I think we will hear something very soon. I put the delay down to work load of the judges.
I am still confident they will dismiss the appeal. Circumstantial cases involve lots of pieces of evidence, which individually don't have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, but taken together as a whole as evidence of murder which can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. I think the court will find that it was open to the jury to find him guilty of murder on the evidence.
People have been convicted of murder where no body has been found but the circumstantial evidence is sufficient to prove murder even though the actual death hasn't been proven as there is no dead body by which to prove the death.
As always, value your professional perspective
Circumstantial cases can be difficult to prosecute but as you point out, even in the absence of a body, murder can be proved to the requisite standard.
The issue I personally have with this particular case is that the prosecution spent a great deal of time focusing on proving that Gerard was responsible for Allison's death (and thus met the criteria for unlawful death) but were a little vague when it came to proving intent and if I was on that jury I'm not sure I could have been convinced of intent to kill.
If the ground of appeal dealing with the failure to give a Shepherd Direction in relation to the blood in the car fails (if it was to succeed we would almost certainly see a retrial at best, acquittal at worst) there's no doubt that the prosecution has proved that Gerard unlawfully killed Allison, the defence team has admitted as much. However it is much harder to prove that the accused was responsible for the death of a person than it is to prove that they meant kill.
You'll have to forgive as I haven't gone back over the fine details but I recall 3 main possibilities that the prosecution put forward that may have provided the catalyst for murder -
- Gerard was in dire financial straits and was seeking an insurance payout.
- The almost imminent meeting of Allison and Toni in the coming days.
- Toni's pressure to end the relationship with Allison.
Not knowing how Gerard's mind works, it's of course possible that one (or more) of the above pushed him over the edge but did the prosecution prove intent, to a level that is acceptable to the appellate court? Personally I don't believe so.
Ordinarily you might expect to see a degree of sophistication and pre-meditation when one is motivated by financial greed. I don't believe this is present in this case. To me at least, this seems to be a spur of the moment killing with no evidence whatsoever that this was planned in any great detail, or indeed planned at all.
The possible crossing paths of Allison and Tony, uncomfortable it may have been but is it sufficient to drive a man with no criminal history, no history of violence, to commit murder? Possible? Of course, but I wouldn't hang my hat on it.
As for Toni's pressure, it seemed obvious to me that Gerard was never going to leave Allison but wanted to have his cake and eat it too, so to speak. I cannot be convinced that Toni's charms were persuasive enough to push Gerard to kill Allison. Rightly or wrongly many, many people engage in affairs but in almost all of the cases that I'm aware of where an extra marital/relationship affair led to a homicide, it was the overwhelming urge to be with the illegitimate partner. I don't believe there was ever any genuine desire to leave Allison for Toni, just Gerard telling Toni what she wanted to hear when all the evidence suggested otherwise.
Not for a moment suggesting that Gerard had no intentions of killing Allison, there's a very good chance he did. But to me, a very good chance does not satisfy the element of intent and thus he should instead be found guilty of manslaughter, not murder.
I would say it's more likely than not that we will see a downgrade.
