Garth McVicar – racist

Written By: - Date published: 12:57 pm, December 16th, 2008 - 59 comments
Categories: crime - Tags: ,

Here’s a quiz. Can you name the one killing that has seen Sensible Sentencing’s barking mad Garth McVicar support the killer and argue, in direct contrast to his normal practice, that the sentence ought to have been more lenient? And can you point to the unusual socio-economic conditions around this killing?

Yup. The only, only, killing in which McVicar has called for leniency is the manslaughter of young, working-class Maori Pihema Cameron by middle-class Pakeha businessman Bruce Emery. Frankly, the real crime here is that a person who purposely assaulted another person with a deadly weapon resulting in that person’s death (even though that death was intended) was not found guilty of murder despite the clear words of the law. But, no, McVicar thinks the poor Maori had it coming, property rights for the white, middle-class trump the right to life for others. He says this killer, and this killer alone, should have been set free because that “would have sent a message that minor crimes like graffiti need to be dealt with seriously” – by vigilante killing, for example.

Well, we knew McVicar is a racist and a fascist but let’s not forget he is also the man whose policies National/ACT have xeroxed and turned into their law and order agenda.

59 comments on “Garth McVicar – racist ”

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  1. Chris G 1
    16 December 2008 at 1:17 pm

    hes such a douche, I cant believe he gets so much press.

    He would vehemently claim that the racial side of this story, SP, was a coincidence. what a crock eh

    Or maybe he’d defend this by skewing his definition of ‘sensible’

    What a Dork.

    I trust that upon every homicide in NZ being made public, McVicar – NZs podium of Sensible – decides whether the murder was infact justified and ‘Sensible’ It is good to know that we have one man who can justify or deplore each murder according to his opinion and then have the MSM get out the kneepads and copy and paste his press statements on them.

  2. Stephen 2
    16 December 2008 at 1:23 pm

    “Racist”? Seriously?! He’s a knob, so therefore he’s a racist too? Get a grip.

  3. Tane 3
    16 December 2008 at 1:25 pm

    Stephen, how do you account for the disparity of treatment between this particular case and every single other case McVicar has commented on over the years?

    Personally I doubt he’s consciously racist, but his comments betray a deep and underlying racial and class prejudice.

  4. Chris S 4
    16 December 2008 at 1:27 pm

    It’s a logical conclusion to draw, Stephen. Although it assumes that a man like McVicar acts logically, which may or may not be true.

    The man is incredible, just as I thought he couldn’t sink any lower he opens his mouth and another bucket of shit comes pouring out. The media seriously have to stop consulting him on these things as he’s just an embarrassment.

  5. Brett Dale 5
    16 December 2008 at 1:50 pm

    Young, working-class Maori Pihema Cameron ??????

    Two out of three anit bad.

    He was a tagger, a petty criminal who might of gone on to do harder crime.

    Did he deserve to die, No way, should his killer be locked up in jail for a long time, yes.

    In terms of, did he have it coming?

    You cannot expect to damage and vandalize someones private property and not expect to have the victim of your crime get angry.

    The problem was the victim took a knife, so perhaps if he just caught him and gave him a thumping then the answer would be yes.

    Still what I want to know is, the family members of this unemployed tagger who didnt give a F about anyone else (but that doesn’t mean he deserved to die) were always in court with pictures of him on their teeshirts, why weren’t they supporting him before though? That might of stop his wee petty crime spree.

    Anyway I don’t think its racist for Garth to say this, its far to easy and a lot of people on the left do this, to scream out Racist if you don’t like someone?

    If wanna be cop killer Steven Wallace had of been white and the police officer who protected himselves had of been a Maori, you wouldn’t have heard a wimper out of the left.

    Now that is racist.

  6. Peter Wilson 6
    16 December 2008 at 1:51 pm

    Yep, the media go to him the same way they go to that other crackpot, Bryan Leyland on anything to do with energy or climate change.

