Actually, I Think The Predictive Text Option Is Off The Hook For This One…

The court heard the pair, who had known each other for six months, had fallen out over text messages.

Brook told the police he sent Mr Witkowski a text containing the word “nutter”, but, because of his predictive text, it came out as “mutter”.

Which I thought was the wrong way round, but it seems that ‘mutter’ is slang for ‘gay’ or ‘chav’, clearly much worse things than being called a nutter.

Also, certainly not as accurate, in this case.

The jury yesterday took just over three hours to clear him of murder, but found him guilty of an alternative charge of manslaughter.

There must have been a lot of room for doubt that he meant to k…

Oh:

Brook had taped up two large kitchen knives in his flat—one on the back of his front door and one near his bathroom. He opened the door to let his friend in but said Mr Witkowski flew at him with a knife of his own.

The court heard that Brook grabbed the knife from the back of the door and stabbed Mr Witkowski in the leg, and he took refuge in the bathroom.

Brook continued to attack Mr Witkowski and delivered the killing blow, stabbing him in the chest and piercing his heart.

Mr Witkowski had 104 injuries including cuts, stab wounds, bruises and slice marks on his hands.

Ah. OK, then…

It’s a bit of a mystery how they reached that conclusion, though it seems they felt there was an element of self-defence involved, given that Witkowski was said to have arrived already armed.

More on that later.

The public needs to be reassured that a man who stabbed his friend to death is not a danger to anybody else, a judge has said.

Good luck with that!

He was due to be sentenced yesterday, but Judge Michael Henshell adjourned the case and ordered a full report to be carried out into whether Brook posed a danger to the public.

He said that the report was needed to decide whether he would impose an indefinite sentence for public protection or a fixed term in prison.

I suspect, given the summing up, the judge wasn’t too impressed with the jury’s decision to go for manslaughter:

Mr Henshell said: “Anybody looking at the facts of this case would be struck by the level of violence, whatever the level of provocation is assessed to be.

“This is a case where I believe the public expect the court to make every enquiry possible whether a man convicted of an offence of this type poses a future risk of harm.”

Indeed.

Oh, right, I forgot about that knife. What was it, kitchen knife? Hunting knife?

Oh:

The jury accepted Brook’s claim that Mr Witkowski had come to his flat with a knife, looking for a fight, although it was never conclusively established whether he had a knife or not.

Ah.

When police arrived, Brook was covered from head to toe in blood.

Brook then sang along to music on his TV while he waited for a police van to come and take him away.

Hmmm….

That predictive text option clearly needs some work.