kporte

These threads get emotive, I don't think this would have offended your average Jock.
Actually we do have a reputation as excellent fighters and the SAS have an extremely high percentage of Scottish soldiers.
I am not sure if this is a good thing or not

the troubadour

You most certainly do and by all accounts a reputation well deserved.

kporte

Not me I should add, I'm a pussy

mr mover

I got out of jury duty once by telling them my Neighbour ,is a member of the "Finks".............mm

lapin_windstar

But this is just Ross McToss, isn't it? If they'd been convicted you wouldn't be trotting out all this guff about how easy it is for lawyers. You can't just front up in court with a posh accent and a nice suit and yell "all coppers are bastards" and trounce the prosecution. Jurors aren't as thick as you're making them out to be.

Having said that, I think we're miles away from where we started: at least we've come to a shared understanding of what self-defence is and why self-defence to an assault isn't a criminal act. You just disagree with the jury over whether the force that the cops used was excessive or not. I don't see any reason why you should think they're wrong, but at least that's a rational reason for disagreement, unlike the "it's always illegal to hit cops" and "if my dad was getting beaten up, I'd stand aside and follow up with a strongly worded letter of complaint" guff that we were getting from other posters earlier on!

kporte

Agreed. Excessive force by the police is not on. They are meant to protect and serve. The jury did not see this happen.
I'm frankly amaazed at the posters who clearly are better informed than the jurors, quite amazing.
The jocks involved appear to be scum by the way, but that is another matter

Kalenge

Thousands support protection for police in WA - well done to them.
http://www.westtv.com.au/?Channel=Ne...0&Format=flash

This notion posted earlier on in this thread that 3 policeman were batoning the one thug when the headbutt occurred is just plain incorrect. Watch the video again. The thug had pummeled 3 punches into the policeman prior to him getting his taser out.

And this idea that the son was somehow justified to use cowardly excessive force because his father was about to be tasered which would have been dangerous as he had a weak heart ... yet he's the one willingly joining into the fracas and landing punches on the policeman in the first place.

I agree that justice will be served when the family gets hounded out of Australia.

kporte

watch the video that is only PART of the picture you mean?

Baz

I have been in he job almost ten years, so I have a reasonable working knowledge of court process (all be it I am not a police prosecutor).

Every day around Australia, there are numerous cases, where defendants are acquitted or found 'not guilty,' where they are in all likelihood as guilty as sin. The fact of the matter is that most of them are relatively low profile cases, where someone has not been paralyzed, so we never hear anything about them.

I will give you a few recent examples of incidents which highlights my point :

Case 1 : An individual goes and floggs another individual, evidentially speaking we have the complainants statement, photographs of injuries, doctors statement speaking to the nature of the injuries, and when the offender was apprehended, in a properly conducted interview they made full admissions, which corroborated the version of events made by the complainant in their statement. With this evidence there is more than enough evidence to charge the offender.

Case 2 : An individual goes and steals a car, and is subsequently apprehended out with the vehicle. There is a complainants statement (owner of the vehicle) which does not identify the offender stealing the car, but puts them at the scene at the time it was taken. Offender is subsequently apprehended in relation to the matter, and in a properly conducted interview he makes full admissions, corroborates the statement of the complainant (evidentially speaking), and states where the vehicle can now be located. The vehicle was subsequently located in the stated location by officers. Once again, with this evidence there is more than enough evidence to charge the offender.

Both offenders (like the McLeod's if the newspaper reports are anything to go by) have a criminal history that you could wallpaper your house with, and though this cannot be used in court, we can safely say we are not dealing with re-incarnations of the Virgin Mary, or Ghandi (unless we want to be incredibly naive).

