Foxy,

As I said, you seem to be struggling with the definition of conjecture and what a jury is supposed to do:

conjecture

noun
1.
the formation or expression of an opinion or theory without sufficient evidence for proof.
2.
an opinion or theory so formed or expressed; guess; speculation.
3.
to conclude or suppose from grounds or evidence insufficient to ensure reliability.

The jury's duty is to not to speculate on the motivations of those involved. Their duty is to decide whether the evidence presented conclusively proves the prosecution case. In this trial, it did not. This is an objective decision based on the information available and is not conjecture.

Dear Shadow Minister,

It's time to move on. This is not
getting us anywhere.

Neither of us can be right all the time.

I think everybody handles things very differently
and we can conjecture, but until we're put in
that situation we really don't know.

Foxy,

Agreed, there is much to speculate in this case. There is only one certainty and that is that there was insufficient evidence to convict the ute driver of manslaughter.

Dear Shadow Minister,

Thank You.

foxy I have tried to keep up with this topic or at least where it ended up. I have some questions or concerns. You accuse the driver of breaking the law in driving too close to the motorcycle. I may be wrong but as this all took place 'off-road', I believe the traffic act did not apply so it simply became 'death by misadventure'. As for 'running the motorcycle over'. I believe we all agree that a 'trail-bike', when off-road, weaves erratically so the obvious happened. From the details on this story, I extracted the scenario that the owner of the bike was high on adrenaline and was very keen to stop the bike in any way he could, without any desire to kill him. He intended to possibly 'elbow' him off the bike as they do in mustering cattle and such. Once the bike had stopped he intended to give him the biggest hiding of his life and then leave him there as he loaded his bike and returned home. As for the bike having been thrown away, I'm not sure where that came from but it does not seem to fit the over-all scenario of events. You also appear to sympathise with the boy for 'stealing' the bike. I must disagree in the strongest possible terms. I have had enough stolen from me and from all nationalities that I feel qualified to comment on at this time given where this topic has strayed to. My position is yes, whatever form of punishment is acceptable when it comes to theft. You say, who cares your insured. Well not everyone and not always and not everything, so having spent the time and effort to make the money to buy these items I do not care what happens to someone if they are thieves. Earn your money. Are the hand-outs not enough?