Very good question. He was staying the night in the hotel room because Evans' mother's house was full.
Wouldn't they have seen shagging, or whatever, with no soundtrack, other than their own. Where are you going with this?
Instead of engaging in a vacuous argument, what about you coming back with something a little substantial?
Evans' brother and a mate was watching through the hotel window until MacDonald closed the curtains. They filmed some of it on their phone. The receptionist was called to give evidence as he was listening through the door. Its a reasonable question, did they give evidence and what was it.
Brilliant. Wonderful indignation. Men are the bastards and women innocent and vulnerable? I think you do your gender little credit. Some men are scum, some women are scum. This lass went out at a dead hour because . . . She was not new to it . . . she relexed by squatting and pissing in a doorway, then her life went on (that's the way of it, no?) . . . Her one concern on the partner changeover was that she wanted to be licked out (I believe the convicted and the acquitted agreed on this.). Good for her.
Not sure what your problem is Fez. Saying I do my gender little credit is just ridiculous when I was making a valid point. I never said all men are bastards and all women innocent. Far from it.
MacDonald shut the curtains after hearing giggling outside. Why don't you google it for yourself? Its not difficult to find.
Presumably as you were one of the twelve doing jury service your self assessment is remarkable. I have been on many juries including murder, rape and robbery while in Aus and have generally enjoyed the experiences and would recommend a spell on a jury to everyone. Until you have sat in a jury room you cannot experience the power you have and the emotions you may go through in reaching a decision. Believe me, sometimes "the law" just dosen't always come into a verdict, it being trumped by common sense. Age is not a barrier for jury service as a couple of weeks ago I was informed I was on a list of potential jurists for a period of 12 months at the local city criminal court and I am 76.
See below You need to have been found guilty, but your personal belief of being innocent can still survive, as it has done for so many. It's not difficult to understand that, why do you consistently fail to? You have argued and made broadbrush statements as the so-called board feminist, but I haven't seen you address the role of the women in rape allegations - do you believe the responsibility is solely that of the man? What do you make of the behaviour of the victim in this matter? Do you not find it strange that the took a technicality of a law change to even make a charge of rape possible, as the girl herself has not made any such allegation? This and above - I have already read it, thank you. Have you, as you seem to make more of it than I am able to. Didn't it say the external mobile footage was worthless due to poor quality? Do you know for sure that the footage was shown to the jury or is that just another of your theories? If, once his sex had finished, a now more focussed MacDonald had heard his mates outside the window, might he not then draw the curtains? Could the reason have anything to do with not wanting videos uploading to social media, regardless of fame. I don't know the answers, I suggest you don't either, but you seem to focus on constructing the only versions that condemn.
I've mentioned several times he can claim what he wants. The simple fact is, you have to be guilty in the eyes of the law to receive a sentence, so asking for a lower sentence is acknowledging the findings of the Court, whether reluctantly or not. You can fluff about with "found" guilty and the like, the facts as they stand right now, are he is guilty of rape. If he gets that overturned, he's not guilty, but so far his expensive legal team have failed to convince those that matter. His legal team failed to make the case you're trying to, and they've more knowledge, experience and information at their disposal. I've asked earlier, do you have a link to an example of this scenario you're painting, where a person found innocent asks for a reduced sentence?
I put the phrase board feminist in quotation marks as it's not a title I've given myself but others have remarked upon that I seem quite feministy ( a word used by one of my work colleagues about me last week). Let's not forget that rape victims can be both male and female adults and children. Like any allegation of a crime being committed you hope that people will make a claim that is true. If anyone is found guilty of making a false accusation of any crime then they must be dealt with within the laws around that. Women who falsely claim rape do a great disservice to all rape victims regardless of gender or age. The girl in the Evans case got very drunk, apparently also took drugs and put herself in a very vulnerable position. Did she deserve to be treated as she was? No.
