Editorial: Love will have its way, no matter how hard to understand

Liam Reid and Davina Reid (nee Murray). Photo / Herald graphic

EDITORIAL

It's a bind as old as time, or at least 160 years old. In 1862, American poet Emily Dickinson wrote, "The heart wants what it wants, or else it does not care".

This week, once-rising defence lawyer Davina Murray sat down with the Herald on Sunday for the first time to talk about her incredible love affair with convicted rapist and murderer Liam Reid.

To briefly recap, Murray answered a call for help with Reid's appeal and found something appealing in him.

The couple's relationship was outed after Murray faced criminal charges for smuggling an iPhone, cigarettes and a lighter to Reid in prison in 2011.

During her court case, messages she sent about Reid and her plan to marry him were revealed. "My heart says: 'I should just do it' but my head says: 'wait'," Murray wrote.

Having sacrificed her career and continuing to stand by him and protest his innocence five years after they married, there can be few doubts about the sincerity of the woman now known as Davina Reid.

Nor should it be forgotten that there are victims of horrific crimes. Their families and friends will be distressed all over again to hear from those representing the person they have every reason to believe is responsible for their grief.

American author Sheila Isenberg famously interviewed dozens of people to try to understand how women could fall in love with a prisoner and found no type, in particular, was more likely than another.

"They were highly educated women — one woman had a PhD and was a college professor. Other women hadn't graduated from high school. Socioeconomic: There were rich women, there were poor women."

Still, the Reids' relationship looks destined to be a distant one for the foreseeable future. The Court of Appeal dismissed Liam Reid's bid to overturn his conviction and sentence a year after his trial.

The Supreme Court dismissed an application for further appeal in 2012, saying nothing put before it could provide any basis that the evidence being challenged was unreliable.

Their only chance is to plead with the Governor-General to exercise powers in section 406 of the Crimes Act 1961.

Davina Reid has brought in defence lawyer Jeremy Bioletti to take up the case and he contends the evidence relied on for conviction was flawed.

The once-promising legal practitioner has lost her career and, she concedes, many friends who cannot fathom why she would throw it all away for this man. However, it's clear she hasn't lost perspective on where she stands in other people's eyes.

"Until people accept that's what happened, they'll always think there's something wrong with me."

Her heart wants what it wants, and it does not surrender for circumstances most of us would find hard to comprehend.