edit, wrong thread bugger

Basically if it’s abolished there seems to be enough flexibility in the law for judges to respond to mitigating circumstances. If they don’t suck that is.

Once again, this is justifiable force and is a complete defense, not a provocation defense. If you kill someone who was attacking your child you are not guilty of a crime if the steps you took to save your child were reasonable. If you killed someone because you flipped out after he or she refused to babysit your child (the Rongonui case) then that is one in which a provocation defense could apply. If you chase after a tagger with a knife and the tagger winds up dead (the Bruce Emery case) then that is also a defense in which provocation could apply.

As a layperson I make no comment about the strategy chosen, its efficacy or otherwise. I do comment on your use of language, though – ‘vile’ is very prejorative, and implies moral failure and perhaps unprofessionalism within the defence legal team. Was that your intention?

Frankly, alex Masterley I’m surprised he doesn’t pass the test for insanity.

[DPF: It is clear to me that the defence strategy was set by the defendent, not his lawyers.]

This impotent prick always thought he was better than he was ,had delusions of his ability,in short ,thought he was a senior in his field of chioce.
Problem was he was far from it.
Work was going from bad to worse and as his partner was moving on from him and upward ,above what ever sick evaulted scenario his warped world was in his mind.
He murdered her because she was already way above his level and his tantrum ended in her demise.
The trial was his last chance,in his mind, to try and show everyone he was the interlectial he never was, not before and not during the trial.
In the end it was a master stroke for the family of the deceased, as he came across as what he was ,a sad little wanker,not worthy of sympathy and quite simply pathetic.
I wish the Eliott family all the best wishes for there future,good New Zealanders who never ever deserved this in their lives
As for the defense lawyer,I hope you remember your part in this disgrace for along time, because I wont forget the level of your professionalism, it was poor.

Never a problem Cerium as long as you always make sure you have at least two shells in your gun.

I think it gets dicey if you killed someone after the imminent danger had passed. If you killed out of revenge, retribution, even anger, that moves into the same territory of the offender.

An admittedly unlikely scenario – you arrive on a scene just after a murder of someone in your family and due to “provocation” kill the offender, if someone related to the offender then arrived could they be justified killing you?

It seems to me that it should probably be there, but the standards should be extremely high. As with P-induced psychosis, or drunken driving leading to death, the question arises of ‘to what extent is the perpetrator responsible for having put themselves in the position where they were a danger to others?’ If you have hot temper, and you know it, then even going around to someone’s house to have a screaming argument at them could be seen as a form of premeditation (particularly if you are in the habit of carrying a knife).

The truth is often lost anyway, since violent acts are often shrouded in the mystery of lost memory and falsified evidence. Weatherston could have put scissors in the dead girl’s hand, he could even have stabbed himself with them first to make it look real. Or in the constructed example of the mother avenging her, who could really know except through confession, which blow it was that killed him, and what the intention of the blow was, or if he was incapacitated at the time? How often does one hit someone over the head with a baseball bat, to get a feel for what a killing blow feels like? How many of us have been in life-or-death struggles to know exactly how much violence is too much?

But sometimes there are pretty clear-cut cases – anyone can see stabbing and mutilating a defenseless girl hundreds of times is too much, even if we might think a punch in the mouth was warranted (I don’t think that, but I’m aware of a lot of people who do think like that).

However, by way of hypothetical example, without provocation, if Sophie’s mum went into the room during the attack and knocked Weatherston out with a baseball bat, that would be self-defence. However, once Weatherston was clearly incapacitated (and thus no longer a threat), if she hit him again on the head to intentionally kill him after what he had done to Sophie (an ordinary human response to such evil), that would be murder requiring (under present caselaw) a life sentence. If she could rely on provocation, it would certainly succeed and the judge could sentence her to anything they saw fit from a discharge without conviction through to a fine, community service, or jail for any period up to and including life, if the circumstances required.

Provocation must stay, albeit perhaps not in its present form.

“A commentator today talked about this case and put the supposition that if someone had entered the room while weatherston was carrying out his murderous deed, and killed weatherston to prevent or put a stop to the attack, surely this would be an act that would attract the defence of provocation.”

Interesting. I got into a conversation about this at a party last night, and I raised a similar scenario. My example had someone killing Weatherstone after he had clearly already killed Ms Elliot, so that the plea of “I was defending Sophie’ would not apply. The people I was talking to pointed out that it could still be self-defence, because he might want to kill you for witnessing the murder. But I still think it’s a worthwhile line of enquiry – suppose, for instance, if a friend of hers had shot him while he was being led away by police.

It’s worth thinking about this before we decide that the defence of provocation has no merit.

Any reasonable person can be provoked into actions they later despise themselves for.

A commentator today talked about this case and put the supposition that if someone had entered the room while weatherston was carrying out his murderous deed, and killed weatherston to prevent or put a stop to the attack, surely this would be an act that would attract the defence of provocation.

Am I being too simplistic?

Personally, being a bit of a soft lefty, I struggle to see how he could have been in his right mind. In fact I struggle to see that he’s even in his right mind now, since his perceptions of right and wrong are so much at variance with everyone else’s.

But then, I’m not averse to the idea that some people really are just bad. The expert defense witness said he wasn’t insane, and that kind of suggests that they couldn’t find anyone to say it, so the best they could come up with was someone prepared to say that he had a narcissistic personality. Which is far from insane, it’s actually pretty normal. It’s called being a selfish shit.

He wasn’t insane. The tests for insanity weren’t met.

I am not so certain that the provocation defence is doomed however. There may be some circumstances were it may be able to continue as notwithstanding what the Law Commission say, and I will be re-reading their papers, there are some circumstances were the reasonable person may be provoked to the extent that control is lost leading to the death of another party.

In any event the removal of the provocation defence will not stop the deceased in a murder or manslaughter trial being maligned. Robin Bain is an example.