It's a fairly commonly held belief that if someone is murdered or harmed by their partner, they "must have" done something to provoke or deserve it, even if that's just "failure to leave". But if friends and family of the perpetrator are saying they're shocked - then it has to be the former. Provocation.

The reason is pretty obvious - if people don't believe that it was provoked, then they have to believe that the victim didn't see it coming, and thus, it could happen to them without them seeing it coming. "That could never happen to ME, because..." ... they must be able to tell themselves.

So if friends and family of someone who chokes their wife to death say he's always been a nice man and a good person who would never just randomly do this, then he must indeed be that (they think), and yet he did it, so there must be "other reasons".

Which is in reality is victim blaming at it's worst.

Yeah I hate the 'hardworking patient family guy, friendly to all, lovely bloke, we dont know what happened?!?!?!?!' type reporting that tends to go with stories like this. Not too much of a lovely patient family guy really, if you wipe your family out, surely.

...I still struggle with it being changed to manslaughter when strangulation in the force it would take to cause death could only be a deliberate act...surely at the very most it would have been defended as diminished responsibility but still murder...

Yep, and I do think that underlying fear it's a huge subconscious motivation behind most victim blaming; "I don't want to believe that this could happen to me or someone I love, so what did THEY do that caused it?"

I definitely agree with this. Its 'safer' for people to think they could simply avoid the behaviours that 'cause' stuff like this, than it is to accept sometimes things are totally beyond your own control.

I think thats it with a lot of conspiracy theories too actually. Much easier for us to comprehend some plot or something, than accept sometimes bad **** just happens and noone could stop it either..

hhhmmmm I'm not entirely sure I agree with that, I think it's a misogynistic motivation, be that conscious or unconscious (probably unconscious for the most part) it's the same with rape cases, I've often thought that a lot of times men want to understand the man more because what if something like that ever happened to them, what if they didn't read someones signals or were wrongly accused etc and in murder cases, the woman was probably manipulative and pushed him to it somehow. I still think in society people still want women to be at fault for causing a man to do something to do them (and It's not always just men who think that way)

*Obviously I don't think all men think like this either

she ran down the stairs, she was in the porch with keys trying to get out, how did the time it took him to get down the stairs, and how terrified she must have been not stop him in his tracks

and all she said was 'get over it'

I assume there is no history of domestic abuse which probably went in his favour but even so...

...it seems and reads less to me that his wife is thought to have done anything wrong to provoke in any way...but more the depression/anxieties etc that he was going through and had been for some time, being a reason for reducing the charge to manslaughter...and that should never be...and if she had killed him and it being the same circumstances etc...would it be viewed the same or more being, ughhhhh an act of evil...

Jury trials are so flawed really. However, I dont see a realistic way to do it besides juries. Jurys are just as likely as anyone else to believe various myths to do with how criminals/victims act and such.

...we could speculate also...and as Niamh said... (...It's not always just men who think that way and not generalising all men..)...that it could be imagined to kill a wife, so the guy had to be under so much pressure and pushed too far when any poor guy could be understood to snap...but what reason would a wife have to ever kill her husband, a lovely guy like that...there is something about that woman and we need to look very closely at her etc...

...one of my friends had jury duty, it was quite a few years ago...but she expected it to be a more minor case...and then found that it was a very huge case in our area with a particularly brutal murder of a wife by her husband...she really was quite traumatised for such a long time with the things that were told in court...