Charlie1 asked if Evans' brother and mate had given evidence. You asked why. I said that they were outside the window looking in. As witnesses I would have expected them to have given evidence. Wouldn't you? The only reference I found that the video evidence taken by them on the phone was rubbish was on the Ched Evans site. The reference to the curtains and the video is in the transcript of the application to go to the Court of Appeal. I posted a link to it, which you said you'd read. I came across something else yesterday. On 18 October 2014 Sheffield United denied they offered Ched Evans a 2 year contract worth £500,000. Early that week Nigel Clough confirmed the club was discussing offering him a contract. The offer for him to resume training was made in November 2014. Two and two doesn't always equal four. In my opinion they were testing the water to see what the reaction would be. You may have a different opinion. I don't construct anything, I read reports of the evidence and look for reasons why MacDonald was found not guilty and Evans guilty. There is much missing, such as how long was it before the woman went to the kebab shop after Evans had watched her sprawled out in a bar pissed? Was it minutes, a couple of hours? Did MacDonald and Evans follow her to the kebab shop? Did she follow them? How long did it take to get served? What happened between 3:00 and 4:00am? All this would be covered in the full trial transcript. The jury saw all the evidence presented and acquitted MacDonald and found Evans guilty. The simple question is what did they hear and see during the trial to come to that conclusion? He said she consented. She said she couldn't remember, she didn't deny consenting, the jury found him guilty. The obvious question is why? We know there was some film taken so the first obvious question is what did it show? The second did it help persuade the jury MacDonald was innocent and Evans guilty? You don't know the answer, neither do I, which is why I suggested it may have influenced the jury. If it showed nothing then it clearly didn't and something else did.
Bear in mind i am thinking of the big picture rather than this particular case. This bit in bold takes us back 10 or 12 pages, trail by social media. He did the crime and served his time ( ok half of it but thats the norm these days ) now he is been punished again by the twitterati ( lovely word ) Surely thats a bad thing.
This is total nonsense, show me where I have argued his innocence? I have clearly stated that the sentence is accepted, but that he will argue his innocence. You refuse to accept that a verdict can be passed, a sentence imposed but the accused and sentenced can still claim they are innocent, even though due process has found them guilty. He applied for the appeal and sentence review as someone who has been found guilty (something out of his hands), but refuses to accept or admit any guilt. To discuss it further is a total waste of time.
I don't refuse to accept that at all, quite the contrary. Just post a link to an actual example of whatever point it is you're trying to make happening in practice. It may explain your point better than you're doing.
Having looked at a great deal of information relating to this case, I believe this article sums it up well and I totally support the points made within it. Why was the training offer a bad thing? http://www.insidetime.co.uk/articleview.asp?a=1878&c=the_right_to_work "A couple of months back, I did a remarkably foolish thing. I was emailed a petition protesting against one or other of the government's prison "initiatives" and, being totally in sympathy with its objectives, I gladly added my name. But never again. Ever since, I have received a regular flow of petitions, all of which their organisers seem to feel I will be wildly enthusiastic about signing. Some, indeed, I did approve of; others I would never have dreamed of endorsing. However, none of these unsolicited petitions was as unsettling as the one asking me to protest against the re-employment of the footballer Ched Evans by his former club, Sheffield United, when he is released. Evans was convicted of rape at Caernarfon Crown Court in April 2012. I have never before been asked to play a part, however minuscule, in preventing someone from obtaining gainful employment. Isn't the right to work one of the most fundamental rights? The idea that we should deliberately prevent someone from applying his skills in his particular vocation is astonishing. There is a second point. These petition-organisers were seeking not just to interfere with someone's natural employment rights; they are also seeking to usurp the criminal justice process. There has been a trial and conviction and the judge has imposed sentence. That is what happens; criminal justice is resolved in the courts by judges and juries. The process, in its purest form, is equally independent of influence whether from on high (by the government or State media) or from below (by rabble-rousers). Yet we now have a caucus that is seeking to impose an additional punishment to that handed down by the judge, a punishment that was never even contemplated in the