The Defence Will State Their Case

[Leonora]

Didn't he plead guilty to the porn charges when the case came to court?

You can be forgiven for not having all the "facts" of this case at your fingertips, but this discussion has been somewhat derailed. To clarify: two different porn allegations were made public - adult porn, and child porn. We haven't previously used the word "adult", because it was clear from the context what was intended. Furthermore, there were allegations relating to prostitutes. These belong together with the adult porn, since in neither case was there any suggestion of any law being broken.

The child porn would have been illegal, had it existed. Vincent Tabak did indeed plead guilty to the charge of possessing illegal child images, or at least the media reported that he did. Whether you think his trial and conviction for this offence, several years after his conviction for the murder of Joanna Yeates, is weird, seems to depend on how credulous you are. Once again, no witness was produced to testify under oath that these illegal images had actually been found on his computer. None of the news media found this odd - but I do. Any normal defence counsel would have challenged the prosecution to produce this witness right from the start.

I don't want to spend time on this issue, as some people will consider it speculative. What is 100 percent certain, however, is that NEITHER the child porn NOR the adult porn (and associate prostitute trysts) could have existed at all. If police really had found illegal child porn on his computer, then they could have produced it during the murder trial as inescapable evidence of his bad character. There would have been no need for the lawyers to waste time arguing backwards and forwards, repeatedly, about whether to tell the jury about the adult porn and the prostitutes, as they evidently did, if the prosecution already had such strong evidence of bad character to produce against him. Therefore, this evidence did not exist, and therefore the adult porn and the prostitutes also had to be equally phoney.

[mrswah]

I'm not quite sure what to say to that. I guess it feels to me that it's just logical that (at least) the large majority of people that plead guilty do so because they are. I guess in the States people might plead guilty to avoid a likely death sentence but I can't think of a good reason to do so here. In what situation do you think that you would admit to murder when you hadn't committed the crime?

I'm wracking my brain and but I can't think of any proven miscarriage of justice i which the person pleaded guilty in a court of law.

I would agree with you that most people who plead guilty probably are guilty, but I'm sure there are exceptions.

In what situation might I admit to a crime that I hadn't done?  Well,  I sincerely hope I am never put to the test. However, if I had undergone several days of relentless questioning, gone without sleep, and had perhaps been given medication too, I might go slightly mad, especially if it was my first time in custody, and I could hardly believe what was happening to me.

Also, if I knew that somebody on the outside might threaten me or my family if I didn't plead guilty, I might conclude that a prison sentence was preferable to spending the rest of my life in fear that I, or a member of my family might be "bumped off".

But then, I'm a bit of a coward, AND I have a very vivid imagination!

[[...]]

You can be forgiven for not having all the "facts" of this case at your fingertips, but this discussion has been somewhat derailed. To clarify: two different porn allegations were made public - adult porn, and child porn. We haven't previously used the word "adult", because it was clear from the context what was intended. Furthermore, there were allegations relating to prostitutes. These belong together with the adult porn, since in neither case was there any suggestion of any law being broken.

The child porn would have been illegal, had it existed. Vincent Tabak did indeed plead guilty to the charge of possessing illegal child images, or at least the media reported that he did. Whether you think his trial and conviction for this offence, several years after his conviction for the murder of Joanna Yeates, is weird, seems to depend on how credulous you are. Once again, no witness was produced to testify under oath that these illegal images had actually been found on his computer. None of the news media found this odd - but I do. Any normal defence counsel would have challenged the prosecution to produce this witness right from the start.

I don't want to spend time on this issue, as some people will consider it speculative. What is 100 percent certain, however, is that NEITHER the child porn NOR the adult porn (and associate prostitute trysts) could have existed at all. If police really had found illegal child porn on his computer, then they could have produced it during the murder trial as inescapable evidence of his bad character. There would have been no need for the lawyers to waste time arguing backwards and forwards, repeatedly, about whether to tell the jury about the adult porn and the prostitutes, as they evidently did, if the prosecution already had such strong evidence of bad character to produce against him. Therefore, this evidence did not exist, and therefore the adult porn and the prostitutes also had to be equally phoney.

