Should Peter Sutcliffe be released?

[Soapy Sam]

>Soapy
Sorry, I expressed myself badly, but I think Rolfe summed it up in a more coherent way

My bad.

Cheers. Apologies if I came back a bit harshly. I know some folk feel that anyone like myself who is in favour of the death penalty (A bit like being "in favour of" castor oil) is some sort of reflexive, knee-jerk flog & hang 'em type. (Thursdays, round at my place).
I think CP has value in limited cases and I don't actually believe a lot of folk find the idea as obviously immoral as they claim. I think this is to some extent a "fashionable" POV. What I see in public chats like this and what I hear in private often doesn't match .
There's a lot to say on both sides, but I really am concerned that if our systems are as unreliable as some seem to think, we should be doing something pretty drastic about it.
And yes indeed, I'd agonise over sending someone to the block, but I'd agonise over sending him to jail too.

 

[Rolfe]

Cheers. Apologies if I came back a bit harshly. I know some folk feel that anyone like myself who is in favour of the death penalty (A bit like being "in favour of" castor oil) is some sort of reflexive, knee-jerk flog & hang 'em type. (Thursdays, round at my place).
I think CP has value in limited cases and I don't actually believe a lot of folk find the idea as obviously immoral as they claim. I think this is to some extent a "fashionable" POV. What I see in public chats like this and what I hear in private often doesn't match.

I'll say the same thing in private as I do here. I'd rather have thought it was fashionable to go the Daily Mail line, but it doesn't matter. I think we've evolved past the point of judicial killings in the same sort of way we've evolved past cutting the tails off horses to make them look smart or sending children up chimneys.

There's a lot to say on both sides, but I really am concerned that if our systems are as unreliable as some seem to think, we should be doing something pretty drastic about it.

Beyond "shoot all the lawyers", do you have any suggestions?

What happened to Sally Clark is an abomination. But is it any better when it happened to Stefan Kiszko, just because he was a bit mentally handicapped rather than a qualified solicitor? (Er, being an actual lawyer didn't help Sally Clark.) Did you see the evidence they convicted Barry George on? I wouldn't have given him a parking ticket on the strength of that.

Closer to home, take a look at the way Megrahi was fitted-up some time. Circular reasoning doesn't begin to cover it. And although Shirley McKie is a different sort of case, the utter inability of the SCRB to contemplate that it might have made a mistake is downright scary.

Thankfully, none of these people was actually executed. Clark and Kiszko died, but at least they were exonerated first, hollow though that was. Do you really think it would have been better if we'd hung Sally Clark?

If anything, I think it's the adversarial nature of the legal process that's at fault. Rather than trying to find the truth, so often it's about proving a pre-determined case no matter how slender the evidence. Though having said that, I don't know what the alternative is. I've seen the "single joint expert" thing in the civil courts, and that has problems too. Parties do need advocates to put their interests forward.

And yes indeed, I'd agonise over sending someone to the block, but I'd agonise over sending him to jail too.

A bit more of that might not go amiss. When you've got juries ready to convict on the evidence presented against Clark and George, there's something badly wrong.

Rolfe.

 

[Soapy Sam]

I think standards of evidence need to move towards the scientific definition thereof, with a lot more "double blinding" in the sense of physical separation of jurors and accused. It should be possible technically.
Scientific method works. Can't we somehow move towards a more objective model of trial?
The reliance on rhetoric, however clever, is a sad joke. You don't do labwork by clever quip, but through method and rigour. And yes, the adversarial business needs to be rethought.

Some things I doubt you would like. The notion of concealing evidence of previous crime from the jury strikes me as daft. Recidivism is a fact of criminality. Is it more likely that a man with five previous convictions for GBH is guilty of a similar assault than that someone with no record did it? Well, yes, I think it might be.

Dumping double jeapordy is a start.

Getting rid of the ridiculous wigs and clutter would'nt go amiss.

On the Sally Clark business- I agree. Bloody awful. The whole issue of technical expertise needs to beexamined sceptically.
Maybe what's needed is a Randi?

 

[Pikachu]

I'm at home today so I don't have access to all my legal databases. I'll try and get some Privy Council links tomorrow.
I'm a prosecutor and I don't think Barry George should have been prosecuted. That said I can't see how a jury convicted him (mind you no one's ever been able to work out how juries think...)
There is supposed to be a two-stage test in every case;-
1) is there a realistic prospect of conviction. If so (and only if so)
2) is it in the public interest to prosecute
Sometimes those tests seem to get turned round.

