An Australian court is hearing the case of a father who threw his four-year-old daughter off the Melbourne West Gate Bridge in January 2009, shortly after phoning his ex-wife to tell her she would never see their children again. The jury is faced with deciding if the father was “mad”, too mentally impaired at the time to be responsible for his actions, or if he was a “bad” father. Two other children, ages 2 and 6, were found with him soon after the crime, the facts of which he does not contest.
He was delivering the children to school and a creche when he pulled over on the bridge. Motorists immediately stopped to scan the water below, and emergency services pulled her out of the water but she died four hours later from the effects of being in the water, and multiple injuries.
Links to other sites: The Age, Herald Sun
Body never found, manner of death unknown
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The jury has passed judgement and ruled José guilty of murdering Olga in 1999, in the strange trial that has taken place in Geneva during the past week.
The jury announced its decision Tuesday 21 December in the evening and on Wednesday the judge sentenced him to 16 years for murder, rape and sequestering another person.
The sentence was conditional: he must be reviewed by a psychiatric panel and if, when his sentence is complete, he is not judged safe for society, he will not be released.
José, a 44-year-old Peruvian, was charged with assassination in the death of 23-year-old Olga, a clandestine au pair worker in Geneva, with whom he had a child. But Olga’s body has never been found, nor is it known how she died, and the jury settled for the lesser, not pre-meditated charge of murder, under the circumstances.
It refused to exclude the possibility that Carmen, his ex-wife and one of the mothers of his nine children, may have had a hand in Olga’s death, although Carmen alerted police to the possibility that her ex-husband had murdered the younger woman.
Final Geneva jury has its say
Geneva, Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – The trial of Cécile Brossard for the murder of Edouard Stern draws to a close today 17 June. The jury of 12 is sequestered and its judgement is expected by the end of the day. They must decide if the murder, to which Brossard has admitted, was simple homicide or a crime of passion with attenuating circumstances. A conviction for homicide could carry up to 20 years in prison for the 40-year-old.
Background: Edouard Stern’s murder, GenevaLunch in partnership with l’Hebdo, 9 June 2009
Geneva's voters say yes to school reform
Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss voters Sunday 17 May adopted biometric passports and a government proposal for insurance to cover, to a limited extent, complementary medicine costs. In cantonal and communal votes, Geneva’s citizens accepted their government’s proposal to reform the education system and they have voted to abolish citizen juries. In Vaud, a new commune has been created, Bourg-en-Lavaux, which embraces five villages.
A jury in Alabama in the US convicted Lam Luong, 37, on four counts of murder Thursday 19 March. Luong pleaded guilty to throwing his four children off of a Gulf Coast bridge after a marital dispute that occurred a week before the murders in January 2008. Luong’s sentencing, a complex process, begins Friday 20 March. Jurors will have to recommend the death penalty or life in prison without parole. The judge is not bound to the decision of the jury, however, and automatic appeals are mandatory in murder convictions. CNN
Update 15:20 Josef Fritzl has been found guilty on all charges and sentenced to life: Fritzl is the man who made world headlines after he imprisoned his daughter, then the several children he fathered by her. He pleaded guilty to all charges against him, including murdering a child who was not given medical treatment. The jury is expected to hand in its verdict 19 March. One possibility is they will recommend he be placed in a psychiatric treatment unit. BBC
