve, I tried quite hard to verify that I was spelling Comeskey's name correctly. I'm pretty sure it's right, though it returns hits for all kinds of variations. In the course of that search I found this, which I wasn't aware of, and a whole lot of scarily vitriolic comments.
-
The Gay panic defence is an "I did it, but I'm not guilty of murder" defence. Like insanity or self defence... you are not denying it was your own actions that lead to death, you are denying that it is murder.
Indeed. And that's how Graham Coutts used the kink defence in the Jane Longhurst case.
The Liu An An case is different - and I see the use of sex in the Bain trial as different again, because it seems pretty clear that the source of the incest rumours was Laniet, not David or his lawyer. The question in common I guess is how relevant it was. What bugs me about the Liu An An case was how manufactured the kink defence was, how unsubstantiated. It was like saying 'it wasn't me, it was that invisible purple elephant my wife had been seeing behind my back', only much more insulting. So perhaps we are confounding a few too many different things here.
-
Don't read if you want to remain upbeat and relatively sane today.
"Mr Kaye [the defendant's lawyer] said if the actions were involuntary then the charge was manslaughter - not murder."
I honest to god thought someone was giving me the wind when I first read about this case, and it was an Onion story or something. A homophobic killing with a banjo? Srsly?
-
Okay...
Once the verdict was in , Comesky went out of his way to start flinging the nasty stuff.
As has been pointed out, this doesn't seem to make a lot of legal sense on the face of it. If he intends to lodge an appeal on behalf of his client, where's the benefit?
Indeedy. Mrs Skin has given me a bunch of reading I want to get through once my eyes recover from this morning's prodding. But in particular, that post-trial interview does not seem to me to be coverable by 'following client's instructions'. And I'd direct attention, in case people missed it, back to that link DeepRed posted on the first page of comments:
In the decision, Justice John Wild said Mr Comeskey misled the court.
"Optimistic would be a charitable description of the last of Mr Comeskey's submissions. Misleading would perhaps be a more accurate one.
"Need we mention the fundamental importance of counsel accurately stating the position, and being absolutely candid and forthright with the court?"
The Law Society seems to have had some previous issues with Comeskey's legal ethics.
But there are deeper and I think more interesting issues here than whether or not Comeskey is a good lawyer or a grandstanding attention-seeker.
Take the Gay Panic defence. There's a private member's bill to get rid of it, which has come through ProgBills, been picked up by Charles Chauval (a gay lawyer) and passed to Lianne Dalziel. If passed, a client would not be able to direct his lawyer to argue gay panic as a defence. And I can completely understand lawyers not wanting to argue it.
Like the kink defence, not only is it deeply distasteful to a lot of people, but it also doesn't work - in serious cases, it fails to either get people off, or affect their sentencing.
So, we have a precident for a law affecting what defences are admissable.
Then there's the Louise Nicholas case. The defendants' convictions were inadmissable, which I'm fine with. But the complainant's entire sexual history was fair game. How is this in any way just? If their previous behaviour isn't relevant to the incidents under question, then surely neither is hers.
I guess what I'm saying (on two hours sleep and a not very pleasant morning) is that I have some very broad issues with how sexuality is used in the legal system. The homosexual panic defence law suggests one way of getting lawyers out of that bind, by simply saying 'you cannot argue this'.
And yes, I am worried about what the defence is going to say in the Sophie Elliot murder case. If you've got nothing, go for the victim?