Guilty or not?
June 27th, 2004 at 10:31 am by David FarrarUMR 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.
No tag for this post.
June 27th, 2004 at 11:25 pm
Watson – guilty/good conviction
Vote:Bain – guilty/good conviction
Elis – don’t know/bad conviction (but deserved 5-10 for that jersey).
June 28th, 2004 at 7:19 am
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 miscarrige of justice here.
Vote:June 28th, 2004 at 8:23 am
Watson – definately guilty (many studies have shown the unreliablity 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 – definately 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.
Vote:June 28th, 2004 at 3:44 pm
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 (see my latest posting) 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.
Vote: