My first point here, Veggiefan, made with a wink, is that if you want us arbitrarily to take the median of the stated time range when it comes to fixing when he throttled her, you must also allow us arbitrarily to take the median of the stated throttling duration.
I personally don't think the median is relevant in either case. The truth lies somewhere in the range stated.
Yes, but nobody seems to know where in the range. It is obvious that pressing the neck for one second is unlikely to kill, and that pressing it for a long time is likely to do so. Agreed that he should not have been doing it all, but given that he did, how should he have known when to stop?
I am frankly annoyed by people here who claim that because he has a Ph.D he should be clever enough to know these things. I have a Ph.D (in early 13th-century musical notation) and I know for certain that my studies didn't include the length of time it takes to strangle a young woman.
On the contrary, I would have assumed that the body going limp is a sign that the victim has passed out (like a Victorian woman in need of smelling salts) and that it is time to stop. I had no idea that strangulation can, as in JY's case, cause death from heart attack rather than from asphyxiation - and I'm a well-educated person in later life - at least the ordinary "man in the street" that the courts sometimes refer to.
All of this is important because, if VT's
intention was murder, I'd not have expected him to stop at what could have merely been a faint, but to make sure the job was done properly by further physical assault.
My second point is that if you consciously do a potentially lethal action for any length of time capable of resulting in death you are guilty of murder, not manslaughter, if death results.
That's not what the law says. Intention is the key issue.
If you ignore faulty electrical wiring in your ice-cream shop, and a customer dies through electrocution when opening a fridge door, you will not be charged with murder because there was no intention to kill. There was gross negligence, perhaps recklessness, quite possibly manslaughter, but there was no intent to kill.
Accepted.
There is no such thing as an action "which can result in manslaughter". Actions result in death. Whether it is murder or manslaughter depends on whether the killer ought to have realised it was liable to result in death or serious injury.
Agreed. What I cannot honestly say is at which precise second VT should have made this realisation.
Once again, let's remember, we can't read minds, so the law tells us to assume that people act with ordinary human awareness unless it is shown, for instance, that they are mentally abnormal. Which, once again, is not claimed in this case.
And, as I say, I am not aware of how long it takes to strangle someone to death (was it aneurin who said that the sheep he strangled took much longer than he expected?), nor was I aware that a heart attack might bring life to an end much more quickly than one might expect strangulation to take.
(For avoidance of doubt, I'm not trying to defend VT, but neither am I one of those posting here saying I hope he gets done for murder: nothing on this earth can now help JY, but there is no point in compounding the tragedy by falsely convicting VT for murder, if that was not his intention).