This article references the porn been shown when the jury were not there .. I don't know how the article has that date ???

CREATED: 10:27, 25 October 2011

Her reaction to news that her boyfriend was a killer with a sordid double life can only be imagined. She was not called as a trial witness and not in court to hear legal argument - without the jury - over Tabak’s internet porn obsessions.

I take from this that the porn was brought to trial..... That proves it didn't exist.... I have always said that it couldn't exist because of the 1300 page document.... The jury had a copy so did the prosecution the judge and the defence... I believe that if it existed then it would be within the pages of the 1300 page document....

Now I'm about to contradict myself.... The 1300 page document was made well before trial... And it should have had all the information relating to what they say Dr Vincent Tabak apparently did in America .. along with his internet searches for porn ..... And any supposed transactions for porn.....

I am now wondering whether or not the jury saw this information.....

They convicted Dr Vincent Tabak of murder.. there was no supporting evidence to say whether it was intentional or not...The Prosecution always maintaining that it was sexual... But.... And I am being to wonder....

Did the 1300 page document still contain the alleged searches of porn and the so called evidence of subscriptions to various websites.....

We don't KNOW.......

I have always assumed that because they argued the porn... then it couldn't be still contained within this document... But lets face it... 1300 pages is one hell of a lot of information, which was supposed to contain Joanna Yeates ... Greg Reardon... Tanaj Morson and Dr Vincent Tabaks movement .. emails texts and phone calls....

Joanna Yeates would have had very few texts and phone calls .... Greg Reardon too, as he was just a witness... Tanja Morson did not appear at trial, even though we are aware some of her texts were mentioned in court....

Which leaves Dr Vincent Tabak.... So the majority of this 1300 page document was in relation to Dr Vincent Tabak....

So what did the jury actually see within these 1300 pages of documentation???

Were the references to porn still in there ???
Were references to prostitutes still in there ????
What about the child porn ????

What was bound in this document that the jury had in their possession to take to the jury room and deliberate as to whether or not Dr Vincent Tabak was guilty???

Did they have the knowledge that was not used in evidence in this trial in the jury room before we the public were made aware of it??

It most certainly could have been still held within the 1300 page document... Lets face it Clegg was hardly gonna say anything was he .... (imo)

That 1300 page document I believe is significant.... Now where can I get my hands on it ????


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2053178/Joanna-Yeates-trial-verdict-Vincent-Tabak-guilty-murder.html#ixzz4yS40Arel

[mrswah]

Replying to Leonora's last post, yes, I do think it's weird that VT was tried for possessing illegal images of children as late as 2015.  If these images really existed, I cannot, for the life of me, understand why he wasn't tried for this at the same time as he was tried for the murder of Joanna.

I am very suspicious of "computer evidence"------unless it has been verified by at least one independent witness. As I have said previously, anyone can accuse anyone of having nasty or illegal material on their computer.  There are far better sources of evidence:  CCTV, for example (providing the images are clear, and the dates and times are accurate ), of course!

[[...]]

Looking at the difference between the two images of Dr Vincent Tabak... We have the Black and white CCTV image of Dr Vincent Tabak that was taken the day before his arrest and we had the one from when he is in custody....







Is either of these images Dr Vincent Tabak??? If we accept that one is, then the other cannot be...

Dr Vincent Tabak is well groomed ordinarily... The image from When he was in custody, shows beard growth/stubble.... which of course not having access to a shave you can see why..

The CCTV image, shows he is normally clean shaven....

The length of the sideburns in the custody image are far longer than in the CCTV image...  This cannot be possible.. Dr Vincent Tabak could not have grown his sideburns longer whilst he was under arrest.

If we look at this image we can see he has close cut hair by the ears...