    I guess the thing to remember with the media is that they believe that if you set up opposing sides people will find the truth somewhere in the middle. But it doesn’t work on knee-jerk issues like crime and it certainly doesn’t work with anything scientific.

  7. Dylan 7
    16 December 2008 at 2:34 pm

    Keep the scenario almost identical – just swap the race of the killer and victim. Then try to imagine the reactions. I suspect that tiny change alone would have made for some very different responses.

    Also – after stabbing Cameron, what did Emery do? Did he check how hurt the boy was? Call an ambulance? No – “He went home, washed blood from the knife, placed it under a mattress. He told his wife nothing and he did not call police.”

    McVicar has just revealed a whole lot about his own motivation…

  8. Ianmac 8
    16 December 2008 at 2:48 pm

    Yes. The most important problem is the degree of publicity McVicar gets. The size of his constituency has been questioned as is the source of his funding.

    I think Mt Eden will blow as a volcano within a few years. Now to be fair I should be granted a forum so that another person who disagrees with me will be able to debate it again and again. Be fair you know. Even shares on time and publicity.

    And a big difference between defending ones self when cornered by a person who poses a serious threat, and a person chasing anyone down the street to “punish” them.

  9. Brett Dale 9
    16 December 2008 at 2:49 pm

    If a Maori man stabbed a skinhead who was damaging his property, what would people on this group say?

  10. Tim Ellis 10
    16 December 2008 at 2:54 pm

    Tane wrote:

    Stephen, how do you account for the disparity of treatment between this particular case and every single other case McVicar has commented on over the years?

    I don’t defend McVicar or Emery, but there is a clear difference between using force to defend your property against an offender, and committing an unprovoked home invasion.

    McVicar has spoken out in support on numerous occasions about people having the right to defend themselves. Greg Carvell comes to mind. So does the Virender Singh case.

  11. Felix 11
    16 December 2008 at 2:56 pm

    Brett,

    “Now that is racist.”

    Surely you mean “would be racist”, seeing as that’s a scenario you just made up.

    It’s a bit like saying “If Brett came over to my place and pissed in the pool I wouldn’t be impressed. What a wanker he is!” when of course you didn’t (I hope).

  12. Felix 12
    16 December 2008 at 2:59 pm

    Oh and lets not forget the details of the stabbing.

    Cameron was stabbed to death while backing away from his attacker, so any comments about “defending your property” are way off the mark.

  13. Rex Widerstrom 13
    16 December 2008 at 3:05 pm

    More class conscious than racist I suspect.

    I imagine McVicar would go weak at the knees if, for instance, Winston Peters and Ron Mark popped round for a cup of tea. After all, they’re just nice, respectable white collar criminals.

    It astounds me that Act fell for this tripe when formulating a justice policy. It’d be like, say, the Greens adopting the manifesto of the Earth Liberation Front.

  14. Tane 14
    16 December 2008 at 3:22 pm

    Tim, the killer wasn’t ‘defending himself’ in any way, he stabbed a poor Maori kid for tagging his property.

  15. Vanilla Eis 15
    16 December 2008 at 4:04 pm

    Tane: not to mention he had to chase the kid around 360 metres. Anyone here done the 400 metre dash recently? I’d be extremely surprised if Emery could cover that distance in a minute, and yet there he was – over a minute later, still running after these kids with a knife.

    How the fuck is that defending your property?

  16. Brett Dale 16
    16 December 2008 at 4:05 pm

    Tane:

    If some skinhead was writing bigoted remarks on your fence and you caught him and stabbed him, Garth would support you for defending yourself against scum, it has nothing to do with skin colour for Garth.

  17. Tane 17
    16 December 2008 at 4:15 pm

    Brett, I’m not so sure. We’d have to wait and see what happens.

    I’ll tell you what though, if my unemployed Maori cousin murdered a middle class white businessman for illegally putting a billboard on his fence I doubt Garth would have the same sympathy.

