tinyurl.com/6evfewn
Simple really, but in the 50's or 60's in the UK, the trail would have finished and a couple of months later the drop.
Too late for an appeal then!
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but if there had been a death sentence waiting for her wouldnt the court case have been more thorough?
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>>>but if there had been a death sentence waiting for her wouldnt the court case have been more thorough?
Doesn't seem to work though.
Most alarming though, is the was some countries or states stack the odds. In this case the families had resources to mount a defense at the time. However, there are instances where the full weight of the state has been used to prosecute a suspect with no expense spared whilst the defendant, who cannot afford representation, is given an overworked lawyer of limited effect and limited resources to challenge evidence.
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The only death sentence here is for the lass who was murdered.
And why are we so certain all of a sudden these two didn't do it?
Because they said so - well, to coin the old phrase, they would say that, wouldn't they?
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>> The only death sentence here is for the lass who was murdered.
>>
>> And why are we so certain all of a sudden these two didn't do it?
>>
>> Because they said so - well, to coin the old phrase, they would say that,
>> wouldn't they?
because the police made such a balls up first time round, it was always suspect evidence wise.
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We just don't know - and that's the point isn't it: the prosecution has to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt, which I imagine is the same or similar in Italy. They will have got off not because of their impassioned pleas, but because of doubt over the evidence (DNA on a knife I think was one of the things in doubt).
I've never been in favour of capital punishment ever since I read about Timothy Evans (hanged for murder of his wife in 1950, for which three years later John Christie was convicted). I do think that 'life' should mean the rest of a working life- i.e. up to retirement age with a 'minimum of 25 years' rule which would deal with older murderers.
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>> but if there had been a death sentence waiting for her wouldnt the court case
>> have been more thorough?
No? there is no different evidential or burden of proof court process depending on degree of sentence. A severe sentence may have an additional appeals process, or need to be ratified, but determining guilt must always be the same.
Many american death sentences carried out have been iffy to say the least.
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"Many american death sentences carried out have been iffy to say the least."
Clearly he escaped.
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...Clearly he escaped...
To mangle a phrase I used earlier:
You would, wouldn't you?
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I haven't read all the relevant details, because I haven't bothered to search too deeply.
The one person convicted, was IIRC, given a fast track trial because they entered a guilty plea.
I haven't seen the testimony of this one, or doesn't it matter in this trial?
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The only comment I'd make on the Knox trial is that the DNA evidence was apparently gathered 46 days after the death. The manner of collection, and potential contamination, is in doubt. Seems reasonable, if correct. As for the death penalty, I won't ever be swayed that it can be returned. Not that I wouldn't happily kill certain offenders but the problem arises with some 'in the middle' murders. As an example: there was a case whereby an Indian lady took suffered years of abuse at the hands of her husband. She was of limited intelligence but devoutly religious, and following some writing in her religion, bathed him in a bath of fire. Unsurprisingly, he died. Would you hang her? Any realistic threat to anyone else? There will be other cases where we can perhaps undestand some degree of provocation or overreaction. Trying to legislate for which murders would attract teh death penalty is nigh on impossible. Better to desist altogether. Doubtless some will suggest that it acts as a deterrent but there's no evidence whatsoever for such an assertion.
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www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-15127072
A good reason for not having the death penalty!
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Excellent example Zero! It never got to trial but you will recall the recent hospital .case of contamination of saline and consequent deaths? Nurse arrested and months on remand and then released with her life and career in tatters, just because her DNA was all over the bags which she legitimately handled as part of her day to day duties. Even today the legal and scientific processes are not fool proof enough or reliable enough to justify a death penalty IMO
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Italy has no death penalty.What should happen do that if you are convicted of murder live should be live.
The case Woodster mentioned when
somebody is abused for years and that person is found quilty by a jury.Then it is up to the judge to administer the sentence and show lenience.
Remember the school caretaker killing two children.And the moors murderes Brady and co.
Crime of passion in certain circumstances is different than calculated murder.
In this case something has gone wrong,and has justiced being served.?
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you can understand how in todays instant news you would have both pieces written up ready to drop, but when you get it wrong and publish the false one, your lying lazy journalism methods becomes clear when made up "reactions" and "comments" are published in error.
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One of the comments under the Mail piece is: "I think you’ll find that Sky News ran the wrong verdict hence the Mail, Guardian and BBC all posting the wrong verdict.". If true, it would be interesting to compare the various write-ups.
