Judge...send them down.

After what seems like an interminable wait, the nine assholes who killed a woman during a spiritual cleansing ceremony last year are finally going to stand trial for manslaughter. This has been a long time coming, but these dickheads who get it into their thick skulls that evil spirits, demons of the netherworld or makutu can control people and needs to be cleansed through dangerous and utterly Neanderthal ceremonies, need to be educated. Especially when they take the life of someone else and try and justify it with that sickening word "religion".

Janet Moses was a 22 year old mother of two girls, 3 years and 1 year old, living in Wainuiomata with a relative, just over the hill from Lower Hutt, New Zealand. Her family were firm proponents of the Maori belief system (a mixture of christian and tribal) which included belief in a makutu or curse being able to be placed on a family or individual. Recently, a family member had been suffering ill health and the family believed that it was the result of a makutu being placed on them through a family member stealing a taonga (treasured item). The taonga in question was a stone lion statue from the front of a Greytown Hotel and it was stolen by Janet's sister. They decided to hold a curse lifting or exorcism to remove the curse, and on the evening of October 11, 2007 the family began their wailing, chanting and application of water to drive out the curse. No-one as yet knows what took place that night except the police and the family members at the house, but one neighbour reported loud noises that night "like banging on a wall".


The next day, Friday 12th October, police were called by family members to her house around 5.30pm, and Janet's body was found lying on a bed. The autopsy found that she had died through drowning and the time of death was placed at around 8am that morning. She had lain dead in the house for nearly 8 hours before the police were called. Another victim of the family insanity was one of the 14 year old cousins who was also subjected to the same cruelty, and ended up in hospital.

Well, in what one can only hope is the beginning of one of the most successful cases in police history, 9 of the family members present that fateful night have been passed in for trial after two Justices of the Peace agreed that there was a case of manslaughter to answer to. A further case of cruelty to a child was also passed on for trial for a 10th family member. Good bloody job - I hope they get the bookcase thrown at them. People such as this who value hokey beliefs stemming from the days back when they used to eat each other, over a family members life deserve to be judged very harshly.

At an earlier hearing, apparently one of the lawyers argued for name suppression because "the case involved sensitive cultural issues" and argued "the defendants faced potential public vilification if their identities were revealed". You're damn right they would! And for good reason - they killed someone for nothing! You punished the youngest member of a family for the theft of a stone statue that was taken by someone else - morons!

For those of you thinking that perhaps Manslaughter is not the appropriate charge, and perhaps murder would have been more apt, there's still a hefty price to pay if found guilty.

"The maximum penalty for manslaughter is life imprisonment. The worst cases of manslaughter are near to murder and can attract severe sentences of imprisonment. But a conviction for manslaughter may also result where someone causes the death of another person by a single blow in circumstances where loss of life was not intended, and a sentence less than imprisonment may be appropriate."
NZ Courts

The difference between murder and manslaughter is mainly around premeditation and the sentencing of someone found guilty of murder involves a mandatory non-parole period, usually of no less than 10 years. So this still leaves the judge a wide range of jail time to hand out to the morons in the dock.

In an unsurprising move, all 10 have plead not guilty, and the trial date has been set down for 22 September. Here's hoping the judge sees sense and sends them all down for a long custodial sentence, during which time they can contemplate the life they took with their stupid customs and religious hocus pocus.