UPDATE: David Gabriel Watson – It’s Not Over Until The Fat Lady Sings
DIVE KILLER FACES US JAIL
by Eamonn Duff
The Sydney Morning Herald
AMERICAN authorities will travel to Australia to appeal against the leniency of the sentence handed to a man who admitted drowning his bride during their Great Barrier Reef honeymoon.
Tina Watson drowned on October 23, 2003, while on a scuba diving adventure with her husband, David Gabe Watson, off Townsville.
Watson was charged with her murder but made a shock deal with prosecutors on Friday, agreeing to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter. He will have to serve only 12 months of a 4½ year sentence, less the time he has already served.
Alabama’s Attorney-General, Troy King, will lead a mission to Queensland to lobby for an appeal, his office told The Sun-Herald yesterday. If that isn’t successful, he will push “America’s legal boundaries to the limit” and attempt to charge Watson with murder, for the second time, when he is deported back to the US upon his release.
Tomorrow Mr King will write to the Townsville Supreme Court and Queensland Attorney-General, Cameron Dick, to express his disappointment with the Australian legal system.
The letter will state: “On behalf of the victim’s family, I am respectfully requesting that this Honorable Court grant an appeal for re-sentencing of the defendant. I stand ready to appear in front of this Honorable Court if you so desire.”
Alabama’s assistant attorney-general, Don Valeska, said: “I don’t wish to throw stones at the Australian prosecutors but they spent hundreds of hours on this and told me personally they had a very strong case. It now seems Tina’s parents made a huge mistake letting them handle this. What were they thinking? Had we known Watson was only going to get a year, we would have begged the prosecutors to drop all charges and send him back to America.
“It is a fact that he would have received at least 20 years here, probably life without parole, because we can demonstrate he killed for the money.”
Mr Dick said yesterday in a statement Queensland would “explore every option appropriate in these circumstances”.
“I am requesting the sentencing remarks for the case handed down yesterday, with a view to considering an appeal,” he said.
Underwater footage taken during Mrs Watson’s fatal dive showed her husband swimming away while she sank to the ocean floor.
Watson, a rescue diver, told authorities his wife panicked underwater. He said she was too heavy to drag to the surface so he raced off for help. He later changed details of his account when quizzed by police.
An autopsy failed to find any pre-existing medical condition to explain her death, and tests proved there was nothing wrong with her diving gear.
The coroner found it likely Watson killed his wife by holding her underwater and turning off her air supply. The motive was believed to be her life insurance policy, which Watson tried to collect after her death.
Mr Valeska said: “As far as this department is concerned, the crime started in America and was then committed in Australia.
“We can demonstrate Watson started plotting here because he went to her job and tried to up the insurance, without her, right before they got married.
“We would definitely arrest him when he gets back but whether two countries can charge someone over the same murder remains to be seen. A judge here may turn around and say that he can’t be put in jeopardy for the same crime twice.”
Picture linked to from the Mail Online - Visit Their Website!
So it appears there are several things that could happen now. Gabe Watson could have his deal invalidated by an Australian appeals court, and either be resentenced or forced to face trial for murder. The latter appears to be is what Christina Thompson’s family had been led to believe would happen. There’s also a slim possibility that the Australians may decide to not prosecute Watson and send him back to the US to face charges. That would be the best outcome as far a getting justice for Christina, because he would face the stiffest sentence. There’s also a possibility of Watson serving the one year, then returning to the US to face murder charges. There’s a huge problem with that scenario, however, because double jeopardy may apply.
I find the situation as it stands now personally intolerable – I have no doubt in my mind that Gabe Watson murdered his new wife Christina by turning off her air supply while they were diving on the Great Barrier Reef, then leaving her to sink to the bottom of the ocean. The picture of her body sinking into the distance is as haunting a photograph as you will ever see, and this bastard has managed to get away with it so far. It’s time to make him pay.
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Anal-retentive sick bastard. F’g “me, me, me” asshole. I hope U.S. legal eagles pool their expertise and just suck the soul out of this asshole. What a whiny little selfish prick.
“…suck the soul out of this asshole”
Lazy, he has to have a soul to begin with for that to work. =)
Oh WOW. You mean the legal system may actually go out of their way to make sure this son of a bitch gets punished for cold blooded murder??? I am so impressed. That is not even sarcasm! Applause to the Attorney General!!!! God, I’d give the man a hug if I could.
There is a chance this fucker will get off regardless… double jeopardy if the Aussies want to be stupid and leave him with his plea bargain. If not, maybe his Australian sentence of nothingness can be tacked onto any time the US court gives him. If they do manage to retry him, wouldn’t that case set precedent??
On a personal note, I wish I could break this guy’s kneecaps. What a heartless bastard.
Alanna,
Most of the time, they end up doing the stupid thing and fucking up the case. Don’t hold your breath yet. And, if they do let him off in Australia, I wouldn’t embellish our legal system yet…we’ve all seen the awesomeness of our system and the great people they’ve let off, even with more physical evidence than in this case (see OJ and the like).
Either way, I hope his ass gets sent for the rest of his pathetic excuse for a life. I can’t even begin to think about how these people even imagine such a timeline of events in the first place. If they would just die off and kill themselves, I’m sure the great gene pool of humans would be ever so greatful.
Then again, we wouldn’t have the pleasure of burning these assholes.
Libby
I thought double jeopardy was only for the U.S.?
Great…now every asshole who wants to murder his wife can just take her on a vacation to Australia and only have to worry about going to jail for a year. WTF.
Don’t get your hopes up too much, folks. I’m not a criminal lawyer, but I have worked in an Australian State justice system, and I don’t think most of the options described by Max could possibly come to pass. Let me outline what I think will and won’t happen.
