Joshua, what a timely and lucid analysis- thank you! From my earliest teens pacing around the school grounds with one very clever friend debating with him a then hot issue I have been a passionate and never subsequently doubting abolitionist. I am also grateful to David Barlow and Alisdair BUT:
I am with respect to the former always resistant to the notion of having a trial so as to -almost- appease public demand rather than acting independently upon what the evidence and the medical/psychiatric appraisals are telling us. Also call me naive but I retain more faith in jurors than to view convictions in such a case as almost a foregone conclusion. And as Joshua says the same disposal would have ensued whether on a verdict of murder or manslaughter.
Swallowing hard with so many legal luminaries around, I dare to propose a radically different approach. There can often surely be an invisible dividing line between the former and the latter verdict on the evidence and the option selected either by the CPS or by jurors in their verdict in a highly charged case such as this would have little or nothing to do with any assessment of harm or blameworthiness. Why not a law focused on unlawful homicide rather than allowing the current lack of clarity to prevail with judges trusted, with the aid of sentencing guidelines, to impose the just sentence calibrated as with sentencing practice in general?
As to PR for the judiciary, there is certainly a case for that but in a measured manner. The trouble quite often is that when explanations are these days forthcoming they are couched in language familiar to us lawyers but troublesome and seen as divisive by the public at large. More work to be done there. As to the CPS taking the victims and victims’ families with them I fear that there seems indeed to have been a failure here but then a revisiting in retrospect is always a fine thing perhaps taking account insufficiently what may have been a fraught and time constrained exercise.
Finally I do hope no one is offended by any elements of this posting and in particular I would be mortified should Joshua, David or Alisdair have been in any way affronted. In no way was I seeking to create contention just for the sake of it; I am just a concerned, wizened and retired criminal defence hack.
Surely, we are looking at probabilities here. No one can say for certain ( ie “beyond reasonable doubt”) what was in the mind of the defendant at the time of his actions. Given the nature of the actions and the manner of and how the actions played out there was plenty of scope for the whole scenario to be be examined in public, in a trial before a jury, if the defence of manslaughter was put forward and not accepted by the prosecution. I would hazard a guess that the CPS lost its nerve and didn’t want to risk the loss of a conviction in such a high profile case and took the safe/easy route out. Playing safe and hide is justice denied.
Joshua, what a timely and lucid analysis- thank you! From my earliest teens pacing around the school grounds with one very clever friend debating with him a then hot issue I have been a passionate and never subsequently doubting abolitionist. I am also grateful to David Barlow and Alisdair BUT:
I am with respect to the former always resistant to the notion of having a trial so as to -almost- appease public demand rather than acting independently upon what the evidence and the medical/psychiatric appraisals are telling us. Also call me naive but I retain more faith in jurors than to view convictions in such a case as almost a foregone conclusion. And as Joshua says the same disposal would have ensued whether on a verdict of murder or manslaughter.
Swallowing hard with so many legal luminaries around, I dare to propose a radically different approach. There can often surely be an invisible dividing line between the former and the latter verdict on the evidence and the option selected either by the CPS or by jurors in their verdict in a highly charged case such as this would have little or nothing to do with any assessment of harm or blameworthiness. Why not a law focused on unlawful homicide rather than allowing the current lack of clarity to prevail with judges trusted, with the aid of sentencing guidelines, to impose the just sentence calibrated as with sentencing practice in general?
As to PR for the judiciary, there is certainly a case for that but in a measured manner. The trouble quite often is that when explanations are these days forthcoming they are couched in language familiar to us lawyers but troublesome and seen as divisive by the public at large. More work to be done there. As to the CPS taking the victims and victims’ families with them I fear that there seems indeed to have been a failure here but then a revisiting in retrospect is always a fine thing perhaps taking account insufficiently what may have been a fraught and time constrained exercise.
Finally I do hope no one is offended by any elements of this posting and in particular I would be mortified should Joshua, David or Alisdair have been in any way affronted. In no way was I seeking to create contention just for the sake of it; I am just a concerned, wizened and retired criminal defence hack.
Surely, we are looking at probabilities here. No one can say for certain ( ie “beyond reasonable doubt”) what was in the mind of the defendant at the time of his actions. Given the nature of the actions and the manner of and how the actions played out there was plenty of scope for the whole scenario to be be examined in public, in a trial before a jury, if the defence of manslaughter was put forward and not accepted by the prosecution. I would hazard a guess that the CPS lost its nerve and didn’t want to risk the loss of a conviction in such a high profile case and took the safe/easy route out. Playing safe and hide is justice denied.