  18. George 18
    16 December 2008 at 4:30 pm

    how many business people go round putting up illegal billboards?

    i have to chuckle at that, can just imagine it. business people pulling up in their black tinted audi’s, jump out in an all black suit, shirt and tie combo and having a quick glance around before whipping out a “Use Genesis NRG” billboard and screwing to the fence before jumping in the blacked out audi, doing a burnout away making genesis energy gang signs out the window.

  19. Tane 19
    16 December 2008 at 4:33 pm

    Yeah, it was just an example, feel free to come up with a better one. Those with wealth and power don’t usually need to break the law to express themselves.

  20. randal 20
    16 December 2008 at 4:43 pm

    seriously weird that this case didnt come up till the angry party were in power!

  21. Dom 21
    16 December 2008 at 4:45 pm

    McVicar’s words astound me “Trust spokesperson Garth McVicar says the verdict is a shame, because he understands the frustration Emery was going through when he caught the tagger at his house.”

    So frustration is now a defence to murder? It’s now okay to kill just because you’re fed up?

    Wow, I’m often frustrated by things – the government mostly at the moment – so the McVicar Defence will really come in handy…

  22. Andy 22
    16 December 2008 at 4:51 pm

    The main reason McVicar annoys me is the way he takes advantage of victim’s suffering for his own means. Standing out front of courthouses spouting vitriol and attempting to get pictures with families of victims and quoting from them. These victims need to be supported, not taken advantage of and it angers me to see victims and their families used as pawns in an interest group’s machinations.

  23. Rex Widerstrom 23
    16 December 2008 at 5:27 pm

    Dom: I dunno about you, but I’m seriously fed up with McVicar. Hmmm….

  24. sunny 24
    16 December 2008 at 6:18 pm

    What 15 year old boy hasn’t done something a bit bad/mad/annoying/destructive? Calling him a ‘tagger’ throughout the trial dehuminised him…he was a kid! And a bad tempered, furious man grabbed a knife and chased him for half a kilometre before stabbing him and claiming ‘self defence’. Sick.

  25. JamieS 25
    16 December 2008 at 7:10 pm

    Where was the family? How many know the father was a tetraplegic and the mother lived in Perth? Bet you if he was a white boy we all would have.

    But instead he is just a “tagger”. “Scum” as David Farrer would put it.

    Pihema Cameron was a messed up kid chased 300 metres down the road by a full grown man with a 14cm knife. He was stabbed and died. The jury found intent, or recklessness but somehow he still got manslaughter.

    Good post!

  26. Rex Widerstrom 26
    16 December 2008 at 7:24 pm

    JamieS:

    David’s exact comment was “Taggers are scum, but being a tagger should result in a fine, not death”.

    The morons who tagged my elderly parents’ front fence (which my dad built and painted himself) a few years back were certainly scum. I tracked them down and stood over them while they cleaned up their mess. Plenty of kids are “messed up” by a lot of things, including a parent thousands of miles away. Mine, for instance – and particularly by the circumstamces of my going. But they manage to cope without destroying other people’s property.

    But that doesn’t mean I support summary execution as a penalty and nor, clearly, does David.

    I think Emery’s actions in chasing Cameron amounted to murder and am disappointed the jury didn’t see it that way. This isn’t a case of defending yourself and your family against a home invader, or anything like it. David differs on this, and seems to think manslaughter was the correct verdict.

    Likewise, Nosferatu McVicar’s capitalising upon every tragedy except this one, sucking up the victims’ grief like a vampire, sickens me, whereas Kiwiblog gives his rantings a bit of space.

    But it’s completely unfair to infer David Farrar is somehow cheering the death of Pihema Cameron.

  27. David 27
    16 December 2008 at 7:30 pm

    IMO Garth McVicar is a tosser who has little to add to any discussion on crime and punishment and sentencing.