In the CCTV image the hair at the side of his face comes to the top of his glasses frame... But on the custody image, the sideburns are a good inch below the glasses frames...

Who is the Dr Vincent Tabak impersonator?????

[Leonora]

I wish you would stick to the point. What is WEIRD is that Vincent Tabak's defence didn't challenge the very existence of the illegal child porn images - in view of the failure of the prosecution to call a witness to testify to having analysed the defendant's computer and state under oath that these image were found on it. mrswah, we don't know WHY the CPS waited several years with this prosecution, so we cannot discuss whether it was weird or whether they had some logical reason for doing this.

Nine...Again, the link you posted adds NOTHING to our knowledge about Tanja or the porn & prostitutes. We don't know WHEN these were brought before the court, because none of the news media has reported the date. This means that they must have been prohibited from EVER reporting the date. Indeed, their reporting seems deliberately intended to mislead us, perhaps because the way the reporting restrictions and their very nature were not allowed to be reported.

In the absence of clear information, we must assume that the adult porn & prostitutes were first discussed at the Old Bailey on 5 May 2011. They seem to have been discussed again, perhaps more than once, during the main period of the trial. The actual content of the discussions, and what was said by the lawyers, were reported in great detail by the local news media, and in somewhat less detail by the national media.

My guess, mrswah, would be, that the trial for the child images was delayed as long as possible, because they realised that this trial would enable "people like us" to work out, onjectively, that the failure to tell the jury about the illegal child images PROVES that neither the adult porn, the child porn or the prostitutes existed at all - they were all devices invented to blacken the defendant's character. It is one thing to "feel" subjectively that something is WEIRD - it is quite another matter to have the objective evidence for it that we have here.

[mrswah]

By delaying the second trial for as long as possible, perhaps it was hoped that the general public would have forgotten the details of the first one, and merely remember that Vincent Tabak was convicted of murdering Joanna Yeates, was sentenced to life imprisonment, and therefore is a very wicked man. If that was in the forefront of people's minds, the second trial would not have seemed "weird" at all-----just exactly what VT deserved, and good on the CPS for bringing it, no matter how late.  Just my opinion, of course.

I believe those who sat in the public gallery during the murder trial did hear the "bad character evidence" in the absence of the jury. I do remember one poster on the original Facebook forum saying this----although , of course, she did not reveal exactly what she had heard.

[Leonora]

I'm not quite sure what to say to that. I guess it feels to me that it's just logical that (at least) the large majority of people that plead guilty do so because they are. I guess in the States people might plead guilty to avoid a likely death sentence but I can't think of a good reason to do so here. In what situation do you think that you would admit to murder when you hadn't committed the crime?

I'm wracking my brain and but I can't think of any proven miscarriage of justice i which the person pleaded guilty in a court of law.

Yes but Baz in this particular case it is clear that, in my opinion,  Vincent Tabak was NOT guilty of killing Joanna Yeates at all, so you need to think a good deal harder. The course of the trial and the scale of the deception of the jury, with, amongst other things, fake evidence, proves this, both in detail and on an overall scale. We don't know what really happened, nor who else was really involved. If he had killed her somewhere other than at 44 Canynge Road, then the prosecution would have made the effort to have a much more convincing case.

There are numerous examples in fiction of persons who accepted blame for a killing to protect someone they loved, especially Agatha Christie's "Five Little Pigs". Had Vincent Tabak done this, then it would be the job of the Prosecution to expose it - not to go along with it. There is OVERWHELMING evidence that both the defendant, his defence lawyers, and the judge, were in collusion with the prosecution to ensure a guilty verdict - and the only explanation, in my opinion,  HAS to be that his reward was an amnesty, a new identity, and goodness knows what else besides.

I am sure that the real killer(s) has/have already worked this out too.

[Leonora]

...
I believe those who sat in the public gallery during the murder trial did hear the "bad character evidence" in the absence of the jury. I do remember one poster on the original Facebook forum saying this----although , of course, she did not reveal exactly what she had heard.

