Scott Watson
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I'm not saying he is completely innocent, I'm just saying this was one of those things where cops close to the situation are pretty sure they have the right guy but their case seems to have been 'proven' mainly because of incompetent defence followed by the intricacies of the legal system the make it very difficult to reverse.
I tend to disagree that it's difficult to reverse. The appeal system is run by highly respected judges who would be well aware of what shit investigations look like. Bain and Lundy both got retrials on the back of such allegations. I trust those judges over the people who comment on the comments part of the Herald and stuff.co.nz Facebook pages any day.
I generally dont bother reading the Scott Watson stories anymore, but it would seem to me that he doesn't have a heap of law experts backing his claims of innocence like Pora, Bain etc did? I could be wrong, because as I've not read a lot on it, of course.
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I think the cries are more for wrongful conviction (which gets confused with innocence)
As I'm sure you are aware, appeals are only based on overturning certain points through permitted new evidence, they aren't retrials.
There is also a lot of circumstantial evidence toward not guilty in this case. Eg how do you murder two young people in the very confined space of a small metal hulled boat rafted to other boats in the dead quiet of night without a single person hearing anything? If you start the engines to move off and murder them elsewhere how did you not wake them when the racket would be huge?
The whole ketch thing is still not properly explained with so many witness sightings (including ones with the victims descriptions) yet the police insist it didn't even exist.
I just think that although he is a creep and fits the bill, taking everything into account I wouldn't convict him beyond reasonable doubt. That 'everything ' has never been placed together in front of a jury. -
@Crucial said in Scott Watson:
I think the cries are more for wrongful conviction (which gets confused with innocence)
As I'm sure you are aware, appeals are only based on overturning certain points through permitted new evidence, they aren't retrials.
There is also a lot of circumstantial evidence toward not guilty in this case. Eg how do you murder two young people in the very confined space of a small metal hulled boat rafted to other boats in the dead quiet of night without a single person hearing anything?I've worked on cases where people have killed other people in a house where others are in the room next door and no one has heard. Add intoxication into that, and the fact one of them was a female and I wouldn't think it adds anything to a defence.
You're right, it is about overturning points of evidence, which if substantial enough would order a retrial. For example, the stomach content stuff in the Lundy trial. Presumably all these things have been put before the highest courts and they have decided that they're not significant enough points of evidence to quash the rest of the conviction.
I'd be quite happy to see a retrial to be honest. It would shut people up one way or another so I don't have to see the guy's mug on the front page of the paper every other day. It would also give it a chance for the evidence to be aired out in court again, rather than just the lopsided arguments from either side.
I just re-read the article on the NZ Herald about Watson and Hope's prison meeting, which apparently Scott Watson had been all for. (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11766026)
Interesting that Hope felt Watson was being elusive about his movements on the 1st of January and a number of other points he was completely silent on. Really? When Watson wanted the meeting as much as Hope did. Just seems mighty fishy to me. It smacks of a guy who can have a public campaign behind him but when he is actually asked to prove it wasn't him, he can't do it.
In the end, he either killed them or he didn't. If he didn't kill them, I'm unsure why he would be elusive about it to Hope. If he got Hope in behind him saying he thought he was innocent, that would provide massive momentum to his case.
Either way, I'm definitely not as well read on this case as I am on the Bain case, so I'm probably the wrong person to be arguing the intricacies of it. My main point is, the guy seems dodgy as hell, and eluding giving the truth. If it were me sitting in there innocent, I'd be screaming to anyone who would listen, not avoiding questions.
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Resurrecting this thread as I stumbled across a long but interesting read that throws some light on something in this case that I had never heard of before.
A little background as to how I found this. You may be aware that Watson has been turned down for parole once again. He is in the catch-22 situation that with taking steps to acknowledge his behaviour and put plans around personal behaviour management on the outside he is considered a threat. To him he won't do that because he still pleads innocence.
It made me wonder why he is clinging on to this so hard when the easy way out is to do some courses and be released.
I then realised that I missed last year that his case has been referred back to the Court of Appeal.This came about after the legal eagles that helped Teina Pora reviewed the DNA evidence in Watson's case and found significant enough to get a former High Court judge to review what they found and recommend royal prerogative for an appeal.
Then I found an article that the legal team had quite a bit more than this to present to the court which intrigued me so I went looking for 'new' theories out of interest.
I found this blog/site https://free-scottwatson.com/ which among a rambling repetitive spiel and conspiratorial conclusions had actually done some digging among police records and described some quite interesting facts that I hadn't heard about.
It is a horrendous read that tries hard to paint itself as not being biased but fails.
However the facts contained within contain a fair bit of stuff that I hadn't heard before around the change of investigative tack regarding a boat of interest, and around Guy Wallace the person and how some that knew him very well quickly informed the police to look in his direction.I'm curious as to what the legal team have now discovered and what may come out in the Court of Appeal.
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Was actually talking to a high court defence lawyer friend of mine on the weekend about this case and learned a hell of a lot of stuff that I didn’t previously know and not sure how many in the public do.