  28. Jum 28
    16 December 2008 at 8:48 pm

    Savagery is just below the surface of mankind. If adults can’t control themselves how dare they think they have the right to control children.

    Just had a look at the SSsite. Where are the 300 police coming from for Counties Manukau?

  29. leftrightout 29
    16 December 2008 at 9:05 pm

    Emery’s lawer, Chris Comesky is a scum bag to.

    Comesky is the same lawyer who is defending Nai Xin Xue, got Millie Elder off the hook, and represented the medal theives. Scum.

  30. Pascal's bookie 30
    16 December 2008 at 9:15 pm

    Lro, everyone gets to have a lawyer, therefore some lawyers must defend even the worst people, and the best of those lawyers do so to the best of their ability.

    That’s not to say that Comesky isn’t scum, I wouldn’t know, and I can’t know just from looking at that list. If he only had one client, like mafia lawyers do, then maybe we could draw that conclusion. He could be the type of defence lawyer that takes the jobs other lawyers don’t want to have on their cv’s. That in itself would make him a good lawyer in my book.

    But like I say, I don’t know. Not enough info.

  31. Kylee 31
    16 December 2008 at 9:36 pm

    I am Maori. I am middle-class. I do not agree with tagging. I understand the socio-political argument of ‘making your mark on a society that gives you few options’. I know that being Maori in New Zealand is a hard road. You will not understand what it feels like to be a second-class citizen unless you have actually been subjected to constant discrimination. You have no idea what it is like to constantly be under scrutiny – from shopkeepers/police/white people ambling around the neighborhood – unless you have been subjected to constant discrimination. Ra Ra get the violins out…no that is not my intention. I have a degree and a post-grad diploma. I live in Remuera not Papakura. I am lucky enough to have been given options in my life. Some kids are not that lucky. Some kids are born bad. Most are not. Until our society puts the wellbeing of all above tax cuts and the ‘rights of business’ then we will all have to bear the social costs of such policies.

  32. leftrightout 32
    16 December 2008 at 9:44 pm

    Pascal, you’re probably right, but the way he defended Emery and the way he made out to the jury that somehow this kid deserved it, makes him scum to me. He also seems to take very high profile cases to.

  33. millsy 33
    16 December 2008 at 11:03 pm

    Well, I can only conclude from his outburst, that the value that McVicar places on some humans lives is next to zero.

  34. JamieS 34
    16 December 2008 at 11:10 pm

    Hey Rex,

    I was using Farrers comment as an example of how mainstream media have labelled Pihema Cameron….”tagger”. This doesn’t just mean he as an individual was tagging that night, it means a whole lot of things, including that he is “scum”.

    Its the same process that Hutu’s used to kill the Tutsi cockroaches. Taggers as scum are somehow different from the rest of us, although many of us have flaws probably at least the equal of tagging.

  35. Stephen 35
    17 December 2008 at 8:54 am

    A long bow to draw, the unequivocal title of this post doesn’t help either.

  36. lyndon 36
    17 December 2008 at 11:27 am

    In answer to your question, Paul Kingi, though I never managed to determine if that was an April Fools joke.

    As a longtime Garth watcher I don’t really feel the need to make the racist call.

    It’s as much a matter of dividing the population into ‘ordinary new zealanders’ and ‘criminals’, where the latter don’t count as people. You might call it criminalism. It might include some implicit racism in practise (especially if ‘ordinary new zealanders’ are people like garth), but it’s not the focus.

    In consequence, crimes against criminal don’t count. Especially if committed by ‘ordinary new zealanders’ (but criminal-on-criminal violence probably isn’t a priority either). And Garth thinks it’s more important to send a message we don’t tolerate petty crime than to worry about the culpable homicide thing.

    And it wasn’t an off-the-cuff response. He wrote it down April:

    “[Kiro’s] comments are hugely provocative at a time when a decent hard working citizen is facing a murder charge because of his frustration over this issue.’

    He’s just an idiot.

