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| For obvious reasons, the following diary contains no names. It also contains no specific dates or places. |
Defence deconstructed Crown's scenario of the murder. He emphasised the point that Witness 34 had said that Accused A had asked if he could give Accused B a lift to the station just before the meeting with Deceased. Why, he asked, if these two had planned to murder Deceased, was Accused A asking someone else to take Accused B away from the Business Premises? The stressing of this point raised another possibility in my mind - that Witness 34 had lied about Accused A asking him to take Accused B to the station! If that was so, it could implicate the accused even more!
Defence also tried to bolster the credibility of some witnesses, such as Witness 38, who in his first statement had said he cut the chain sold to Accused A into three pieces, only changing his statement later at police insistence to say that he wasn't sure if he cut it into two or three pieces. Defence said clearly he would have remembered better closer to the event, and he was unequivocal that he had cut the chain into three pieces. And without the chain, clearly there was no real connection between Accused A and the body of Deceased.
Defence made a lengthy argument about the sighting of a tall man at the Restaurant by Witnesses 44 and 45. Defence said there was no way one could reasonably conclude that was not Deceased. Similar argument was made about Witness 47 and the possible sighting of a man who resembled Deceased at the service station after the meeting with Accused A. On this point, Defence stated the police investigated the phone calls made from the public phone there, but pointed out that Deceased had a toll-free number which could access his home phone voicemail, and that toll-free calls were not recorded on the telephone company's call records, so it was possible Deceased had made a call from there.
Defence attacked the sightings of the boat at Business Premises as all being vague and consistent with the boat being there up to two months before the critical date.
Defence referred to Crown's statement that the Crown didn't have to establish a motive and said that even though Crown tried to establish one, there simply was no motive at all. Defence argued that Security Company was going bankrupt and there was no money for Accused A to be siphoning off for himself. The "lucrative" new contract that Crown argued had been hidden from Deceased was in fact known to Deceased, and wasn't that lucrative anyway. The web site business was appallingly bad, so there was no motive to steal that either.
Defence explained the lie Accused A told to his girlfriend about not purchasing chain as the immediate panic reaction of an innocent man when questioned about something in an accusative tone.
Defence said that the phone call made by Accused A to Deceased's mobile phone simply could not be explained by Crown's fanciful scenario of ringing to search for the phone on the body. The only possible explanation for Accused A ringing Deceased at 10:55pm was that he obviously thought Deceased was still alive. As for the location of that call, picked up from a mobile phone base station near the river where Deceased's body was found, Defence said that the maps produced by the telephone companies were clearly unreliable, as they changed the shown coverage areas depending on who prepared the maps and when, and they were based on computer simulations rather than measuring in the field. Even so, the coverage area of the tower that picked up this call extended as far south as a small town where Accused A's father lived, and what more natural place for him to have been that night?
Defence outlined that in order for a murder conviction, we must be sure there were not other possible explanations for the death of Deceased. On that front, consider the atrocious alibi given by Witness 35, who, Defence claimed, had every motivation to want Deceased dead. Defence asked us if we could believe the innocent testimony of a convicted perjurer! He believed that Deceased had informed against him to the Police Integrity Comission, and that belief was the important thing, whether or not Deceased actually had informed. The conviction for lying under oath had led to a prison term and destroyed his life and reputation. What more motive could anyone want to kill someone? Defence said that he was not suggesting Witness 35 had killed Deceased, but that given such a clear motive for someone else, and no motive whatsoever for Accused A to kill Deceased, could we really convict Accused A?
Defence mentioned the phone taps and bugs in the Business Premises, which failed to record any incriminating evidence against Accused A even though they were in place for nearly two months. Crown had argued that, given the admission by Accused A and B that they were aware of the taps and bugs, they were careful not to say anything incriminating. Defence said how much more likely is it that they didn't say anything incriminating simply because they were innocent?
Defence deconstructed the 40 circumstances in the Crown's "cable of evidence", one by one. Defence noted that some of these strands seemed to be simple repetitions of the same thing, while others had no bearing whatsoever on the guilt or otherwise of Accused A - one such being that Deceased's girlfriend made a call to Accused A's mobile phone at 02:04. Partway through going through the 40 circumstances, we ended for the day.
In discussions in the jury room today, we could start to see people's opinions crystallising. Some of us were saying how ridiculous Defence's attempted deconstructions of the evidence were, while others were expressing doubts. Juror A said he hoped the judge would give us some direction on what constitutes murder, because as far as he was concerned, Accused B helped Accused A dump Deceased's body, but didn't necessarily help to kill him. He said he couldn't call that murder, no matter what the law said.
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