Comment: It's an undeniable fact. There is little to like about Gable Tostee, writes Kim Stephens.
It's an undeniable fact, there is little to like about Gable Tostee.
But though he may not be a great bloke, this does not make him a killer.
The 30-year-old has, in the past decade, repeatedly bragged online about the hundreds of women he slept with and gone into great detail about his sexual exploits.
Overall, his attitude towards women seems to be that they are to be used and abused.
Sadly, however, as a 20-something male on the Tinder island, Tostee is hardly Robinson Crusoe.
Most of his peers just don't end up with their entire, salacious online histories splashed across newspapers, television screens and digital media.
From the moment the good-looking, 28-year-old bodybuilder voluntarily walked into Surfers Paradise police station nine hours after Warriena Wright fell to her death, he was branded the "Tinder killer" and the "balcony killer".
He became, in the words of his defence barrister, Saul Holt, QC, "a cartoonish villain", already branded a murderer by those who had no idea what happened in his 14th storey apartment in the early hours of August 8, 2014.
There is a fundamental cornerstone of our democratic, functional society: a person charged with any offence is entitled to the presumption of innocence.
But in the case of Gable Tostee, we all failed to recognise that right.
From the moment Tostee was charged with Ms Wright's murder in August, 2014, he was denied the presumption of innocence.
Not in the judicial system that finally acquitted him, but, in one that perhaps has a much more profound impact: the court of public opinion.
The court in which he will never be exonerated.
It's a conviction, that, despite being found not guilty of in the eyes of the law, he will have to continue to live with for the remainder of his days.
In the two years since Wright plunged to her death from his balcony, Gable Tostee has been subjected to relentless stream of vile, online abuse.
Even as he left the court, acquitted of all charges on Thursday afternoon, cries of "Tostee's a pig" - and worse - filled the air.
He changed his name on social media, in a bid to reclaim his anonymity, but still people found him, subjecting him to the kind of unfiltered abuse and threats many of us may not hear in our lifetime.
His past criminal behaviour - none of it violent or sexual - has been rehashed and regurgitated throughout the media in the wake of his acquittal.
As have the past sexual exploits he has bragged about online.
He may have his freedom but it has come at an enormous cost.
Tostee will undoubtedly have to leave the Gold Coast if he has any desire to reclaim a life of anonymity.
Gable Tostee made his apparently overall unchivalrous attitude to the opposite sex obvious with his desire to bed Warriena Wright after a Tinder exchange between them of just five messages.
In the world of digital dating, he is hardly alone.
This does not excuse his behaviour.
But, equally, it cannot be used it to demonise him forever.
The judicial system may not always get it right but the court of public opinion does far less so, inflamed, in this instance, by a voracious media tantalised by a Tinder date gone horribly wrong.
A jury acquitted Gable Tostee of murder and manslaughter after a fair trial.
To say they got it wrong is to demonise the system which is designed to protect us all.
We need to respect our judicial system and accept this is not a person who killed his Tinder date.
Because that is the finding of the jury.
The time has come for us to leave Gable Tostee alone.
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