![]() ![]() Common sense, thoughtful and informed common sense, will tell you that this was a murder, but put through a legal mincer it ends up being defined as manslaughter. Crispin's clanger is both trailblazer and emblem for any discussion of this case. ![]() Murder by any other name will smell as putrid. ![]() It took the defence counsel to correct Crispin and tell him that in the second clause he meant manslaughter. The defendant receiving this unusual judgement was Anu Singh, an ANU law student who had knocked out her boyfriend, Joe Cinque, with Rohypnol-laced coffee, then injected him with a fatal dose of heroin. He bowed, sat, and said, "I find the defendant not guilty of murder, but I find the defendant guilty of murder". In the words of Helen Garner's book about the case, Joe Cinque's Consolation,* he "entered on a tide of seriousness, not with his habitual hasty sweep, but slowly, almost grandly". One day in April 1999 judge Ken Crispin of the ACT Supreme Court delivered his judgement in a murder trial. Gerard Windsor interprets Helen Garner's judgement on murder, grief and the law. ![]()
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