Alabama judge acquits Gabe Watson in wife's honeymoon scuba diving death

By: Crimesider Staff
Topics: Daily Blotter

Gabe and Tina Watson in an undated photo

(Credit: CBS)

(CBS/AP) BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - An Alabama judge on Thursday acquitted Gabe Watson, the man accused of drowning his newlywed wife during a honeymoon scuba diving trip in Australia.

Circuit Judge Tommy Nail ruled in Birmingham that prosecutors failed to present enough evidence of a crime to send the case to jurors. He ended the two-week-long trial by acquitting the 34-year-old Watson on his own.

Watson had faced a sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted of murdering his wife, Tina Thomas Watson, in 2003. He already served 18 months in an Australian prison after pleading guilty there to a manslaughter charge involving negligence.

Nail agreed with defense arguments that prosecutors failed to show Watson intentionally killed the woman. Prosecutors claimed he drowned her for insurance money, but the only eyewitness testified he thought Watson was trying to save the woman.

Complete coverage of Gabe Watson on Crimesider

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by bobnjersey February 24, 2012 9:59 AM EST: [Prosecutors claimed he drowned her for insurance money,]
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how much money?; Reply to this comment

by guyfrompa46 February 24, 2012 7:32 AM EST

RealiteBites- He cannot be retried. This is over.

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by andie52 February 24, 2012 7:57 AM EST: I hope it is never over for this killer. He's a sociopath.After being informed by Tina Watson's family that flowers and gifts were repeatedly being vandalized or disappearing from the grave site, even when chained down, Sergeant Flinn investigated. On hidden surveillance videos, he saw Gabe Watson removing them with bolt cutters and putting them into the trash, which Flinn then showed to media


by Carol065 February 24, 2012 3:25 AM EST: I hope Tina haunts his buttocks!; Reply to this comment


by rwsmith29456 February 23, 2012 11:25 PM EST: She's innocently smiling in the photo while he's thinking.....; Reply to this comment


by RealiteBites February 23, 2012 9:53 PM EST: Summary judgment ... I don't think double jeopardy has attached - which means he can be retried if new evidence emerges.

Yeah, Drew Peterson indeed ... creepy!!; Reply to this comment


by RealiteBites February 23, 2012 9:48 PM EST: It's been a while, and I can't remember - so if the case got dismissed in pre-trial ... has double-jeopardy attached?

I forgot the name of this dismissal - Judgment something something something ... not JNOV (Judgment notwithstanding the verdict ... ); Reply to this comment

by anotherlawyer February 23, 2012 7:58 PM EST

KCWilson: I absolutely would make a terrible juror because I have seen several diving accidents and their results up close and personal - it comes from living on an island in the Pacific for two years. I'm like the judge who got ticked off about the insuation that taking an engagement ring from the deceased is wrong - when he himself had done it - much of the behavior described is common, human behavior.

I know these sorts of divers - I know what they do in the water and how they react to stress. I've had fearful moments myself - though usually in a wreck or cave dive when I was worried about getting out in time, or when I dived too deep and got narc.

This woman was the most dangerous diver of all - a novice with no common sense. She was an adult responsible for herself - common sense dictates that she just say no to a dive out of her depth and at minimum, that she discuss the dive in full detail with the dive master prior to the dive. Why should her husband have been charged with discussing her lack of experience with the dive master? As a woman, I find that insulting - she is not a baby - she is an adult and if she read the PADI manual she should have known that diving is an inherently dangerous sport - not for people prone to panic. But nope - she took the dive without so much as an orientation. That she didn't have a complete discussion with the dive master attests to her carelessness - but his as well. Frankly, your dive buddy is only just so responsible - whether he is your spouse or not - he is not a dive master but someone who has himself only taken a few dives and from what I understand, new to that diving environment. He's there to buddy breath in a pinch, give you whatever support he can, and signal when there is an emergency. Mostly, he needs to save himself first if he believes that he might be in danger - it's the same thing that the Red Cross and YMCA teach you in lifesaving and WSI classes. That's why they make you memorize the definition of panic: 30 years after I memorized it I can still recite it: a sudden unreasoning and overwhelming fear which strikes a person in the face of real or fancied danger.

Do you know what it is like 100 feet below the surface, hooked up to a BC, carrying weights, not being in control? I've known military guys who have gone into a panic at that depth.