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>> One of the comments under the Mail piece is: "I think you’ll find that Sky
>> News ran the wrong verdict hence the Mail, Guardian and BBC all posting the wrong
>> verdict.". If true, it would be interesting to compare the various write-ups.
>>
Earlier yesterday an American commentator " from our sister TV station", on site in Itay, was interviewed.
He said there were six charges and he predicted that only one charge of guilty would remain, That was the least charge and it would save face for the Italian judiciary.
He was spot on. I suspect the guilty verdict was therefore going to be the first announced.
SWMBO said the radio also copied the guilty verdict and started to blame the interpreter.
,
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...your lying lazy journalism methods becomes clear when made up "reactions" and "comments" are published in error...
The piece contains no direct quotes or reactions, only an indirect quote from the prosecutors taken from the appeal hearing.
In that respect, it's quite cleverly written, certainly clever enough to fool you into thinking there are reactions and comments in the story.
You are right about one thing, a couple of pieces covering both results would be made ready.
I do that myself quite often.
Always the risk of publishing the wrong one, which we did in the case of a rapist.
The main story was right - he was found not guilty - but the second story, or backgrounder as we call it, was written from the perspective of a guilty verdict.
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"In that respect, it's quite cleverly written, certainly clever enough to fool you into thinking there are reactions and comments in the story."
In a nutshell that is exactly what is wrong with the Daily Mail and many of its competitors.
A lot of its content is cleverly written lies and half truths. Most days you can't tell quite so easily as in yesterday's example and many people do believe absolutely what they read is gospel.
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Iffy,
As well as the delighted reaction from the prosecutor there is what looks very much like two direct quotes about justice being done and and the lines starting with the words 'human factor....'
The stated reactions of Knox and of the victims family are also a bit suspect, though if Knox initially took the guilty verdict on the minor charge as covering the murder she might break down.
I can understand why the paper has to work this way but it exposes the routine half truths, occasional lies and emotive verbiage that pass for its coverage of the news for what they really are.
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>> The piece contains no direct quotes or reactions, only an indirect quote from the prosecutors
>> taken from the appeal hearing.
"Amanda cox looked stunned this evening"
Nothing clever or indirect about that. The kindest thing you could say about it is that its a prophesy, guesswork. At worse a lie. She may not have had that reaction.
>>
>> In that respect, it's quite cleverly written, certainly clever enough to fool you into thinking
>> there are reactions and comments in the story.
quote
"Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellman also ruled that Raffaele Sollecito, 27, Knox’s former boyfriend, should remain in jail and confirmed the original 25-year sentence on the computer studies graduate.
As Knox realised the enormity of what judge Hellman was saying she sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears.
A few feet away Meredith’s mother Arline, her sister Stephanie and brother Lyle, who had flown in especially for the verdict remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family.
Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that ‘justice has been done’ although they said on a ‘human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail’."
This may all be taken as clever writing and could be misconstrued as the original trial reactions, except the phrase
should remain in jail and confirmed the original 25-year sentence
in the middle of it makes the whole piece into a lie. By whatever standard of writing or comprehension.
Your clever writing theory about being fooled does not wash here. the damning phrase is too unambiguous for that and puts the whole section in context and turns it into a clear falsehood.
Of course, it was never meant to be seen in the wrong circumstances,
Last edited by: Zero on Tue 4 Oct 11 at 09:35
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That must always have been the case with the judge's summing up.
Until the jury has returned their verdict, he must have two alternative speeches lined up:
A - You are a dastardly crook and I am glad to sentence you to the maximum term.
OR
B - You have been found innocent and leave this court without a stain on your character.
Either said with full conviction and self-righteousness no doubt.
Imagine if he was convinced himself of one verdict, and was getting all ready to deliver speech A, and then suddenly the jury returned and it need a hasty switch to speech B !
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A bit more info here:
www.gizmodo.co.uk/2011/10/the-daily-mails-eggy-face-over-amanda-knox-is-guilty-story/
Says mistake might have been due to judge announcing (in Italian of course) guilty verdict for defamation before the not-guilty murder verdict.
Last edited by: Focus on Tue 4 Oct 11 at 09:07
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...Says mistake might have been due to judge announcing (in Italian of course) guilty verdict for defamation before the not-guilty murder verdict...
