Manslaughter: Why Princess Diana Wasn’t Murdered, Even Though She Died
Posted on April 7, 2008
Filed Under Celebrities, Criminal Law, Drugs, Laws, Los Angeles, News, Paparazzi, Princess Diana |
A court recently ruled that Princess Diana was unlawfully killed, yet her death wasn’t ruled a murder, rather it was ruled to have been manslaughter.
The legal definition of manslaughter is - The unlawful killing of a human being without malice or premeditation, either express or implied; distinguished from murder, which requires malicious intent.
The major difference between the two, is intent. If there was motivation, or previous intention, to cause harm to the other person, than murder would be the charge. However, in the case of Princess Diana, the paparazzi were ruled to have acted recklessly and this caused the accident.
Actor Lane Garrison, formerly on the show “Prison Break” was convicted last year of vehicular manslaughter (killing someone with your car) and was sentenced to 40 months in jail. Garrison has a blood alcohol level of .20 (more than twice the legal limit in California), had cocaine in his system and killed one girl while injuring two others.
Manslaughter differs from someone’s death being ruled an accident in that the killer must have been acting inappropriately in some way. Lane Garrison didn’t intend to kill the girl in his car, but he did get drunk and high and acted in such a way that it put her life at risk. The photographers who were found to have caused Princess Diana’s death didn’t intend to kill her, but their actions heightened the situation in which she eventually died.
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A few questions, and, please, can someone actually answer rather than screaming “burn the witch”
1. Why do we have no pictures of the moment of the crash?
There are CCTV cameras all along the Alma Tunnel, and they were all working, except for the one that would have shown how the crash happened. This one was turned to face the wall. Why?
2. Why wasn’t the crash cordoned off?
Police say they did cordon off the area for four to five hours, after which they claimed they had enough evidence. So, the cleansing teams were sent in at dawn to hose down and disinfect the tunnel, eliminating the possibility of obtaining further evidence. Who ordered this?
3. Why did the ambulance take so long to get Diana to the hospital?
The ambulance that drove her from the tunnel, flanked by two police outriders, took 70 minutes to reach the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital, 6km away, normally a 10 minute journey.
4. Why was Diana embalmed?
French law clearly says that no body should be embalmed if a postmortem is required.
So why did chief pathologist Dominique Lecomte embalm her immediately? Conspiracy theorists claim that it was in order to prevent a pregnancy test.
Their argument may be nonsense, but what makes their claim stronger was that someone at the hospital did announce that night Diana was six-weeks pregnant. This report was later withdrawn.
5. Why was a dangerous car used?
The Mercedes S280 supplied to Dodi had problems. Four months earlier it had been stolen, recovered, stripped and then remade. But all was not well. Its usual driver, Olivier Lafaye, told the police it was unstable and drifted out at the rear end.
A warning light also indicated the vehicle had a brake problem. When the Gendarmerie Nationale motor unit did check the car, they found the brake fluid was 7.5 per cent water.
6.Was Henri Paul a patsy?
Paul was the security officer at the Ritz, called in by Dodi to drive the car that night. He died at the wheel, and the postmortem at the hospital found he had been drunk at the time. Authorities later blamed him for causing the accident and not the paparazzi. Case solved.
Unfortunately, the evidence does not fit the conclusions. First, Paul does not appear drunk in any of the CCTV coverage that night. He parks his car normally, he walks steadily.
Second, Paul was not a drunk. He had a perfectly normal liver and two days earlier had passed all the tests for his pilot’s licence. Even if the blood sample finding was correct, it raised a far more serious problem. It showed his blood had a high concentration of carbon dioxide, enough to give him a blinding headache and render him unable to function normally. According to established medical opinion, Paul could not have been driven with that much carbon dioxide in his blood, and the levels were not found in Diana’s or Dodi’s blood. If Paul was functioning normally at the Ritz, but full of alcohol and carbon dioxide at the hospital, when did that change occur?
7. Who was on the mystery motorbike?
According to Brenda Wells, a British secretary driving in the tunnel at the time of the crash, she was near the tunnel entrance when a motorbike with two people came screaming along, just in front of a black Mercedes. She saw two flashes of light and heard the crash. A moment later a swarm of bikes entered the tunnel, stopped, and she heard someone exclaim: “It’s Di!” Her story is confirmed by Francois Levistre, a harbour pilot, who had entered the tunnel ahead of the Mercedes. We do not know who was riding that motorbike, and the police have never found them. Why not?