    Most of the actual SST press releases have been coming from someone else lately, BTW. I had the hazy impression he wasn’t well, but I may be confusing him with someone else.

  37. Westminster 37
    17 December 2008 at 6:45 pm

    Whatever your explanation of his behaviour, I think we all can agree he’s nothing but a shallow-minded hypocrite.

  38. Greedy Pig 38
    17 December 2008 at 8:48 pm

    I understand sympathy for Emery. The taggers are like marauding barbarians. Finally someone snaps and stands up to them. Apologists for crime will never understand and are part of the problem. Societies can solve crime if the wet weaks don’t get in the way..
    In other words this is an act of rejection …. keeping out the Barbarians.

  39. Pascal's bookie 39
    17 December 2008 at 9:44 pm

    They must be like the lamest barbarians eva then. Scribbling on fences is hardly sacking Rome is it?

    Funny thing is pig, your comment is a perfect example of an apologia for crime.

    So I guess that means you will never understand and are part of the problem. It’s a bit like one of those star trek episodes where kirk makes some genocidal computer blow up by asking it explain a paradox.

  40. Lew 40
    17 December 2008 at 10:14 pm

    Perhaps we should have a schedule of offences and the legitimate forms of retaliation which accord to them, or the degree to which the offence being retaliated to mitigates against the retaliatory offence. I propose the Vigilante’s Charter, thus:

    Tagging: Murder -> manslaughter
    Breaking and entering: Attempted murder -> assault with a weapon
    Bad driving: Assault with a weapon -> common assault
    Shoplifting: Assault -> intimidating behaviour

    … add your own!

    L

  41. Simon 41
    17 December 2008 at 11:02 pm

    One less Labour-voting, welfare-guzzling criminal burden on decent New Zealand. Good riddance.

    If the Clark Police had spent the last decade investigating and preventing actual crime as opposed to focusing the entirety of their law enforcement efforts on the minor driving infractions of Caucasians in European cars, decent Kiwis might not be inclined today to enforce the law themselves.

    The Labour-voting section of society has committed crime with impunity for a decade. Good for Emery helping to restore the deterent.

    IrishBill: and one less redneck trolling the standard. Take a month off.

  42. Greedy Pig 42
    17 December 2008 at 11:29 pm

    I’ll try again:

    People have a sense of being within a civil society with boundaries that it has an acceptable code of conduct. When people perceive law and order to have deteriorated (and having to rely on a nobbled police force) a persons instinct is to stand up and fight as they would an invader .
    Of course taggers don’t deserve the death penalty but Emery’s actions were pure instinct.

  43. Greedy Pig 43
    17 December 2008 at 11:40 pm

    Continued:
    Like it or not there is a message in the general response to Emery’s actions.
    Calling Garth McVicar a racist is just clutching at straws.

  44. Killinginthenameof 44
    18 December 2008 at 12:57 am

    “Greedy Pig

    People have a sense of being within a civil society with boundaries that it has an acceptable code of conduct. When people perceive law and order to have deteriorated (and having to rely on a nobbled police force) a persons instinct is to stand up and fight as they would an invader .
    Of course taggers don’t deserve the death penalty but Emery’s actions were pure instinct.”

    Unfortunately those perceptions are through glasses tinted white or brown, that is why we have courts, that is why we have standards of evidence, impartial judges and the rule of law. If we took your white-centric, “common sense”, back in the good old days, and every other stomach churning, dry retching, foul apologist cliche we would have every one who doesn’t look or think like you locked up, unless I was running the show, then it would be every one who doesn’t look or think like me (And i bet you wouldn’t like that now)

    You could possibly claim that its more an issue of wealth than skin colour, equally disgusting in my books but hey, your the one trying to defend emery not me. I honestly never thought, and said so many times along the way that there was no chance he would get convicted or murder none at all. It was a bit of a laugh when the news reporter said there was z number of men and x number of women, massively irrelevant, what mattered too the case was how many brown people and how many white people were on the jury.