Husband was also a dangerous diver - he should have never believed that he could be a buddy to a novice in challenging conditions. It's easy to judge him post facto but anyone who has had his or her mask ripped off at 100 feet can tell you that his decision to save himself was understandable. Once the mask gets ripped off, most people panic - he wanted the mask back on and didn't have enough experience to realize that he should just hit his BC and surface first.

But the dive master? WHERE WAS HE WHEN ALL OF THIS WAS GOING ON? When I made my first wreck dive, the dive master stuck to me like glue - and for crying out loud - I was diving in a third world nation, not Australia, which has safety standards.

This case was about panic and guilty consciences - and there seems to be plenty of that to go around. You had an inattentive dive master who didn't notice one of his charges in distress until she was actually lying down on the bottom? NUTS TO THAT! I couldn't believe what I saw in the picture. You had other divers on the dive who claim to have seen something odd - though they don't really know what, and never bothered to kick over and do a few hand signs? I've lent a hand to plenty of people who were not my buddy because not all buddies are that great. If one of these chuckleheads - just one - had tapped his buddy on the shoulder, pointed, kicked over and offered to give the woman some air, she'd still be alive. Nice of these people to come and testify in court and point the fickle finger of fate.

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by servorum February 24, 2012 7:04 AM EST: Well put. Thanks for the informed explanation.


by ittime February 23, 2012 7:20 PM EST: another Drew Peterson, wait till the 3rd and 4th wife dies!; Reply to this comment

by anotherlawyer February 23, 2012 5:58 PM EST

Finally - a judge with the decency to look a renegade prosecutor in the eye and just say no. This has got to stop somewhere - these cases motivated by headline seeking, political-wannabes looking for a ticket to the big time. We've had far too many convictions in this country on scanty, conjecture evidence that fools people on juries and it seems to be a growing epidemic.

As both a lawyer and a VERY experienced scuba diver, all that I can say is that the wrong person went to jail in Australia - the dive master should have been shoulder to shoulder with a diver of such limited experience - and to say he didn't know is ridiculous - your PADI certificate has the certification date right on it as well as the location and dive instructor who certified you. It's easy enough to determine that someone certified a short time ago in Alabama lacks serious open diving experience. The woman herself should have been responsible enough to say - hey let's snorkle instead - or hubby - you go diving and I will meet you back at the hotel. It's absurd and inane to claim that he would have used this bizarre method of murder - because if the dive center's staff had been doing their jobs and if the wife had not gone into a panic, she certainly would still be alive today. Even if he had done what they conjectured and turned off her air, she could have survived. But I seriously doubt that he did that - someone certainly could have or would have witnessed it and everyone underwater has a camera these days.

Panic killed her - not the husband. She could have dropped her belt and gear and surfaced with little trouble since her wetsuit had plenty of boyancy and her fins would have provided sufficient momentum - she sounds like a crazed air hog, sucking it down at a rapid speed and unable to keep her breath even. This is like more than a few dive accidents that I have seen in places with bad dive facilities.

His story has a ring of authenticity to it for anyone who has ever experienced a dive accident - especially one where your mask gets torn off. I almost was killed once in Micronesia by an idiot who was in a panic - not unlike this woman, and who grabbed my mask and pulled it off. That's why PADI makes you take the mask off test first before you go to the next level - and even so, when you're at 100 feet, anyone, regardless of their character, will panic if their mask gets ripped off. His mistake was trying to put the equipment right instead of just hitting the button and inflating his BC to surface - maybe in the back of his mind he was just as scared of being bent as drowning. He wasn't evil - he just wasn't qualified to be the buddy for a novice diver and the dive master should have ascertained that beforehand.

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by kcwilsonii February 23, 2012 6:33 PM EST: "The woman herself should have been responsible enough to say - hey let's snorkle instead - or hubby - you go diving and I will meet you back at the hotel. It's absurd and inane to claim that he would have used this bizarre method of murder - because if the dive center's staff had been doing their jobs and if the wife had not gone into a panic, she certainly would still be alive today. Even if he had done what they conjectured and turned off her air, she could have survived. But I seriously doubt that he did that - someone certainly could have or would have witnessed it and everyone underwater has a camera these days. "

You make a lot of assumptions.
You have put words in the deceaseds mouth, whom cannot speak for herself.

You assume she did go into a panic. This is based on the husbands testimony

You assume everybody has a camera. If everyone does have a camera these days..where are the pictures?

You assume everybody is an expert
You would make a terrible juror..