Comment: Gable Tostee case almost too complex for a jury

GABLE Tostee is a thoroughly unlikeable person. But he never deserved to serve 20 years in jail for murder, just like Warriena Wright never deserved to die after going on a Tinder date.

Gable Tostee leaves court after being acquitted. Pic: Jack Tran

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GABLE Tostee is a thoroughly unlikeable person.

But he never deserved to serve 20 years in jail for murder, just like Warriena Wright never deserved to die after going on a Tinder date.

The 30-year-old carpet layer from the Gold Coast was acquitted in a case that was almost too complex for a jury to decide. The six men and six women on that jury were asked to assess the reasonableness of two people who were being entirely unreasonable in the early hours of August 8, 2014.

Warriena Wright and Gable Tostee at his apartment just hours before her death.

An extremely intoxicated Wright was clearly picking a fight with Tostee. Tostee, while playing along to start with, snapped and restrained the 26-year-old NZ tourist.

The jury was asked to decide whether Tostee’s actions — which the prosecution at one stage alleged ­including “choking” her — instilled enough fear into Wright that she thought she had no choice but to climb over the balcony to seek help.

It also had to decide whether ­Tostee could have foreseen his Tinder date would try to climb down, and whether any defences — including self defence — were available to him.

But they then had to figure out whether Wright’s decision to climb over the balcony was reasonable.

Sound complicated? It was.

The Director of Public Prosecutions had no choice but to move forward with this case and there certainly was enough evidence — the harrowing audio recording was almost unprecedented — for it to be in the hands of a jury.

The public, and no doubt Wright’s family, wanted answers and someone to pay for her death.

Tostee was, as his defence team said, a “cartoonish villain” in the eyes of some. He should never have put her out on that balcony and in the aftermath reacted horribly to a tragic situation.

But the jury was right to acquit him of murder*.

*Gable Tostee was found not guilty of the murder or manslaughter of Warriena Wright