    Lets not get too distacted from the topic though, Garth McVictim was only ever going to support the white guy. He and his group exploit grief, lie and are one of the most disgusting influences on the law and order debate in New Zealand.

    The very least they could do is be honest and acknowledge that they are happy to have a higher crime rate, in return for some petty childish revenge against some criminals. Lets not forget the inordinate amount more suffering Mr Rossiter has to go through because of McVicars exploitation of his grief. Lets not forget that McVicar knows the facts, knows his policies don’t work, but doesn’t see this as a problem for two reasons, A he knows where he lives he’s unlikely to be a victim of crime, and B he knows crime is so low he’s unlikely to be a victim anyway.

    Its also worth noting that it is only because of moral panic chasing, profit driven, reactionary media that McVicar gets any traction, the crime statistics for many many years would have proved him wrong, but an angry man appealing to the moron in as many people as possible trumps the truth and the objective measurements every time.

    He only gets away with what he does because he is a liar, how dare we let him do this to our country?

  45. Killinginthenameof 45
    18 December 2008 at 1:05 am

    ps, sorry about the spelling and grammar mistakes I managed to loose my comment twice in the process of writing it so just wanted to knock out what I was thinking quick and easy.

  46. Greedy Pig 46
    18 December 2008 at 7:05 am

    “Unfortunately those perceptions are through glasses tinted white or brown, ”

    What evidence do you have that (a) his actions were in control of his higher faculties and (b) his perception of race was an issue?

    “Lets not get too distacted from the topic though, Garth McVictim was only ever going to support the white guy. He and his group exploit grief, lie and are one of the most disgusting influences on the law and order debate in New Zealand.”

    Or perhaps his group shows up those who have made conditions perfect for criminals to flourish by extending too many rights to law breakers. The crime rate in Japan is a fraction of Western countries: our prisoners swagger and give the bird; theirs march with hands swinging enthusiastically.

    “Lets not forget that McVicar knows the facts, knows his policies don’t work, ”

    His policies wont work while prisoners have the same rights as everyone else except incarceration. In Japan they have a much tougher time but, there is no prisoner on prisoner violence and sentences are shorter. Police march out of Yokohama Police Station swinging their long truncheons (a stirring site)!

    “but doesn’t see this as a problem for two reasons, A he knows where he lives he’s unlikely to be a victim of crime, and B he knows crime is so low he’s unlikely to be a victim anyway.””

    (a) a lot of people have altered their behaviour to avoid crime
    (b) people see yobbo’s walking about with cans of beer and pit bull type dogs without collars and or graffiti which says: “I am in your territory”
    (c) when people buy Lotto they cannot calculate the odds and the same goes for crime, but they know that if they go certain places at certain times their chances are much greater (eg walk through down town late at night while drunk). The effect of the fear of crime and the perceived influence of civil libertarians is enormous: people started driving kids to school after Teresa McCormick was murdered.

  47. Pascal's bookie 47
    18 December 2008 at 8:22 am

    Wellington, Dec 17 NZPA – National ‘s new Taupo MP, Louise Upston, urged people to support the police when she made her maiden speech in Parliament today.

    She listed her priorities as law and order and education, and said a police force supported by politicians was much stronger than one that was attacked by them.

    “It seems everyone is presumed innocent — except the police,” Ms Upston said.

    “They act courageously and make terrible decisions in the line of duty and we repay that by hounding them in the media, launching immediate inquiries and subjecting them to intense scrutiny.

    “Let ‘s not be mistaken. The police are good. The criminals are bad. It ‘s that simple.”

    Sounds like your kind of thing GP. Personally I find it more worrisome than crime. Authoritarian daddy state nonsense.

  48. Greedy Pig 48
    18 December 2008 at 8:26 am

    A weak response

  49. Pascal's bookie 49
    18 December 2008 at 8:45 am

    How so pig? Is it not daddy statism? Is it not authoritarianism? It is a fact that I find such things to be worrisome nonsense I assure you.

