Posts by HORansome
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Hard News: The war over a mystery, in reply to Islander,
My nom-de-plume is HORansome, not "HOR Ransome."
As for the expert testimony material spiel, as you put it, maybe I am being an arsehole, but that's a separate issue from that which I raised, which is a question about how we assess the reliability of such testimony. You might well want to assert that water-boaters always get it right; given what I've read, I'd be surprised if they do better than the norm for other such expert witnesses.
(Which ignores the other, possibly less contentious issue, which is that in a court of law, witnesses are often coached to phrase their testimony as being certain when, if asked in other contexts, they might be more cautious in conveying what they believe they saw.)
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Hard News: The war over a mystery, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Well, the golden thread of justice is that a person is innocent until proven guilty. What counts as being proven guilty is decided by the courts. So, whilst I agree that the burden of proof is on the Crown pre-trial, the burden of proof changes post trial to those who would disagree with the trial verdict (which is why we have a rigorous appeal system which requires you to go through substantive hoops).
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Hard News: The war over a mystery, in reply to Russell Brown,
Oh, I agree, if the police tricked people into identifying Watson that certainly would be a problem for the police case but a problem for the police case isn’t necessarily a problem with the overall evidence. It might well be the case that Watson was fitted up but that there was sufficient evidence to convict anyway.
As I said, I’m not saying I’m convinced that case for Watson being the killer is ironclad. I’m just not convinced by the counter-argument which claims he was innocent.
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Hard News: The war over a mystery, in reply to Ross Francis,
Ah, the old "If you knew what I knew, you'd whistle a different tune." 9/11 Truthers pull that one on me all the time.
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Hard News: The war over a mystery, in reply to Ross Francis,
Saying that as Hunter was never sued over his book is also a bit of a red-herring; NASA doesn't sue over documentaries that claim the Moon Landings were faked, but from that we can't say there's a case for a Moon Landing hoax. It just means that NASA (and, by extension in this example, the prosecution) either don't feel the need to rehash something that has been to trial or consider the claims to be warrantless and thus not worthy of their time.
With respect to the eye-witness testimony, it's a red herring insofar as if it is meant to discredit the case against Watson, it is the wrong kind of counter-argument to look at as it fails at the job of showing that Watson can't have been involved; the quality (or lack thereof) of the eye-witness testimony doesn't in anyway reflect upon the quality (or lack thereof) of the DNA evidence, for example.
In re the cleanliness of the boat, what was suspicious about it was the nature in which certain surfaces had been cleaned. The DNA evidence supports the thesis that the boat had been cleaned (albeit not perfectly) to get rid of the evidence Smart and Hope were there.
I'm not saying it is a sure thing that Watson did it; I'm just not convinced by the counter-arguments and I do think the burden of proof is on those who would argue that, in this case, the Crown got it wrong (I stress in this case).
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Hard News: The war over a mystery, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
The problem here is that whilst we all have anecdotal evidence that seems to indicate that "Professionals of group X never get these things wrong," the actual studies of such professionals (usually undertaken by cognitive psychologists) show that professionals are only slightly better than the laity in these kinds of issues; once you start polling the population of experts at large the error rates go up significantly.
I've always thought the eye-witness testimony was a bit of a red-herring in this case; the scrupulously cleaned boat that belonged to Watson, plus the DNA evidence is evidence which is independent of the eye-witness testimony (i.e. it is a different argument for the guilt of Scott Watson) and that evidence is much more reliable.
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Hard News: The war over a mystery, in reply to Russell Brown,
Whoops. When I said "Bain" I meant "Ellis." I'm not sure what I think about the Bain trial, truth be told. I'm somewhat surer about Watson, mostly due to issues around the issue of the scratch marks in the boat and the DNA.
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Hard News: The war over a mystery, in reply to Jonty,
Whilst I'll agree that the Bain case is of a similar mould, I've never been convinced of the innocence of Scott Watson (although I know a few people whose intellect I respect who have their doubts).
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Hard News: The war over a mystery, in reply to Russell Brown,
Yeah, as I said in the preamble, I'm not endorsing the family member's view; the actual police case seems to rest upon a series of quite astonishing events, each of which is unlikely, the sum total of which is very unlikely indeed.
What is interesting is how the police and their associates (my family member was in admin and not a police officer) aren't very happy to admit that, maybe they got it wrong. It's not as if its the old guard, either; frankly, the Teapot Scandal and the Urewera Trial can also be seen as the police trying to say "We were right, really, even if other authorities have good grounds to say we were wrong."
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Preamble: The following comment should not be seen as me endorsing the views of the person I am representing, especially given my scepticism of the abilities of the New Zealand Police force...
A family member of mine worked for the police at the time of the Crewe murders and is still adamant to this day Thomas did it but that the police bungled the investigation, leading to them fitting him up for a crime they sincerely believed he had actually committed.