Wow. Immediately eligible for parole.
Well, I guess this kind of nixes the argument that she may not have been guilty of anything except being foreign and scared of and manipulated by the police. Oh I;m sure some will say she just pled because the risk was too great but if her case was so solid...
Sorry to push, but could you explain how it "kind of nixes the argument that she may not have been guilty of anything except being foreign and scared of and manipulated by the police"?
Was she a small foreign woman in an area where she had no family and did not speak the language fluently? I get the impression from news that this was the case.
Can a woman being held involuntarily by a powerful group be made to feel some intimidation or pressure? And in this case was there a deliberate attempt by police to apply pressure? It seems to be the case here.
Do the facts of the "confession" that she produced under pressure match what a person would consider reasonably likely? Her confession does not actually make much sense, it does not look like she was recounting facts. It looks more like a cop took advantage.
1) The body was not found for weeks, so he was not buoyant. In other words he had a low fat ratio on his body. He may have been wearing a lot of clothing and that would have made it hard to swim. He may have been drinking too. A drunk person falling into very cold water with a lot of clothing can drown easily enough, but if he is really drunk and negatively buoyant than he is going to go under water quickly.
2) The drain plug theory is mentioned in several comments. Imagine a kayak with the marketing pitch "Comes with a drain plug that, when removed, causes the kayak to sink quickly".
3) The guy was pretty big and would have been less stable in his kayak. She was very small and would have had more stability. Still, imagine the scenario pictured in the confession. If he were above water, and panicking he might have approached her kayak and would have overturned it obviously, that didn't happen.
4) He supposedly asked her to call 911. Would he have done that while he was flailing? Or was he holding onto some flotation object? Hard to picture a drowning person asking somebody to call 911. It sounds more like the kind of fake detail that a person from another country might concoct if they wanted to add local credibility to a confession. He would have known that 911 would be little help, she might not have known that.
Police do have a well deserved reputation for taking advantage of vulnerable people. It looks like that is what happened here. People who need to always take the side of police, even when the police are victimizing somebody, are only creating an atmosphere that perpetuates the problem.
I am curious how somebody who does not see any problems in this case would view a case where the woman was American. Just last year I think a dozen or more Oakland cops were criticized for having sex with an underaged 'prostitute'. Some of them may have even lost their jobs. Would a person say that the girl there was victimizing the police by complaining? Or perhaps was she justified in complaining because she was American and American cops should not abuse American women, but foreign women are fair game?