Will have a read of that link you shared and see if anything matches up.
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@crucial said in Scott Watson:
I found this blog/site https://free-scottwatson.com/ which among a rambling repetitive spiel and conspiratorial conclusions had actually done some digging among police records and described some quite interesting facts that I hadn't heard about.
tl;dr version? I got to 'Was Scott Watson just an innocent bystander set-up by a relentless corrupt police force, or does it go much deeper than that?' and closed that tab.
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@antipodean said in Scott Watson:
@crucial said in Scott Watson:
I found this blog/site https://free-scottwatson.com/ which among a rambling repetitive spiel and conspiratorial conclusions had actually done some digging among police records and described some quite interesting facts that I hadn't heard about.
tl;dr version? I got to 'Was Scott Watson just an innocent bystander set-up by a relentless corrupt police force, or does it go much deeper than that?' and closed that tab.
I did warn you of that.
It’s not that difficult to pick out the factual parts though. They are referenced to police files (although we don’t know what is omitted) -
@mn5 said in Scott Watson:
So how come Lundy got a retrial and Watson never has ?
I don’t think it’s are-trial as such but an appeal based on “new” evidence and/or disputed evidence from the trial.
The way it works though is that you don’t redo the whole trial but the points raised are looked at to see if they would have likely caused a different outcome.
Watson had a really shit defence team at his trial. So much of what has come out later they didn’t contest or didn’t see and now he has to prove he didn’t do it rather than provide doubt.
Shit thrown sticks as shown earlier in the thread where posters still refer to the scratches on the hatch which the prosecution used to paint an awful picture of some clawing in desperation to escape. As shown later the hatch didn’t even have a catch, the marks were never shown to be fingernails, the marks were made with the hatch open and witnesses had signed after Davids that their kids had done the damage earlier and Watson had hit them up for repairs.
The appeal judge decided that the defence had ample opportunities to make those points so there was no error in the trial. Also that if they had done so it wasn’t a key piece of evidence that would change the outcome.
They don’t seem to take into account that in a circumstantial case all the little things add up which is odd.
The latest appeal is around DNA because that potentially was a cornerstone of the case and knowledge on the subject has changed since the original trial.
I know some Pictonites that swear he is guilty mainly because they knew of him and he was by most accounts a jerk. He fits the bill nicely. Sounds like Wallace may have been similar.
With Watson though, he left the scene, had opportunity to dispose of the bodies etc so the argument is that he was easier to make a case against. He couldn’t prove he didn’t do something.
As I said in the OP it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if he knows something about what really happened but also knows that the story he has been prosecuted under is far from the truth. -
The more I read the more I'm convinced that there was something else happening there that night which has muddied things. Possibly it was this stuff that was the police deliberately ignored in order to get a clear line to the missing couple.
There are just too many things discovered by investigators and journos since that are unexplained but if you throw them in the mix don't clear Watson, they just cast doubt around witnesses or make their statements wrong. -
@mn5 said in Scott Watson:
So how come Lundy got a retrial and Watson never has ?
In Lundy's case, the original prosecution case was physically impossible, so eventually the courts didn't have much choice.
David Bain was another where each appeal failed, but eventually the last one succeeded on the totality of the case - basically the Privy Council said that individual appeals may not have had enough, but when all the new material and arguments were combined, they
formed Captain Planetmade it hard to conclude that the original conviction was still safe. Notably, and like Lundy, they still ordered a retrial when quashing the conviction as there was still a case to answer, just that it was not clear what the outcome would be and it should be put in front another jury to decide. -
@godder said in Scott Watson:
@mn5 said in Scott Watson:
So how come Lundy got a retrial and Watson never has ?
In Lundy's case, the original prosecution case was physically impossible, so eventually the courts didn't have much choice.
... which begs the question fo how the hell you got a prosecution.
I have a dark sense of humour, but the Lundy Five Hundy was a quality pisstake road race. Pity it got canned.
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@nzzp said in Scott Watson:
@godder said in Scott Watson:
@mn5 said in Scott Watson:
So how come Lundy got a retrial and Watson never has ?
In Lundy's case, the original prosecution case was physically impossible, so eventually the courts didn't have much choice.
... which begs the question fo how the hell you got a prosecution.
I have a dark sense of humour, but the Lundy Five Hundy was a quality pisstake road race. Pity it got canned.
The initial Lundy case was based heavily on science which at the time was considered groundbreaking but has since been disproved around the amount of McDonalds (I presume a hefty amount) found in Christine Lundy's stomach on the night of her murder, and basically working out a time of death based on decomposition. When factored with other stuff such as the DNA evidence on his tools, his precarious financial position and her life insurance policy, I guess the jury just accepted that he drove like a madman but wasn't spotted by many/any witnesses to get there.
Once the initial science was rebuffed, the window of opportunity for him to have done the murder widened significantly, which then arguably made the case against him stronger, once the prosecution owned up to the past screw ups and reliance on science which at the time they didn't know was faulty.