BTW for anyone worried about Big Brother the majority of CCTV footage is frankly rubbish. The only stuff that's really good is that set up for a specific purpose -immediately over a cash till, on our local buses (absolutely fantastic for some reason), and (slightly ironically) the system for monitoring excess alcohol procedures that was set up because of accusations of police corruption and now more or less guarantees conviction.
(Oh the traffic cars have got good systems too. In their case its because the local force flogged some chase footage from the helicopter to one of those TV programmes and had to spend the cash on something related. The onboard systems just keep getting better. My favourite is the front on view - if you speed it up and close one eye it's like the Monaco GP round our city)
Sorry for derails.

 

[Pikachu]

I think standards of evidence need to move towards the scientific definition thereof, with a lot more "double blinding" in the sense of physical separation of jurors and accused. It should be possible technically.
Scientific method works. Can't we somehow move towards a more objective Some things I doubt you would like. The notion of concealing evidence of previous crime from the jury strikes me as daft. Recidivism is a fact of criminality. Is it more likely that a man with five previous convictions for GBH is guilty of a similar assault than that someone with no record did it? Well, yes, I think it might be.

Dumping double jeapordy is a start.

Getting rid of the ridiculous wigs and clutter would'nt go amiss.

I didn't see this before my last.
Bad character (previous convictions and reprehensible behaviour) has been admissible in England & Wales since 2003. There are safeguards but its pretty certain a man with multiple GBHs would have those put in at trial. Likewise hearsay is allowed in -again with safeguards.

Most advocates would tell you that the jury needs to see the defendant's reactions to the evidence.

 

[Rolfe]

Dumping double jeapordy is a start.

Can we be clear on this? I think what you are supporting is the dumping of the prohibition on double jeopardy, or indeed the exposing of the accused to double jeopardy.

I can see why it was prohibited, originally, when people could be persecuted by oppressive rulers simply trying them again and again for the same crime. However, with proper safeguards such as the requirement for significant new evidence, then I agree it needs to be give a try.

On the other hand, if it just means they can keep prosecuting Barry George for the murder of Jill Dando to avoid getting out there and finding out who did kill Jill Dando, then we'd have to think again.

Rolfe.

 

[Pikachu]

Double jeopardy's gone too in England & Wales. Very serious crimes only you need new evidence - or evidence jury or witnesses were tampered with and permission from one of the Law Officers (can't remember which one)

 

[Soapy Sam]

Can we be clear on this? I think what you are supporting is the dumping of the prohibition on double jeopardy, or indeed the exposing of the accused to double jeopardy.

Yep. Sorry I expressed that badly.
At the risk of opening another can of worms- give me a synopsis of the Dando business.
I never followed the case.
I do remember thinking that if you were going to kill someone, a pretty and popular personality was a bad victim to pick.

 

[Rolfe]

Double jeopardy's gone too in England & Wales. Very serious crimes only you need new evidence - or evidence jury or witnesses were tampered with and permission from one of the Law Officers (can't remember which one)

I thought double jeopardy, in fact, had been reintroduced! That is, you can now be tried twice for the same crime. You can be in jeopardy twice.

It seems to me that people saying "the abolition of the law about double jeopardy" has been shortened into "the abolition of double jeopardy", which is actually the opposite of what's happened.

(Sorry, cross-post, repetition not really intended.)

Rolfe.

 

[Soapy Sam]

I didn't see this before my last.
Bad character (previous convictions and reprehensible behaviour) has been admissible in England & Wales since 2003. There are safeguards but its pretty certain a man with multiple GBHs would have those put in at trial. Likewise hearsay is allowed in -again with safeguards.

Most advocates would tell you that the jury needs to see the defendant's reactions to the evidence.

Perhaps so, but does the defendant need to see the jury? I don't think anyone does, except the judge .
In fact, the whole thing could be done remotely by teleconference in many cases. Might save a lot of time and money. The one time I went to watch court proceedings, several cases were heard and in every one someone critical failed to show up , so the business weas postponed. To those of us who work in realtime, that's totally unacceptable, especially as it's our money being wasted.

 

[TX50]

I think part of the question about the death penalty is how it is handled. Either it's almost too fast or people have to wait years for their execution.
And then you have the question how humane the execution itself is. Most methods have drawbacks.