    Busy today might respond tonight.

  50. @ work 50
    18 December 2008 at 9:00 am

    (c) when people buy Lotto they cannot calculate the odds and the same goes for crime, but they know that if they go certain places at certain times their chances are much greater (eg walk through down town late at night while drunk). The effect of the fear of crime and the perceived influence of civil libertarians is enormous: people started driving kids to school after Teresa McCormick was murdered.

    The its probably worth noting that the fear of crime bears no correlation to the crime rate, only the ammount of reporting of crime, which also bears not corrleation too the rate of crime (before you try that one.

    You also might want to think about McVicars motivations as crime has been going down for a while now, not that youd think so from his carry on, its kind of like hes dishonestly whipping up fear of crime for his own political adgenda.

    Your comments about japanese prisons are bewildering also, you seem far more concerned about the way the prisoners walk than any meaningful policy or programs.

  51. Greedy Pig 51
    18 December 2008 at 9:56 am

    ” its probably worth noting that the fear of crime bears no correlation to the crime rate, only the ammount of reporting of crime, which also bears not corrleation too the rate of crime”

    Well I suppose if people think there are sharks in the water they don’t swim. People practice avoidence behaviour?
    I would say also that fear of crime is related to the perception of the strength of the response and that would be low in this country*.

    The idea that graffiti-spraying and other forms of low-level delinquency promote further bad behaviour has now been tested experimentally
    A PLACE that is covered in graffiti and festooned with rubbish makes people feel uneasy. And with good reason, according to a group of researchers in the Netherlands. Kees Keizer and his colleagues at the University of Groningen deliberately created such settings as a part of a series of experiments designed to discover if signs of vandalism, litter and low-level lawbreaking could change the way people behave. They found that they could, by a lot: doubling the number who are prepared to litter and steal.

    http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12630201

    * “Your comments about japanese prisons are bewildering also, you seem far more concerned about the way the prisoners walk than any meaningful policy or programs.”

    Geoffrey The Weak decided prison “shouldn’t be for punishment”

  52. lyndon 52
    18 December 2008 at 1:57 pm

    G Pig – your argument supports a ‘broken windows’ policy (entirely different to, for example ‘zero tolerance’). Keep the place clean and mend everything and it becomes nicer. I imagine it works extra well if you get the perpetrators to do the cleaning up.

    Do you agree that it’s more important for the justice system to actually affect the amount of crime being committed than to make the general public feel better as an end in itself? Just wondering what the terms of the debate are.

    And what you’re suggestion is.

    Aside from that, on the question of whether “his actions were in control of his higher faculties” – if you’re going to let off someone who can claim their actions were “pure instinct” when they kill someone, you’d get a lot fewer homicide convictions. Somehow I don’t think you’d be happy with the result.

    And I believe at the trial he argued self-defence and accident.

    There is actually a defence (against murder specifically I think) of provocation, which you might remember from men who kill gay people after being propositioned, but AFAIK he didn’t try it.

  53. @ work 53
    18 December 2008 at 2:29 pm

    heres a cat among the pigeons, Where would you righties stand it Camerons relative had, after Cameron was stabbed, turned around, chased Emery down and stabbed him to death also?

  54. Greedy Pig 54
    18 December 2008 at 3:22 pm

    G Pig – your argument supports a ‘broken windows’ policy (entirely different to, for example ‘zero tolerance’). Keep the place clean and mend everything and it becomes nicer. I imagine it works extra well if you get the perpetrators to do the cleaning up.

    “and it becomes nicer”
    Shouldn’t that be : “there is less crime”?

    Do you agree that it’s more important for the justice system to actually affect the amount of crime being committed than to make the general public feel better as an end in itself? Just wondering what the terms of the debate are.

    I think that’s the point if the public feel the justice system is toothless, the chances are the law breakers do too. My hypothesis is that fear of crime is related to (perceived) the level of response from the justice system.