Agreed, and Foxy Knoxy was in tears, suggesting she thought she was staying in jail.
Although having seen people cleared on appeal, when I saw the tears, I wondered if they were of relief, rather than despair.
I'm not saying the Mail covered itself in glory, far from it.
But I have taken the same chance of mangling a short quote from the hearing.
What I wouldn't have done is sent the piece, or told the newsdesk to run it, until I was certain of the result.
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the judge knows which way the jury will judge, he nudged them their in the first place.
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On the subject of court reporting balls-ups, a colleague once omitted the word 'not' from the following sentence: 'Smith pleaded not guilty to rape.'
Happily, the rest of the story said a trial date had been set, so it was fairly obvious the man had pleaded not guilty rather than guilty.
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bringing back the death sentence will make armed killers more ruthless, taking out witnesses ...burning buildings, burning innocent victims to keep one step ahead of the forensic boffins , cop shootouts etc etc to cover their tracks surely?
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I have never been in favour of the death penalty, either, like so many here. The names of Timothy Evans and Derek Bentley come to mind....both men had learning disorders, as did Stefan Kiszco, who spent an awful long time in prison and died soon after release on appeal.
The government, in the last few years of the death penalty, did make some differential between murders. The death penalty applied only to murder in the furtherance of theft, by firearm or explosive or the murder of an on-duty police/prison officer. You could still be topped for the 3 offences, treason/piracy/arson in HM Dockyards until much later.
I was involved to a very small extent in the moors murders in the hunt for Keith Bennett, Brady and Hindley didn't come in the category for hanging but Harry Roberts, the Black Panther and similar would have been.
Kiszco, happily, also came outside the category for hanging.
I suppose, nowadays, forensic/DNA evidence is so much stronger and can lead to irrufable evidence to convict, but in the past this has not always been so......remember Dr Scase (?) and the various IRA suspects in the 70s.
Ted
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>> I suppose, nowadays, forensic/DNA evidence is so much stronger and can lead to irrufable evidence
>> to convict, but in the past this has not always been so......remember Dr Scase (?)
>> and the various IRA suspects in the 70s.
Dr Frank Scuse en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Skuse
I suspect the Birmingham 6 and several others would have gone to the gallows and become martyrs to the cause.
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>>>>>I suppose, nowadays, forensic/DNA evidence is so much stronger and can lead to irrufable evidence to convict, but in the past this has not always been so...
I think it is, but it is not infallible.
There have been cases where someone has been prosecuted for a crime many years later because they were arrested for something else and a DNA match was made.
As I understand it, DNA on its own is not enough to convict because it is very likely that 6 people in 20m will have the same DNA as you. Now that is an average, so in some cases there will be more, others less and therefore without other substantiating evidence, DNA can be contested. Of course, the prosecution will claim otherwise!
Human error is always going to be a factor as well. Evidence can be tampered with. There is a case where a police officer went up to a suspect, put a swab in his mouth as to collect a DNA sample then wiped the sample on a balaclava connected to the robbery. This was revealed many years after the prisoner was found guilty and the officer confessed.
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Francis 'Flossie' Forsyth was in my year at school for a few weeks before he moved to another nearby school.
I got involved in the the enquiry just to alibi a friend who lived very close to the site of crime.
It was all very scary at the time. The police were knocking on the door several days running, to the shame of my mum, when all they wanted was a statement.
His case is often cited as leading to hanging being abolished.
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Although quite young at the time, I followed the Derek Bentley case with interest and agreed with most people that he didn't deserve the noose being a bit simple, having not fired any shot or been armed and being under the influence of the younger, nastier Christopher Craig who did fire the fatal shot but was thought too young to hang. Timothy Evans was another fairly gross miscarriage of justice, just down the road from my old gaff in London in a mews now demolished, built as new housing and renamed.
The possibility of such miscarriages, given the thuggishness and bigotry (not to say senile dementia) of some although not all judges, does seem to rule out having a death penalty. But unlike many opponents of the death penalty I do feel that some people deserve it for their cruel depravity, that there are creatures in human form who are best squashed like the insects they resemble and forgotten. In this I differ quite markedly from some of my nearest and dearest who seem to think all life is equally sacrosanct. I differ too from the law as it stood until recently. Crimes against the state for example may be committed for honourable motives, although not patriotic ones usually. Yet they retained the death penalty until recently, while sadistic psychopaths would probably have escaped it.