Absolutely not. They would ONLY have allowed these discussions to be heard by those whom they knew they could control - and those whom they WANTED to hear them - the press first and foremost. At the Old Bailey Joanna's parents would also have heard about the adult porn & prostitutes. So would Vt himself, but I do not believe it was he. If Noel O'Gara had been in court, he would certainly have passed on what the press was forbidden to pass on, as he is less cowed by fierce judges than us normal mortals. No one on the forum could shed any intelligent light on when the bad character evidence was discussed.

[Baz]

Absolutely not. They would ONLY have allowed these discussions to be heard by those whom they knew they could control - and those whom they WANTED to hear them - the press first and foremost. At the Old Bailey Joanna's parents would also have heard about the adult porn & prostitutes. So would Vt himself, but I do not believe it was he. If Noel O'Gara had been in court, he would certainly have passed on what the press was forbidden to pass on, as he is less cowed by fierce judges than us normal mortals. No one on the forum could shed any intelligent light on when the bad character evidence was discussed.

Well that last sentence is rather self-defeating isn't it.

 Having been through Noel O'Gara's websites (about this and the Yorkshire Ripper ) I find him to be someone who makes damning assertions whilst offering no evidence to support his claims. He even goes as far as saying Greg committed the crime, as if the poor bloke hasn't been through enough already.

[Baz]

Yes but Baz in this particular case it is clear that, in my opinion,  Vincent Tabak was NOT guilty of killing Joanna Yeates at all, so you need to think a good deal harder. The course of the trial and the scale of the deception of the jury, with, amongst other things, fake evidence, proves this, both in detail and on an overall scale. We don't know what really happened, nor who else was really involved. If he had killed her somewhere other than at 44 Canynge Road, then the prosecution would have made the effort to have a much more convincing case.

There are numerous examples in fiction of persons who accepted blame for a killing to protect someone they loved, especially Agatha Christie's "Five Little Pigs". Had Vincent Tabak done this, then it would be the job of the Prosecution to expose it - not to go along with it. There is OVERWHELMING evidence that both the defendant, his defence lawyers, and the judge, were in collusion with the prosecution to ensure a guilty verdict - and the only explanation, in my opinion,  HAS to be that his reward was an amnesty, a new identity, and goodness knows what else besides.

I am sure that the real killer(s) has/have already worked this out too.

Examples in fiction aren't exactly helpful. And there is nothing to suggest Tabak was protecting a loved one.

Why would Vincent want amnesty and a new identity if he were innocent. How would that be an incentive to not speak out against his own conviction?

[Baz]

Looking at the difference between the two images of Dr Vincent Tabak... We have the Black and white CCTV image of Dr Vincent Tabak that was taken the day before his arrest and we had the one from when he is in custody....







Is either of these images Dr Vincent Tabak??? If we accept that one is, then the other cannot be...

Dr Vincent Tabak is well groomed ordinarily... The image from When he was in custody, shows beard growth/stubble.... which of course not having access to a shave you can see why..

The CCTV image, shows he is normally clean shaven....

The length of the sideburns in the custody image are far longer than in the CCTV image...  This cannot be possible.. Dr Vincent Tabak could not have grown his sideburns longer whilst he was under arrest.

If we look at this image we can see he has close cut hair by the ears...



In the CCTV image the hair at the side of his face comes to the top of his glasses frame... But on the custody image, the sideburns are a good inch below the glasses frames...

Who is the Dr Vincent Tabak impersonator?????

The CCTV image is too low resolution to be able to analyse really. You can say it's not him because he doesn't have side burns but by that logic it can't be him because he doesn't have any eyebrows either. It's just a rubbish picture.

Comparing the two portrait pictures, well they look like the same person to me. He has put on some weight and isn't smiling, perhaps they why he looks a little different. But the practicalities of finding a double so convincing and then persuading him to be part of a cover up and then to never tell anyone.... I can't even begin to understand how that would work.

