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How District Judge Inga-Liisa Paavola turned the absence of observation into a credibility argument — without establishing that the alleged act had occurred.
There is a fundamental question at the centre of Count 2 that the judgment does not adequately resolve:
Before deciding who threw an object, a court must establish that the alleged act took place. Yet the reasoning of District Judge Inga-Liisa Paavola moves rapidly from an account in which N did not see the throwing itself to a conclusion that TG was the person who threw the object.
The distinction is not minor. It goes to the existence of the alleged event and the identity of the person said to have committed it.
During the hearing, defence counsel questioned N about whether he had seen the alleged act. In the supplied transcription of that exchange, N’s answer is recorded as:
N explained that his head had not yet entered the doorway. He further described that, had he entered head-first, the object would have struck his head.
N then described looking upwards and seeing TG standing on the upper landing.
But seeing someone after an alleged event is not the same as seeing that person perform the event. It does not establish that the person threw anything. Nor does it, by itself, establish that the alleged throwing took place.
On page 4 of the judgment, the court recorded N’s account:
Kun N oli katsonut ylöspäin, TG oli seisonut ylätasanteella, vaikkakaan N ei ollut kunnolla nähnyt itse heittotilannetta.
Notice the wording: ei ollut kunnolla nähnyt — had not properly seen.
On page 5, District Judge Inga-Liisa Paavola went further:
N asianomistajana on kertonut TG menettelystä varsin yksityiskohtaisesti, luotettavan oloisesti, muuttumattomasti prosessin eri vaiheissa sekä teonkuvauksen mukaisesti. N kertomus ei ole sisältänyt mahdottoman oloisia tai liioittelevia piirteitä, vaan N pikemminkin on tuonut esiin myös itselleen epäedullisia seikkoja, kuten menettelystään harjan kanssa kohdan 1 teon osalta ja ettei sinänsä tarkalleen ole nähnyt tikkaiden heittämistä.
This is the critical passage.
Paavola does not merely acknowledge that N failed to see the alleged act. She incorporates that admission into the reasoning used to support his credibility. His failure to see the throwing becomes an example of his willingness to disclose something unfavorable to himself.
But there is a serious difference between admitting that one did not see an event and seeing an event imperfectly.
The hearing account describes an absence of observation. The judgment describes an imperfect observation.
Those are not equivalent statements.
A person who did not see the act cannot provide direct visual identification of the person who supposedly performed it. Calling that admission honest does not restore the observation that never took place.
There is a further problem with the sequence accepted in the judgment.
N says that his head had not yet entered the doorway when the alleged impact occurred. He then says that he looked upwards and saw TG on the upper landing.
This is not a decorative detail. It concerns the physical possibility of the observation on which the judgment relies.
The judgment records his account. It does not explain how the physical layout shown in the police photograph was reconciled with that account.
Neither gap is resolved by describing N as credible.
On page 5, Paavola wrote:
Käräjäoikeus ei myöskään pidä todennäköisenä kokonaistilanne huomioiden, että tikkaiden heittäjä on voinut olla muu henkilö kuin TG, eikä näin ole väitettykään.
The court refers to “the person who threw the stepladder” as though the throwing itself has already been established. It then considers whether that person could have been someone other than TG.
But the prior question remains unanswered: what evidence establishes that the object was thrown in the first place?
N did not see the throwing. His subsequent observation does not establish who performed it. The photograph raises a further question about whether he could have seen what he claimed to see afterwards.
And the fact that no other person was alleged to have thrown the object cannot substitute for proof that TG did so. The absence of an alternative accusation is not evidence that the alleged act occurred.
The problem is not simply whether N was honest.
He may have been entirely sincere in describing what he believed had happened. But sincerity cannot establish an event that was not directly observed. Credibility cannot turn an inference into an eyewitness account. And a judicial conclusion cannot replace the missing proof of the event itself.
Paavola treated N’s admission that he had not seen the throwing as a positive feature of his credibility. At the same time, the wording of the judgment softened the nature of that admission: from not seeing the event to not seeing it precisely.
The court evaluated the honesty of a person describing an event he did not see. But where is the analysis establishing that the event itself actually happened?
That is the question at the heart of Count 2.
Before identifying the person who supposedly threw the object, the court had to establish that there was a throwing.
An unseen act is not an established act. And an honest account of what someone believes happened is not, by itself, proof that it happened.
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