What will happen: the Queensland A-G will very likely file an appeal against the sentence. It will be heard by 3 Supreme Court justices, sitting as the Court of Appeal. The onus of proof will be on the State, but these sentence appeals are often successful.
Unfortunately, however, manslaughter will never carry the sort of sentence that most of us would think appropriate in this case. Slimeball might get his 1 year increased to 2 or 3 … but it’ll still be much less than life behind bars.
What will not happen: a new trial for murder. Just not possible. Slimeball has had his day in court in Queensland, and the State cannot have another go. Only a defendant can appeal against a verdict and get a new trial.
Also, they can’t strike out the trial and send him back home. It’s too late: a done deal. Maybe Alabama might be able to extradite him after he’s served his time in Queensland, but then, as you say, there’s the problem of double jeopardy.
There’s always the possibility of an OJ-style civil suit, if Slimeball has any assets. But basically I think he’s going to walk away very lightly from drowning a beautiful young woman.
The Queenslanders screwed up on this one … bah, pineapple-brains! :) If they didn’t think they could achieve a murder conviction, and weren’t even willing to try, they should have let the Alabama prosecutors take over.
Mandrake—any insight on the reason to why they agreed to this shitty plea deal? Obviously it seems a little light for murder. And murder it clearly was, premeditated and all.
Alanna, going by the account on msnbc.com, I’d say the authorities had a mountain of highly-suspicious circumstantial evidence. Get this:
“Dennis Murphy, Dateline NBC: How many different versions has he told so far of what happened underwater?
Sgt. Brad Flynn: With the interviews that I’ve done and the interviews that the Queensland police have done, approximately 16.” [!!!]
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24713499/page/4/
But in court his lawyer would have argued: yes, my client told lies and kept changing his story, but that’s just because he was so upset and ashamed at having failed to save his wife from the ‘accident’ she experienced.
It would have been difficult for the prosecutors to prove otherwise, beyond reasonable doubt. And introducing lots of specialist diving evidence might just have confused the jury and led to an acquittal. So they took the easy option and accepted the plea bargain.
It’s a hard job being a prosecutor — every possible legal hurdle is set up against them. Still, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try. This was not a shining moment in the history of Queensland prosecutions.
Hello,
Its been a semester or two since I last took Criminal Law, but it was my understanding that enough circumstantial evidence would “count” in a trial…? And there was plenty of that with this fuckwad. Another thing is that “beyond a reasonable doubt” is not “beyond a shadow of a doubt”. It is meant to convey the doubt that a reasonable person might have that the individual concerned is not guilty of the crime. I cannot see a reasonable person believing this jerk is completely innocent.
So yeah, definitely not a shining moment for the Australian courts. They took the easy way out.
Hi Mandrake,
Thanks for confirming what was toiling around in my head. I didn’t think that a new trial for murder would happen, and just for the reasons that you stated…
“Slimeball has had his day in court in Queensland, and the State cannot have another go. Only a defendant can appeal against a verdict and get a new trial.”
“Also, they can’t strike out the trial and send him back home. It’s too late: a done deal. Maybe Alabama might be able to extradite him after he’s served his time in Queensland, but then, as you say, there’s the problem of double jeopardy.”
This is definitely a case to keep an eye on. Unfortunately, it will be very interesting to see how this plays out.
Again, thanks for sharing your take on the legalities of this tragedy.
MyMelissa
Maybe he can be charged with other stuff here in America, like if he cashed the policies in, then it’s fraud because he bought policies then killed his wife.
So despite the fact that he skates on the murder, fraud will still give him jail time and there should be little difference for being Bubba’s bitch when one is a mirderer or just a con artist.
Maybe here in America he can go in with the GP because he’s only sent in for fraud and the GP can take care of the murder charge!
I, sadly and very disasppointed at this case, think that MF of the Year is going to ride off into the sunset on a lesser charge, just as manslaughter, if possible. I doubt anything else will be done. Yes, he didn’t really set himself up to run across the finish line in first place because of the life insurance bid, but there were really no witnesses that saw him actually murder her. Yes, they have body, yes, they have motive…but, if he pulls the “woe is me, I’m now a newly-wed-widower” card, I’m sure that there might be someone in the jury stupid enough to buy it.
I’m just playing the pessimistic card, though. Hopefully, his dumb ass will wind up getting raped by Big Bubba for a good while longer than we expect.
No legal system, in any country is perfect. Sadly, this man will do what little time he was sentenced with, return to the United States and resume his life because the majority of people will have forgotten that he murdered his wife.
So ladies, take a real good, hard look at his face. Memorize it. Because when he gets out, he is going to be looking for his next victim, er wife. He got away with it once, he will probably try to do it again.
If I was the father of the woman that was brutally murdered (Drowning has got to suck) there would be justice, regardless of the queens over in Queensland inability to prosecute accordingly. Id start with a bit of waterboarding mixed in a old fashion beating and end with a crescendo of fire.
karma’s a biatch
An update on this case: Watson is scheduled to be released from Australian prison in November 2010, at which point he will be deported back to the United States, where the State of Alabama will likely be charging him for murder, as well as kidnapping by deception. The Alabama Attorney General had wanted to charge him with capital murder, and had requested all evidence pertaining to the crime from the Australian authorities, however Australia refused unless the death penalty was taken off the table. In June 2010, the Attorney General assured Australian authorities that the death penalty would not be used.
Source: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/honeymoon-killer-may-face-new-charge-20100814-123or.html
As of today the waste is waiting for trial. Should be May 2012.
I think he is still married to the woman who looks like her also.
Thats all I know though.
http://www.cbs42.com/content/localnews/story/Gabe-Watson-trial-pushed-to-2012/JPbhVYpHQUGFLefxiRVjYg.cspx