trial process. It is the stuff of lynch-mob justice. (For clarification, it should be pointed out that those of us who believe that the system is riddled with miscarriages of justice are not seeking to set it aside in any way, but merely to ensure that it functions efficiently.) The third point about the petition, and one of which the organisers are surely aware, is that the conviction of Evans is massively contentious. Indeed, it demonstrates just how error-prone the UK criminal justice process can be. The incident that led to the conviction occurred in Rhyl in the small hours of a Bank Holiday weekend in May 2011. A young woman approached Clayton McDonald, who is also a footballer. She then hailed a taxi, which drove them both to the inexpensive hotel that Evans had previously booked for McDonald. Evans joined them there, and everything that ensued would appear to have been entirely consensual. However, after spending the next day at work, the woman went to police to complain that her handbag had been stolen and her drink spiked at a night-club (at which time Evans and McDonald were not with her). It turned out that she was wrong on both counts: she herself had left her handbag behind and, although she had consumed a great deal of alcohol, there was no evidence that it was in any way contaminated. So it is important to clarify that there was no forensic evidence of anything, that the woman suffered no injury and indeed did not even make a complaint of sexual assault. One of those supporting the petitioners' aim of ensuring that Evans should not be allowed to resume his occupation is a Guardian writer whose argument is that Evans 'has never even acknowledged that he raped his victim⦠pretending that he never committed a crime just isn't good enough'. On the contrary, it seems that there is every justification for him to plead his innocence especially in view of the fact that the jury appeared to reach incompatible verdicts, with McDonald having been acquitted on just about the same evidence as that on which Evans was convicted. (This raises the possibility that Evans, who was much the more successful of the two footballers, was discriminated against because of his higher profile.) In the wake of Evans' conviction, a number of local people nine, altogether were so appalled that they revealed the identity of the previously-anonymous complainant through social media. They then had to face prosecution themselves, with the result that this case now encompasses ten miscarriages of justice rather than just the one. Those who sought to 'out' the complainant may have displayed a more deep-seated concern for the public interest in the administration of justice than the Crown Prosecution Service. Certainly, their instincts (they believed that the woman was an opportunist money-grabber) soon appeared to be confirmed. It was subsequently revealed that the woman had written social media messages, not disclosed by the prosecution, in which she betrayed a preoccupation with compensation monies, telling a friend that she'll be able to 'get us matching pink Mini Coopers', 'treat us to an amazing holiday' and 'make all your dreams come true'. Now, imagine a situation where trial witnesses had to make declarations of interest (as they certainly should). She would either have had to admit to these comments, in which case the jury would have been able to take them into account; or she would have forsworn them and committed perjury. In fact it is the real character of this disgraceful case which one suspects that petition-organisers and bloggers are so keen to cover up. It used to be a Fleet Street joke that news stories would begin "Outrage as such-and-such happens", even though logically there couldn't be any outrage because the story hadn't been printed yet. So the paper would need to generate the outrage artificially usually by ringing up half-witted MPs (of whom there was always a copious supply). These days, of course, the outrage arrives by the Twitter-load almost instantaneously. There are millions of people who hold considered views that are not fractious or hysterical, millions of people who would not dream of preventing Ched Evans from resuming his lawful occupation particularly in view of the actual circumstances of the case but whose voices are not being heard because the eatenup with-hatred-bile-and-bitterness bullies are making the biggest din on social media sites. Despite their efforts, this shocking injustice has fortunately generated significant assistance, including from barristers at one of the most reputable sets of defence chambers in the country. Unfortunately, however, the poor performance of the Crown Prosecution Service in this case is just being mirrored in other parts of the system. "Justice delayed is justice denied" is one of the key mantras of any criminal justice process; oblivious of this, the Criminal Cases Review Commission has told the Yorkshire Post that they will be able to start considering the case in 2017. In the meantime, let's hope that Evans is able to resume his football career in the very near future. I'm sure that he'll be able to count on widespread public support"
