Antepli Ejderha wrote:


She hasn't been found guilty of anything yet. But if she is, she surely has to go much the same way as him.

Seven Saxon Kings wrote:


Wouldn't have just bought his way out of prison like that? That doesn't sound fair.

Aw man, have a look at their cunty personalised number plate.

Pair of wankers.

To the guillotine .

Huhne's son is Rude Kid from Viz, isn't he?

"Happy Christmas son!"

"Piss up a rope, fuckstick"

I'm feeling a bit sorry for Huhne at the moment. Vicki Pryce's defence depends upon her successfully arguing Huhne was a cunt- at least a bigger one than he is. He can't defend himself in the media because we'd say "Piss off, cunt". So he's reliant on the prosecution in Pryce's case putting his side.

Who's the defendant here? Maybe we're all defendants, mannnn!

Is she claiming duress as part of her defence? It seems to include Huhne trying to force her to have multiple abortions. Still looks pretty weak.

Author-judge Constance Briscoe and hack Isobel Oakeshott have been involved, allegedly helping VP to smear CH in various media. Might be interesting to see Oakeshott squirm, she's a bit too smug for my liking on Andrew Neil's show.

As I understand it, her defence has to establish something called " marital coercion"' , so this strikes me as a rather predictable and perfectly valid line of attack.

Jury discharged.

Sounds like the judge is not pleased with them.

Good grief.

The jury's questions in full.

Why good grief? They seem perfectly reasonable questions to ask of a judge, given they're ordinary people being asked to judge a case in which the facts of the case don't appear to be disputed, but the issue is whether martial coercion was a factor; if it was, not guilty, if it wasn't then guilty.

In other words, deciding a judgement which depends on interpreting a law from the 1920s in which very, very different assumptions about men, women, marriage, obligation, duty etc pertained seems to me very hard indeed.

Bet Huhne's kicking himself though. He could have survived, he'll be thinking now.

There's a few reasonable points in there but several of their questions could be summarised as "can we make things up?"

Is it reasonable to ask something as utterly random and unrelated as this?

The judge was clearly annoyed at the nature of some of the questions (including that one), which (pace NHH) strike me as prima facie evidence of their being at least one very loose cannon on the jury.

My thoughts entirely ursus. It seems highly likely to me that some of the questions are the outcome of a bunch of sensible jurors having failed to persuade some idiot on the jury of the (obvious to most people, especially jurors who will have just had judge's general guidance) principle that you can't, as Central Rain puts it, just make stuff up, and thinking "well we can't talk sense into him/her, but perhaps he/she will get it if we get the judge to spell it out".

The judge did allow a majority verdict, though. So it needs three idiots. Or the one idiot to be pressuasive enough to carry two others with them.

Don't worry, Maria Hutchings will cut through the crap with common sense. And her son who was destined to be a heart surgeon, aged 5.

Unless she's kept quiet by Grant Shapps. Imagine being unable to say much unless you get Shapps to approve it first. They had to bring fucking Boris in to make the campaign look interesting today.

Tory candidate fails to show for hustings on Radio 5, with the excuse that she needs preparation time for a visit to a factory with David Cameron.

Looks like they've decided to lose this by-election than have her damage the Tories nationally.

A legal question about the VP thing. Her legal team made claims that her husband coerced her into having abortions as part of the framework of bullying behaviour that would tally with taking the points thing, does she have to actually provide medical evidence if asked to back up this assertion at all?

As Chris Huhne isn't a defendant and can't confirm to deny this story then I'm wondering if it should be considered admissible without such evidence?

The defence must establish marital coercion on a balance of probabilities. I should imagine lack of corroboration would somewhat weaken the claim, and that juries may take such lack of corroboration into account, but that it falls under "matters of fact" and is therefore up to them to determine using "reasonable inference".

I can't see grounds for ruling it inadmissible. It's neither speculation nor hearsay. It's a factual claim that may or may not be believed by the jury.