In the UK in the 20th century (until abolition in 1965); between 3 and
8 weeks from passing of sentence to execution. One appeal only was
permitted. The execution method used in 20th century Britain was
measured hanging (also sometimes known as long drop hanging). A
properly carried out measured hanging caused unconsciousness after
a half to three-quarters of a second, and brain death after about 6
minutes.

 

[Hallo Alfie]

I prefer the old hanged, drawn and quartered method - to satisfy my blood lust.

..the condemned prisoner would be:

Dragged on a hurdle (a wooden frame) to the place of execution.
Hanged by the neck for a short time or until almost dead (hanged).
Disembowelled and emasculated and the genitalia and entrails burned before the condemned's eyes
The body beheaded, then divided into four parts (quartered).

They really knew how to do it way back when.
Nice

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Yep. Sorry I expressed that badly.
At the risk of opening another can of worms- give me a synopsis of the Dando business.
I never followed the case.
I do remember thinking that if you were going to kill someone, a pretty and popular personality was a bad victim to pick.

In summary, the reasoning of the Court was that at the trial the prosecution had relied primarily on four categories of evidence:

one witness who had identified him as being in Jill Dando's street four and a half hours before the murder and other witnesses who, although they could not pick George out at an identity parade, saw a man in the street in the two hours before the murder who might have been George;
alleged lies told by George in interview;
an alleged attempt to create a false alibi;
the single particle of firearm discharge residue (FDR) found, about a year after the murder, in George's overcoat.
The prosecution had called expert witnesses at the trial whose evidence suggested that it was likely that the particle of FDR came from a gun fired by Barry George rather than from some other source.

Those witnesses and other witnesses from the Forensic Science Service told the Court of Appeal that this was not the right conclusion to draw from the discovery of the particle of FDR. It was instead no more likely that the particle had come from a gun fired by Barry George than that it had come from some other source. The Court of Appeal concluded that, if this evidence had been given to the jury at the trial, there was no certainty that the jury would have found George guilty. For this reason his conviction had to be quashed.[15]

A retrial was ordered and George was remanded in custody, making no application for bail.[1]

...

George appeared before the Old Bailey on 14 December 2007 and again pleaded not guilty to the murder.[2] His retrial began on 9 June 2008[3]. Initially there was a lot of coverage in the press, especially of the prosecution portrayal of the defendant as being highly obsessive, lacking in social skills and a danger to women. The prosecution case differed from that of the first trial in that there was practically no scientific evidence as the evidence relating to the FDR was ruled inadmissible by the trial judge (Mr Justice Griffith Williams). There was much evidence of George's bad character which was admitted in the re-trial (at the discretion of the trial judge) as a result of the enactment of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 since the original trial. There were delays due to legal arguments and to the illnesses of the defendant and one of the jurors. For the defence William Clegg QC reminded the jury that evidence from three women from HAFAD (Hammersmith and Fulham Action on Disability) placed the defendant's arrival at their offices at 11:50 or 12:00, which, according to Clegg's argument, would have made it impossible for him to have committed a murder at Dando's house at 11:30 and then gone home (in the wrong direction) to change. Two neighbours who almost certainly saw the murderer immediately after the shooting had seen him go off in this direction, and later failed to identify Barry George at an identification parade. The trial ended with George's acquittal on 1 August 2008.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_George

Basically they found the local nutter who was a bit of a stalker, and decided he was guilty.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

I had completely forgotten that David Southall was not just involved in the Sally Clarke case, but also in the Sion Jenkins case - appearing as an expert witness in an area he really wasn't expert in.

 

[Rolfe]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_George

Basically they found the local nutter who was a bit of a stalker, and decided he was guilty.

That's essentially it. Also, they only latched on to him some considerable time after the event, after having failed to find any other leads. It looks like desperation.

That murder was committed by a pro. It was practically an execution, if you read the details. This wasn't a stalker dragging a woman down a dark alley, this was a man with a handgun walking up to her on her own doorstep, and then within seconds, grabbing her in a half-nelson and shooting her point-blank in the head.

George didn't have a gun, and hadn't had one for some time, although he had a rich fantasy life that involved trying to join both a gun club and the Territorials (both of these were misrepresented at his original trial as him actually having been a member, but in fact the people in charge gave this obvious nutter the bum's rush.) He was alleged to have got hold of a replica firearm and carried out some procedure on it to turn it into a functioning weapon. No such gun was found, however. More tellingly, the owner of the bike shop George patronised said he was completely handless, and that when he'd bought a bike lamp in one occasion, he had to go back to the shop and ask them to fit it.