Both people go to court, and can you believe it, plead not guilty. At the end of the day when it all goes to court, the individuals concerned may be found guilty, or they may be acquitted like the McLeod's. As with any case, there are a number of ways a smart defense lawyer can try to have their client acquitted, they can give the witnesses a really hard time in the witness box, and wear them down (last time I was in the box I was there for three hours.) They can (as was the case with the McLeod's) focus on discrepancies between witnesses evidence, and believe it or not discrepancies between witnesses are only natural ; people see things from different angles, they remember things differently, and when your heart is going like a clapper and the adrenaline is pumping, the chemicals going through your brain have an effect on memory (I don't have a link to the research, but I am reliably informed this to be the case). Lawyers make it look to a jury, like the fact there are discrepancies mean the witnesses are lying and thereby tarnish their credibility. Lawyers can scrutinize the police procedure and try and find holes in it, or they can see if there is a loop hole in legislation which they can take advantage of to get their client off. There are a million and one angles lawyers can go for, and the more clued up they are as lawyers the more likelihood they have of their client being acquitted.

Back to my cases ; who knows what the result will be in court, like anything they could go either way, nothing surprises me anymore, it depends how good their lawyer is, how good the witnesses are, and so on, and so on. I can GUARANTEE you one thing though, if both individuals concerned are not guilty of the crimes for which they have been charged, I will personally give you a full years worth of my wages (which is not very much I'm afraid). So the point I am making, is that just because they may be acquitted, does not mean they did not commit the crime.

There is an obvious parallel to the case with the McLeod's. If I was their defense lawyer, I would try and ensure the CCTV was not entered into evidence by whatever means possible, but if it had to be entered in evidence, as it was, I would not bother trying to argue with it as the footage does not lie. Instead as the defense lawyer has done, I would have to resort to focusing on what took place prior to the recording being started, and go from there. In this case the defense lawyer has obviously seen the self defense angle and worked it successfully.

I heard of another case that went to court in my area the other day, some bloke found with nunchucas in a street or some other public place (for those who don't know nunchucas are martial arts weapons, basically two heavy bits of wood or metal connected by a cord or chain which are designed and used to clobber people with). The offender in question had numerous previous convictions for being in possession of offensive weapons, and whilst I appreciate this cannot be brought out in court, the Magistrate acquitted the person on the grounds that he / she believed the chain / cord to be too weak for the weapon to be used as it was designed, so the offender was acquitted. Though the person was acquitted, do you really honestly think think that in all likelihood they were not guilty of being in possession of an offensive weapon?

Like I mentioned, just because he got his clients acquitted, and just like the people I have charged may be acquitted, and the person with the offensive weapon was acquitted, it really does not mean they did not commit the crimes, they were just smart enough to get a good lawyer and work the system to their advantage..

kporte

Absolutely. Or the cops waded in with excessive force.

Baz

Interesting point, so maybe it comes down to who's story you believe ; the McLeod's, with their criminal history of violence, and the CCTV footage showing them behaving like animals, or the police.

I know the police are not perfect, and mistakes have been made, but I would like to think they are more credible than the likes of the McLeod's.

kporte

I don't actually believe anyone on this thread is defending the McLeods. They seem questionable sorts at best. People like this are common, in all senses of the word. The police must be beyond this however and it this case it seems they were not. Dodgy cops need to be rooted out, they are meant to serve us.
I happen to believe that these scum were as guilty as sin too, but gung ho cops waded in truncheons/tazers blazing. That is not on, I have witnessed it myself.

the troubadour

I feel that there can be perhaps no real meeting of minds on this.....we are all going over the same territory.People will believe what they wish but as i think we agree it is much bigger than the McLeods which people seem a little over focused on and can understand to an extent why.
There has been some debate in recent times with regards to the over zealous use of tazers in Canada resulting in deaths.All too easy to zap someone than to attempt other methods..of course there are times to use these weapons and i refer only in the general sense here of their use.

kporte

I think our minds may meet here. The bigger picture.
I think the world over, the justice systems are severely flawed. No easy answer

fraser

Their history has nothing to do with this, and the jury wouldn't have known of it.

Someone said the police in Perth do have a known history though, so your point may be valid, and going by the jury's decision it's quite obvious that they saw the police as less credible.

I've witnessed the police kicking the shit out of someone on more than one occasion(not in Australia mind).

What if members of the jury had, or had second hand knowledge of such incidents?

Then maybe their prior conduct had prejudiced the case against them.