Steven Gerrard

[insomniac]

Stilvi writes:-

This item is being discussed on here because Gerrard is famous. I have no reason to be jealous of him. If this were Joe Bloggs I would still have doubts about a verdict of ‘not guilty’ on a basis of self defence where there is no evidence that the other person struck any blow whatsoever. If you always want to believe the jury verdict because they have greater access that is up to you but please don’t cast stones about jealousy and bias in an attempt to substantiate your opinio

1) I may be wrong, but I don’t believe that you can only be acting in self-defence AFTER you have received a blow. I rather think you only have to show that you BELIEVED you were going to be attacked to justify an act in self-defence. Gerrard presumably managed to do that. And the jury believed him.
2) In my initial comment in this thread I said "The verdict was probably correct" – note "probably". Of course verdicts by juries can be wrong, but on what basis do commentators on here base their view that THIS verdict is wrong? Access to more information that was available to the jury? I don’t think so. So what then?
3) Bias? Who’s showing bias? The guy was found NOT GUILTY. I’m also quite happy to accept that you’re not jealous of Gerrard or some paranoid anti-scouse MUFC fan. So why then can’t you accept that it’s your view of his guilt which is "unsubstantiated", my view WAS SUBSTANTIATED by 12 people who actually heard ALL the evidence for and against.

[Onthesteal]

Seeing is believing, and we saw exactly what the jury were shown in court from the CCTV footage – no more and no less. Gerrards line of defence has been made public, as has the victims version of events. We simply don’t need to hear any more details about this case to make judgment and the jury, for what ever reasons, clearly got it wrong on this occasion. We saw Gerrards friend strike the first blow which was closely followed up by three uppercuts by Gerrard himself. There are no other facts in this case worth knowing and the decision by the jury might as well been made on the toss of a coin – double sided I reckon. They simply took his side regardless.

I’m not totally against the idea of juries but believe there will be cases where they are more likely to show a bias – this was always going to be one of them.

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