A woman has gotten away with murder due to 'loss of control'

Re: Your Post Falls At The First Hurdle

Guilty act: She murdered someone
Guilty mind: She purposely went to his home armed with a collection of weapons
Loss of control: thd averagw person would not in the opinion of everyone ive spoke to, go armed with a knife wrench and hammer and murder someone in their home. As evidenced by the fact that there are thousands of paedophiles and yet they arent murdered daily.

Got away with it cos shes a woman in my opinion and because thry decided he deserved it.

 

Youre missing the fact that she isnt judge jury and executioner and youre making the pathetic argument that some violent criminals are good guys. Its not the 1500s

 

I realise what I wrote and the main point of the thread, I found it uncomfortable reading due to the victims back ground. Which offence is worse murder of a paedophile or child abuse. One is going to prison the other was sat at home free to continue his abuse until the murder. Both acts are indefensible but I know which is worse IMO. I was wrong to write previously that she deserved a medal but I presume everyone understood the sentiment. Cheers

 

One wasn't simply sat at home. He was awaiting trial. All the woman has done is stop the alleged victims of his from getting any closure. There will now always be doubt as to whether they were abused by him or are simply making it up for attention. That is the excellent result of her actions

 

;-)

 

Re: Your Post Falls At The First Hurdle

Guilty act: Yep - definitely, ST.
Guilty mind (intent): Only if she was in control of herself and acting voluntarily. You can't judge this on a headline newsheet account of the case. QC's on both sides; judge didn't pooh-pooh the defence interpretation; the jury took nearly three days to decide.

I can confidently tell you this case will have been far, far more complex than the account which has appeared in the papers. Was the jury right? We can't say because we haven't heard the full facts and the argument put to them. It's more complex is all I'm saying. And don't forget that the judge still has life imprisonment available to him when the case comes back for sentence.

 

Re: Your Post Falls At The First Hurdle

One less paedo I suppose. So its not all bad.

One thing is certain, if a bloke had done it, he would have been locked up imo.

 

Re: Your Post Falls At The First Hurdle

The only point I'd question here is intent and your comment about her not being in control. If you go to a house armed with the kind of weapons she did and proceed to use them I can't see how intent can be in any doubt.

Like you say we don't know all the facts but I can't see any circumstances where this crime didn't involve intent.

I'm by no means playing apologist for the victim, from what I've read he was a thoroughly despicable man but he hadn't committed his crimes against her children so that can't be used in her defence.

From the outside it just looks like an act of violent vigilantism. I do agree with other posters that had a man done this he'd have been found guilty of murder.

 

Re: Your Post Falls At The First Hurdle

I agree with you MK - that's what it looks like. But the statute in question was only enacted in 2009 - presumably after a review of the law around this area. Let's just ask this question: could a person going "tooled up" like that be acting rationally, and be said to be full in control of themselves? I appreciate that's a difficult one because logically, you'd soon get to the point where you'd say that hardly any murderers were acting totally rationally, and therefore no-one would ever be guilty of murder. But I think that the courts/judges/ juries are not generally the soft touches that the media would like to portray, and it seems to me that a lot of argument and thought must have gone into this decision. Was it correct? Heck, how do I know. But I don't think you can take a snippet of the case (i.e. the limited facts reported) and say this was outrageous. If it was, you could bet your life the prosecution would appeal the finding.

 

Re: Your Post Falls At The First Hurdle

Just another point - the imprisonment rate for female defendants is statistically much greater than for males. So I'd not be accepting that there is a bias operating in this way.

 

Re: Your Post Falls At The First Hurdle

Imprisonment rate for murder or in general?

 

Re: Your Post Falls At The First Hurdle

In general, ST.

 

This is just a sample of the information available:

http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/ProjectsResearch/Women

 

Re: Your Post Falls At The First Hurdle

Do you work in the profession or know more about that? If so I've got a couple of questions. If not its be a bit pointless asking you (I guess)

 

Re: Your Post Falls At The First Hurdle

You could well be right Mr Kaht and like you say we don't know the full facts so its difficult to judge rationally. It just looks like the kind of crime that 99 times out of a 100 you'd expect to see a murder conviction so naturally people will look at what was different in this case to other cases of violence and murder.

 

Re: Your Post Falls At The First Hurdle

Did until two years ago ST.

 

Re: Your Post Falls At The First Hurdle

I agree - but the point is we just don't know from the limited reports available.

 

Re: Your Post Falls At The First Hurdle

I agree - but the point is we just don't know from the limited reports available.

 

Re: Your Post Falls At The First Hurdle

In that case do you know if more women get prison because judges are harder on them when it comes to sentencing or because with women they tend to only prosecute when it is more severe? What I mean by that is do they prosecute more men for petty crime than women which would out the percentage of women who are prosecuted and end up on prison higher than the percentage of men. In other words if they only prosecute serial killers for women there will be a 100% custodial rate while if they prosecute men for pissing in the street as well then the rate will be lower.

And do you know whether men or women are more likely to be sent down for identical crimes?

 

Re: Your Post Falls At The First Hurdle

The first thing to say about this is that the criminal justice system has an extraordinarily bad record for devising appropriate interrogatable computer systems that would give answers to these sorts of questions. It would be useful if better information existed - both for policy-makers and for sentencers.

I don't believe that judges are harder on women. Judges and magistrates work from sentencing guidelines these days, so a sentence that was out of kilter would always be open to appeal. Nor do I believe that the CPS discretion to prosecute is exercised in a different way for women than it is for men. It seems to me (though you'd have to do your own research to check) that women are more likely to be the defendants in certain cases (failing to ensure school attendance, non-payment of TV licences, for example) than men. As I said, when it comes down to identical crimes, there are identical sentencing guidelines that judges/magistrates have to work to. Logically therefore, I guess societal factors may be more to blame for the disproportionate numbers of women sent to prison (when compared to the gender makeup of all defendants).