Hi ggeorge & welcome to Websleuths...nice to have you on board
I guess I should also address this question to all members in Lisa's thread.
With all we've been told to date, in your opinion, what would you say is the most compelling piece of evidence against the accused??
ETA: If anyone dares to say "the kettle"...welllllll Kimster sometimes lends me her zapper
:
Hey! Thanks for having me. An ex ended up breaking off with me to pursue a career opportunity in Sydney and ended up moving into The Hyde in 2010, thus my interest in this case. Not to mention how tragic everything in this case is.
The most compelling piece of evidence is the pinhole camera. By far. Combined with the deceased screaming for help, the video footage seconds later showing what appears to be the defendant forcibly assaulting and restraining the deceased is damning. Even a judge would find that screenshot of the hand over mouth chilling. With that screenshot, a judge will doubt the claim that the deceased and defendant immediately sat down for tea, and the trier of fact (in this case, the judge) can establish that there was emotional distress on both sides. Without the camera footage, there is no evidence of a crime (the camera footage is the only
tangible evidence
of any crime), there is little context as to why the deceased would be banging on her neighbor's door and therefore there would be zero indicators that a criminal offense was imminent, beyond the eyewitness testimony. In other words, the footage compliments the theory that the defendant threw his fiance over the balcony out of malice.
The eyewitness testimony, like all eyewitness testimony, is unreliable. Aside from the distance, weather, and obstructions, brains are weird things. Eyewitness testimony is not useless, but unreliable on its own. The brain is the one organ part of our body scientists still do not fully understand. The eyewitness testimony was useful in establishing that possibly something was pushed over (creating doubt that the deceased stepped over), the deceased hit the ground, and (most importantly) that the defendant appeared to be on the balcony around the time of the deceased's death. By the way, the testimony from that young eyewitness moving to the USA was solid. Either he's a lawyer, understands legal logic, or he was briefed by the prosecution very well. He understood that his memory is not infallible, but stood by it. Not many eyewitnesses are that confident yet understand the limitations of eyewitness testimony. A lot of eyewitnesses utterly crumble under examination when the idea that what they saw didn't actually happen is floated. Criminal defense attorneys love cases that rely heavily on eyewitnesses for this reason :loveyou:. And it demonstrates how fallible eyewitness testimony can be: if someone can talk you into doubting what you saw, how do you know you're not talking yourself into having seen something?
I also LOL'd (then became depressed and said out loud: "what a peculiar system") that journalists "ambushing" (ie: interviewing) a defendant would result in a judge summoning the manger of those journalists to answer to court. The notion of a journalist answering to a judge gives me chills. I guess Australia doesn't have a very free press, or am I over reacting to wonky, French-like restrictions on how defendants in criminal trials may be portrayed in the media? It was also really amazing that the term "ambushing" was used in a newspaper article in a fashion that the reader would automatically know what it means (I sure as hell didn't; I thought he was assaulted or someone yelled insults at him).
