Tracey Morris claims Sabine ‘set up’

On the eve of Sabine McNeill’s sentencing hearing—all right, the second half of her sentencing hearing—we were interested to note that Tracey Morris has chimed in, claiming that Sabine was stitched up and “made a scapegoat”, and that her trial should be voided:

Sabine Kurjo was put on trial without the right to call upon any witnesses to her defence..

She was set up from day one and I was sick to death of saying it over and over again…

SHE WAS MADE A SCAPEGOAT …

SHE WAS SET UP BY ELLLLLLLLAAAAAAAA DRAPERRRRRŔ to begin with and since she has been remanded, she continued to be set up…

She certainly wasnt the only one set up and she wont be the last…

She is in a bad way and only ever comes out of her cell when she goes for a shower and to and from court. She was found Guilty due to her legal team allowing the trial to go ahead without her rights to call upon witnesses to her defence..

Ffs that says it all about how this has been corrupted in such a way that the truth about the real whistle blower who uploaded those videos in Nov 2014 confessed and sent his affidavit of it that lead to her immediate release from colondale police station on 3rd Aug 2015…

That wasnt allowed into her bundle of evidence for her defence…

WTFFFFFF is going on….

Someone needs to be at that court tomorrow when she is bk up apparently, and make sure there is an appeal lodged..

Kristen Elizabeth we cant let this happen..

1000s more did a lot more exposure of this case than Sabine did so WHYYYYYYY is she on trial?

Sabine needs to open her eyes and see the bigger picture here or she will be dead in a few months or less..

She is very ill and in constant pain..

She is very emotional all the time and is confined to her cell due to her mobility. The women are all looking after her and out for her as best they can and we have to be thankful she has that.

She is up tomorrow for more likely pre sentencing matters, but if she doesn’t appeal this and fight for the right to call upon witnesses then she wont come out of there alive..

Can we have this trial voided due to what they have done here x

(all verbatim)

It isn’t terribly surprising that Tracey is convinced that Sabine was found guilty not due to the jury’s ability to evaluate the prosecution and defence arguments, but due to having been “set up”.

She has expressed this viewpoint multiple times over the past year, notably during her aggressive second-guessing and defamation of Noam Almaz, Sabine’s solicitor.

As she was not present during the trial, we’re not sure what makes Tracey believe that Sabine was improperly represented. In our view, her legal team worked very hard for their client, made some very persuasive arguments about certain of her charges, and were able to persuade the jury to reject 11 of the breach of restraining order charges on the indictment.

What amused us most about Tracey’s rant, though, was her assertion that Sabine had not been permitted “to call upon any witnesses to her defence”.

While it’s true that the only defence witness in the trial was Sabine herself, it’s hard to imagine who else the defence might have called, and what the jury would have made of it if they had done so.

Belinda McKenzie was mentioned any number of times during the trial, but rarely in flattering terms, so she’d be off the list. Ditto Angela, whose videos were used as evidence for the prosecution (and no, Angela, that wasn’t a violation of copyright, you dolt).

Neelu? While it’s entertaining to think of her in the witness box droning on about corruption frauds and ruin frauds, and perhaps even more entertaining to imagine her trying to arrest Judge Cahill, we suspect that the jury might not have been swayed in Sabine’s direction by Neelu’s rhetorical skills.

What about Tracey herself, then?

Didn’t she have some long involved story about how she singlehandedly got Sabine released from “colondale” following her August 2015 arrest, by tracking down some bloke who claimed to have viewed Ella and Abraham’s videos on the dark web in 2014? And wasn’t this months before Sabine, in a temper because Mrs Justice Pauffley would not return the children to Ella, released the videos online and they went viral?

We’re sure the jury would have been transfixed by this astonishing story, yes indeed. The fact that even if it were true, it would be completely irrelevant to Sabine’s charges? A mere bagatelle.

Last March we wrote that Belinda was attempting to discourage an “angry mob” from turning up at Sabine’s application for bail hearing, and with good reason: at that time it would not have helped Sabine’s case if a bunch of her more obstreperous friends were to show up and start mouthing off on her behalf. Oddly, judges tend to be unimpressed by that sort of thing.

As for the jury in Sabine’s recent trial, the court went to some lengths to ensure that the courtroom was not overrun with the differently sane and overly zealous, whose behaviour could have negatively influenced the jury.

While Tracey and friends will likely never be convinced of this, the judge did this in order to protect the defendant from the negative perceptions this could have stirred up in the jury. Like it or not, people are often judged by the company they keep, and one of the major challenges in Sabine’s trial was ensuring that the jury was not exposed to anybody whose behaviour might have influenced their decisions.

Those who were present at the trial will recall that when Paul Rogers/Eddie Isok and Belinda McKenzie were arrested in court, for example, the jury was sent out of the room first, with no explanation. This is standard practice, so that the jury’s opinion of the case could not be contaminated by knowledge that some of Sabine’s friends had allegedly breached the trial’s reporting restriction.

We know it’s a lot to ask, but before Tracey starts flapping her gums about Sabine being “set up”, and casting aspersions on her legal team, it might be nice if she were to give her head a wobble and actually inform herself about what happened in court, and why.

Yes, yes, we know: dream on.