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The answer is to have a "life" life penalty. In till you die.
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VERY expensive and not very productive to keep a 20 year old in prison for 60 years at a cost of £K/annum. What about a cash sum for the family if the accused/guilty person volunteers for execution? Say 10% of the inflation adjusted cost of keeping someone in the slammer for 60 years but capped at £1 million and paid in installments to prevent squandering? (Note tongue slightly in cheek BTW!)
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No, thats a reward for crime. The family should suffer as well, and the prisoner should know they are suffering.
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>>> The family should suffer as well?
There should never be any reward, but why on earth should the family be made to suffer? They may have had no connection with the crime other than to be married or be a child of a villain!
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>> >>> The family should suffer as well?
>>
>> There should never be any reward, but why on earth should the family be made
>> to suffer?
because it acts as a deterrent. To some anyway.
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>>>VERY expensive and not very productive to keep a 20 year old in prison for 60 years at a cost of £K/annum.
Studies in the USA show that it is significantly more expensive to execute a person than to bang them up for life. Law is expensive. Though I suspect they add things up in a way to suit them.
www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=42 suggests California alone could save US$ 1bn over 5 years by abolishing the death penalty and replacing it with life without parole.
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Two films give a very good insight into two of the mentioned cases.
10 Rillington Place.......the Christie/Evans case
Let him have it, Chris.........The Bentley case.
I have them on video but I should think they're available on DVD for anyone who hasn't seen them.
' Pierrepoint ' with Timothy Spall is an excellent fillum...I think he did Bentley and Christie, he certainly topped Tim Evans.
Ted
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The detection rate for murder is in the high 90s per cent.
You are almost bound to get caught, so on any rational view, you wouldn't do it.
But murderers, particularly at the point of killing, are not acting rationally.
Thus any punishment - capital or otherwise - is not a deterrent.
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>> The detection rate for murder is in the high 90s per cent.
>>
That's of deaths that are self-evidently murders, or suspicious enough to cause investigation.
But the clever murders will be those that don't arouse any suspicion whatever, and simply look like natural deaths, or suicides perhaps.
We have no means of knowing the real numbers.
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...But the clever murders will be those that don't arouse any suspicion whatever, and simply look like natural deaths, or suicides perhaps...
Pathologists and forensic scientists are also clever, so there is no realistic chance of killing someone and not arousing suspicion.
But you are right, we don't know the real numbers.
Same as we don't know aliens haven't landed from Mars just because no one has seen it happen.
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>> Same as we don't know aliens haven't landed from Mars just because no one has
>> seen it happen.
Not really, we know Martians haven't landed because we know there are none on mars so we dont look for them
This is not a fatuous comment either, it applies to murder.
if there are no suspicious circumstances, there will be no serious attempt to look for a cause -
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...if there are no suspicious circumstances, there will be no serious attempt to look for a cause...
True, and Dr Shipman got away with it on that basis - until he was caught.
If a person a person dies suddenly and without obvious explanation there will be suspicious circumstances.
Shipman was caught eventually, but one of the reforms to the system following his case is deaths are looked at more closely, not just signed off.
If there's a body, the murderer already has big problems.
Of course, it follows from the detection rate that one or two per cent of murderers get away with it.
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The sucessful investigation against Shipman arose from issues over a will rather than anything to do with a body.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Wed 5 Oct 11 at 12:03
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...The initial allegations against Shipman arose from issues over a will rather than anything to do with a body...
Quite so, which is why the system was changed.
And it was the old system which caught him.
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OK, Shipman was an extreme case, and it's probably quite difficult to get away with murder on that scale.
But imagine a more common domestic situation where someone can bring about another's death by little more than contrived neglect or a slight push. There must be many carers for example sometimes stressed beyond endurance, who might be tempted to delay making a phone call, "forget" to put the pills within reach, fail to hear the call for help, etc.
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>> ...if there are no suspicious circumstances, there will be no serious attempt to look for
>> a cause...
>>
>> True, and Dr Shipman got away with it on that basis - until he was
>> caught.
>>
>> If a person a person dies suddenly and without obvious explanation there will be suspicious
>> circumstances.
Exactly, without obvious explanation.
A good murderer will provide one.
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A good reason for not having the death penalty - zookeeper
