March 2012    Download the Entire Issue (PDF)

Vol. 27, No. 3   What's this?

Manslaughter in Australia, An Acquittal in Alabama

from the March, 2012 issue of Undercurrent  

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We've written many articles about Gabe Watson, a diver from Alabama charged with the murder of his wife, Tina, while diving in Australia. A month-long inquest concluded that while diving from one of Mike Ball's boats on the Great Barrier Reef in 2003, Watson turned off Tina's air and left her to drown. After pleading guilty to manslaughter due to negligence, Watson, now 34 and remarried, served 18 months in an Australian prison before being brought back to Alabama for a new trial, possibly facing a life sentence without parole. The ending was quite different there. The judge acquitted Watson of murder, ending the trial before the defense had even presented its case, saying prosecutors lacked evidence to prove Watson intentionally killed his wife....