    “Aside from that, on the question of whether “his actions were in control of his higher faculties’ – if you’re going to let off someone who can claim their actions were “pure instinct’ when they kill someone, you’d get a lot fewer homicide convictions. Somehow I don’t think you’d be happy with the result. ”

    there’s nothing like personal experience. I lost my cool once and rushed in and assaulted my nieghbours who were having a noisy party at 1:30 in the morning. As I waited for noise control (who were busy that night) I pondered the margin between the bad behaviour in my nieghbourhood (smashed letterboxes broken bottles etc) and police response . I would describe the experience as (though) someone pushed a button at the base of my spine and I was off like a missile. I found myself running into the situation and i was saying to myself “this is strange you’ve never ran into a situation like this before”. At the time it was exhilarating… striking the beast as i had been living in dread of the taunting bass from the nieghbouring rental. I was lucky not to have been permanently incapacitated.
    I imagine Emery reacted in the same way, somewhat over taken for the moment “you know you’ve got a knife in your hand” but that consideration overcome by the purpose… but I contend not a reaction of the cerebral cortex

  55. Greedy Pig 55
    18 December 2008 at 3:43 pm

    and i would (from my own experience) add that if Emery felt that the authorities dealt with them (the bad guys, the tormentors) he wouldn’t have felt compelled to deal with his persecutors himself.

    and this incident struck a nerve: as Liala Harre put it “doesn’t the deathly silence [lack of condemnation] leave a sick feeling in your gut”. Garth McVicar isn’t a racist (on the basis of this example), he is just sensitive to that issue. The disagreement (perhaps) is whether there is an issue.

  56. Greedy Pig 56
    18 December 2008 at 4:19 pm

    So I’m a sardine in a school (of sardines) and there’s a tuna chasing us. If I’m in a school twice the size I should feel twice as safe?

  57. lyndon 57
    18 December 2008 at 5:52 pm

    If the sardines pass a law banning tuna would you feel better?

    That’s just by way of suggesting that it’s not a good analogy; I think I have some idea what your point is on that – I just don’t know how it helps to formulate policy.

    “and it becomes nicer’
    Shouldn’t that be : “there is less crime’?

    That is what I was getting at, but ‘nice’ does cover a broader effect.

    For the rest, we have juries to hear all the evidence and try to get at the facts and I don’t really want to speculate. As it happens, I think your argument could legally be towards manslaughter, which is what the jury found.

    The fact you can understand how something happened doesn’t make it right. That’s actually a distinction that is missed the other way on rehabilition – understanding is not condoning.

    We are all humans; we do things for human reasons. There are people in prison whose point of view you wouldn’t recognise, but still.

    I also understand that most murderers will talk about a ‘moment of madness’ given the chance. You generally find there were a number of things were quite capable of doing to stop it.

    So from Garth, standing by what I said earlier, perhaps it’s a matter of who he can empathise with. I don’t think it’s about race – in fact I see no particular evidence of that – but being-removed-from-Garth’s experience probably does not help.

    Still I do find it, yes, shallow-minded and hypocritical from someone who wants to be put in charge of the criminal justice system.

  58. Lew 58
    18 December 2008 at 6:01 pm

    Greedy Pig: So I’m a sardine in a school (of sardines) and there’s a tuna chasing us. If I’m in a school twice the size I should feel twice as safe?

    Yes. You don’t have to be the fasted sardine, you only have to not be the slowest sardine, and the more sardines there are the higher the likelihood one is slower than you.

    Still, Lyndon’s right – it’s not clear how this is supposed to apply to the case in point.

    L

  59. DeepRed 59
    24 December 2008 at 4:34 pm

    Political partisanism aside, the Garth McVicars of this world should be careful what they wish for, because they might actually get it. In other words, a potential replay of the 1981 Springbok Tour or even the 1992 Los Angeles uprising.