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kiwiblog.co.nz
June 27, 2004
Guilty or not?
by David Farrar
UMR in January 2004 did
a poll on whether people think Watson, Bain and Ellis were guilty of the
crimes they were convicted of.
The article is somewhat
useless though because they have combined those who say they are unsure with
those who think someone is not guilty. There is a big difference between 55%
think guilty, 45% not guilty and 55% guilty, 40% not sure and 5% not guilty.
Anyway the percentage
guilty for each (comparison to April 2002 in brackets) is:
Watson 44% (59%)
Ellis 23% (25%)
Bain around 33%
For what it is worth I
have no doubt at all that Bain was guilty. I also have no doubt that Ellis
should not have been convicted.
Everything I have read
and heard about Watson suggest he is an extremely violent, almost
psychopathic, individual. The contradictory evidence of Guy Wallace has
muddied things, but recalling Hope's DNA was found on his boat, I think it is
a safe conviction.
Posted
by David P. Farrar at June 27, 2004 10:31 AM
Followup Comments
GPT
at June 27, 2004
Scott Watson - guilty/good
conviction
David Bain - guilty/good conviction
Peter Ellis - don't know/bad conviction (but
deserved 5-10 for that jersey).
Pete
at June 28, 2004
Same here, on the first
two - definitely. But the unabated PC
witch hunt that was the Ellis case has not convinced me. I think there was a
serious miscarriage of justice here.
Stephen
Baird at June 28, 2004
Watson - definitely
guilty (many studies have shown the unreliability of eye witnesses - physical
evidence such as hair/DNA is far more convincing)
Bain - less certain,
but believe he had his days in court and had every chance to convince a jury
that he was innocent.
Ellis - definitely
innocent - just reading the part of the transcripts of what the children said
had happened - it is impossible that one staff member at child care could
have done that without the other staff noticing - remember all the other
staff were innocent. Problem was that Peter Ellis comes across as a bit of an
effette nancy boy - some of NZ society would convict just on that.
greyshade
at June 28, 2004
I'd probably agree with
all three but haven't really followed the Bain case closely enough to give
authoritative opinion. I personally don't believe juror's go anywhere near
applying the "reasonable doubt" threshold and we would have many
more miscarriages of justice but for the fact that most criminal cases are
relatively straightforward and "open and shut" by the time they go
to the jury.
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