A great deal of evidence was mis-represented at the trial. For example, George seems to have become a bit obsessed with the murder after it happened. Not that surprising, as it happened almost on his doorstep. He had a huge pile of old newspapers and magazines in his house, as he was a bit of a hoarder. Among this pile, there were some articles about and pictures of Jill Dando. However, in that context, they could probably have found an equal number of references to anyone who was regularly in the news. And they all dated from after the shooting. But this was presented as him having a large collection of material relating to Dando in his house, ergo, obsessed stalker.

ETA: He was also bordering on the mentally sub-normal. He had epilepsy and brain damage, and was subject to "vacant" periods when he didn't look unconscious but simply wasn't there. This didn't help during the police questioning. Whoever carried out that murder was clever - maybe not Mensa material, but certainly bright. The idea that George managed to pull that off, leave no evidence, and remain unsuspected without giving himself away for over a year, is ludicrous.

I was gobsmacked that they even put the case together. It was beyond tenuous. I don't know if they really believed he was guilty, or if it was just "we have to pin this on someone" all along. I was even more gobsmacked that the jury found him guilty. That must say something about the power of the prosecuting orator, I suppose.

Pikachu, we know defence advocates have to give it the old college try, no matter what. What does a prosecution advocate do if he's engaged to present a case he thinks is untenable?

And you can say what you like about having some sort of "super-certain" guilty category, but if we re-introduced the death penalty even with that sort of revised criterion, people like Barry George would still end up hung.

Rolfe.

 

[richardm]

A great deal of evidence was mis-represented at the trial.

Just as a bit of an aside, one of the bits of evidence they found was a microscopic (literally) particle of gunpowder in his coat pocket.

Shortly after all of this I was going through Heathrow airport and got pulled over to be sniffed for explosive residue. A few days beforehand I'd been firing off a large quantity of fireworks (this was not near Bonfire Night either) and still had a couple of little orange fuse covers stuffed, forgotten, in my coat pocket.

Well either the swabbing process doesn't work, or it doesn't care about the explosives you get in fireworks because it didn't even squeak.

Plunging my hand into my coat pocket and finding those covers did give me a rather nasty sinking feeling though

 

[Ian Osborne]

I remember after the trial, pictures of George dressed in combat gear, wearing a mask and wielding a paintballing gun were spread around the papers. I presume they'd been brought up at his trial too.

The pictures looked really sinister, until you stopped to consider their context. I'd wager almost everyone who's ever been paintballing has a picture like that in their album.

 

[Hallo Alfie]

And you can say what you like about having some sort of "super-certain" guilty category, but if we re-introduced the death penalty even with that sort of revised criterion, people like Barry George would still end up hung.

Hanged.

And actually no, he would not have been hanged.
Even though he was found guilty, he was not a not a serial killer and the worst would have been life in prison.

Those who qualify would be Hindleys, Sutcliffes, Bundys, Gaceys and Milats etc. Your "super certain" is nonsensical, we are talking a graduating score of 'evil' with execution reserved for the very worst.

George does not fit that criteria.

 

[Soapy Sam]

RichardM- I had a bomb-sniffer spaniel go loopy at Glasgow airport over the contents of my hand baggage Being me of course I was playing with the dog as well, despite the handler's repeated instruction not to. (I respond to happy dogs before I address grumpy humans- it's got me in trouble on other occasions, but I have no plans to change.) It seems the plastic they wrap cheese with in Hollanbd has a similar chemical smell to whatever Semtex is contained in.
But yes, that sinking feeling on realising you forgot to dump the Stanley knife you opened the mail with before leaving for the airport is one I'm familiar with.

There's gunpowder and gunpowder I suppose, but I would expect security to take a dim view of any pyrotechnics- they are on the banned list, I'm sure.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Hanged.

And actually no, he would not have been hanged.
Even though he was found guilty, he was not a not a serial killer and the worst would have been life in prison.

Those who qualify would be Hindleys, Sutcliffes, Bundys, Gaceys and Milats etc. Your "super certain" is nonsensical, we are talking a graduating score of 'evil' with execution reserved for the very worst.

George does not fit that criteria.

That criterion. Those criteria.

Of course there was a time he would have been hanged for any murder, or for far lesser offences. I doubt anyone is advocating a return to those times.