On the Scott Watson note, I still agree with most of my sentiments above, although concede the fingernail thing maybe is no longer a pillar of that as someone quite clearly rebutted the point earlier, and I hadn't read that much about it. Still for mine, leaving early on New Years day, doing a timely deep clean of the boat etc is dodgy as shit.
Interestingly enough, we had a lecture at a course I was on, and the senior officer who gave it painted Guy Wallace, the water taxi driver as a really strange rooster, and one of those people who wanted to continually inject themselves into the inquiry in an ongoing basis - particularly around miraculous memories he came up with later in the investigation which completely changed from his statement given in the early days of the inquiry. I see Wallace topped himself earlier this year, and it has since come to light that he was facing indecent assault charges (obviously never tested in court).
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/125158076/sounds-murders-key-witness-allegedly-indecently-assaulted-young-girlNot admitting to a crime isn't completely fatal to getting parole, but it also clearly doesn't help one's cause - David Tamahere never admitted murdering the two Swedish tourists, but was deemed low enough risk to be paroled in due course (incidentally, from my knowledge of that case, this is a far less secure conviction than Watson, albeit Tamahere was a piece of trash who raped an elderly lady prior to the murders). From memory, Watson fell into the "high risk" category a few years back when assessed by a psychiatrist, which would cover a much wider span of risk than whether he admitted it or not.
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@aucklandwarlord I've been reading through old material and trial summaries to try and understand more of what really happened rather than the tainted views after years of people writing books and theories.
What is absolutely clear as day is that Watson was/is a piece of shit. I have no doubt that one way or the other he would have ended up inside.At the time I seem to remember that evidence being tainted slightly by police actions that amounted to a smear campaign which provided a bit of sympathy in his direction and the possibility of him being a fall guy for a tunnel vision investigation.
I am forming a fairly clear picture that the case itself (like Lundy) was extremely lucky to get a conviction and that key 'evidence' to support the pillars of the case were misrepresented (I not claiming wrongdoing just that they were overstated and it was up to the jury to decide on, which they did). I expect the DNA evidence to be declared of little value.
I'm still getting through stuff but the other clear thing is that Wallace is unreliable. Very unreliable. He changes his story early on then changes his changes later. I don't think he initially realised what a key piece of the case his statements were going to be. To me that throws a lot of doubt on his timings and descriptions.
The parallels with Lundy and Bain are quite strong. Possibly right man, wrong story somehow gets past first jury despite a crap prosecution (partly due to a crap defence) then provides endless debate because case has so many holes.
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@crucial said in Scott Watson:
The parallels with Lundy and Bain are quite strong. Possibly right man, wrong story somehow gets past first jury despite a crap prosecution (partly due to a crap defence) then provides endless debate because case has so many holes.
For mine, Bain walked because of shoddy police work more than anything (it should be noted I'm generally loath to criticise the police but in this case I genuinely believe a poor job was done - a firearms residue swab of his hands within 6 hours of the murder would have made it an open and shut case). The Crown case didn't materially change between trials. It seemed a genuine case of not being able to polish a turd when it came to the second trial. Almost all evidence supporting Bain was circumstantial at best, but he got a friendly jury as well, which happens.
I feel Lundy got his retrial primarily because of the significant changes in science more so than anything. From following his retrial closely, it didn't seem that the police investigation was particularly poor, they just hung their hat on science they thought they were told by experts that they could rely on, and then the rest of the evidence pointed to the most obvious suspect.
I definitely think Scott Watson is the most likely of these three to be wrongfully imprisoned though, if I had to choose.
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@aucklandwarlord said in Scott Watson:
@crucial said in Scott Watson:
The parallels with Lundy and Bain are quite strong. Possibly right man, wrong story somehow gets past first jury despite a crap prosecution (partly due to a crap defence) then provides endless debate because case has so many holes.
For mine, Bain walked because of shoddy police work more than anything (it should be noted I'm generally loath to criticise the police but in this case I genuinely believe a poor job was done - a firearms residue swab of his hands within 6 hours of the murder would have made it an open and shut case). The Crown case didn't materially change between trials. It seemed a genuine case of not being able to polish a turd when it came to the second trial. Almost all evidence supporting Bain was circumstantial at best, but he got a friendly jury as well, which happens.
I feel Lundy got his retrial primarily because of the significant changes in science more so than anything. From following his retrial closely, it didn't seem that the police investigation was particularly poor, they just hung their hat on science they thought they were told by experts that they could rely on, and then the rest of the evidence pointed to the most obvious suspect.
I definitely think Scott Watson is the most likely of these three to be wrongfully imprisoned though, if I had to choose.
Same - Lundy didn't really have an alternative option, David Bain's defence hung on the police not being able to disprove Robin Bain as the possible killer, so I can see how the jury decided that was reasonable doubt, while Watson's looks pretty weak compared to the other two. In theory a defendant isn't required to prove someone else may have done it, but if there's a strong circumstantial case, an alternative theory can be the best defence available.