[mrswah]

I would think all three pictures are of Vincent Tabak.

"Mugshots" taken in custody do tend to be unflattering, to say the least-----I'm sure we all remember Myra Hindley's!

Images from CCTV are often unclear, especially if they are recorded out of doors  when it's dark.

As for the "nice" picture of VT, who knows when it was taken?  It could well have been taken a few years earlier than 2010.

[mrswah]

Yes but Baz in this particular case it is clear that, in my opinion,  Vincent Tabak was NOT guilty of killing Joanna Yeates at all, so you need to think a good deal harder. The course of the trial and the scale of the deception of the jury, with, amongst other things, fake evidence, proves this, both in detail and on an overall scale. We don't know what really happened, nor who else was really involved. If he had killed her somewhere other than at 44 Canynge Road, then the prosecution would have made the effort to have a much more convincing case.

There are numerous examples in fiction of persons who accepted blame for a killing to protect someone they loved, especially Agatha Christie's "Five Little Pigs". Had Vincent Tabak done this, then it would be the job of the Prosecution to expose it - not to go along with it. There is OVERWHELMING evidence that both the defendant, his defence lawyers, and the judge, were in collusion with the prosecution to ensure a guilty verdict - and the only explanation, in my opinion,  HAS to be that his reward was an amnesty, a new identity, and goodness knows what else besides.

I am sure that the real killer(s) has/have already worked this out too.

Personally, I cannot believe Vincent was "in collusion" with anyone to ensure a guilty verdict. I think he had long given up all hope by then, and was merely going through the motions, having been worn down by months in custody and relentless questioning-----and goodness knows what else.

Unless, of course, he was guilty, and genuinely remorseful------then he might well have felt he deserved a guilty verdict

[Leonora]

Well that last sentence is rather self-defeating isn't it.

 Having been through Noel O'Gara's websites (about this and the Yorkshire Ripper ) I find him to be someone who makes damning assertions whilst offering no evidence to support his claims. He even goes as far as saying Greg committed the crime, as if the poor bloke hasn't been through enough already.

You have obviously "been through" Noel O'Gara's websites so rapidly that you didn't bother to read what was in them. Contrary to what you so flagrantly assert, his analyses of crimes and the conclusions he draws are always solidly backed up by a great deal of evidence, corroborated by media accounts, police statements and other sources which may be considered to have been trustworthy. I hope the moderators will take noté of your damning, false , libellous assertion about Noel O'Gara.

Of course Greg Reardon has to be the No. 1 suspect, since we now know that Vincent Tabak was inexplicably persuaded to stand trial for a crime which the trial itself proved he did not commit. Before the moderator reaches for his/her blue pencil, I would be delighted if Greg himself, his family, or any other insider who knows more about the case than we have been able to learn from the evidence we have, would please come on to the forum and fill in just some of the gaps in our knowledge.

The big question which you, Baz, or any other person who (ignoring the massive evidence to the contrary) faithfully believes in the authenticity of the trial and the verdict, has to answer is: HOW were the police able to eliminate Greg Reardon as a suspect within three days of his 999 call? Nine days were to pass before Vincent Tabak became a suspect, according to the testimony of the officer who interviewed him in the Netherlands. During those nine days, the police wrongly arrested the landlord, but whatever else he may have done, we can be confident that Chris Jefferies did not kill Joanna Yeates.

I concede that the police knew things that we do not know, will never know, nor cannot even claim the right to know. But in those nine days, however much they knew, they cannot possibly have known enough to eliminate Greg with confidence. So why did they do so publicly? Were they lying in order to lure someone else into a false sense of security? The absence of even a false retrospective excuse for their curious behaviour is really very incriminating, both for Greg himself and the police. I too would like to eliminate Greg, but I cannot do so, even in my own mind, as long as both you and the police treat the public with so little respect. As I say, even a phoney excuse is to be preferred to the deafening silence.