Well FWIW, everton, I think yours was the most sensible post in this thread.
Actually, she assisted in the rape, torture and murder of five children. while the difference is negligible to you and me, legally they are different.
You seem to miss the point that everton is trying to make. She would never have been allowed to get parole because fo the public furore that the tabloid press would whip up. “Evil People in Jail” sells papers. Following proper judiciary process means nothing to the tabloid press. And any minister that supported the release of Myra Hindley under the correct terms of the parole system in the UK would be burned at the stake.
Where were the tabloids to help Satpal Ram? nowhere. But you can bet dollars to doughnuts that anything go to do with Hindleys prison case made the papers.
Two things, Twisty:
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Part of the “confusion” is that Everton and Irishgirl seem to have the whacked idea that I care about the state of her soul. I don’t. That’s between her and her God.
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The other part can be cleared up in part if you could answer a question?
Was adding the additional sentences legal?
I don’t care (for the moment) whether it was moral, civilized or nice, just “Was it done within the confines of British law?”.
I assume it was, or it would have been overturned.
Thus, I’m fine with it. It shows that the British Judiciary has an error-correcting mechanism and successfully corrected a gross miscarriage of justice by the original idiot judge who has/had no concept of the value of human life. Frankly, if Brits have a way to impeach a judge, I’d think that this asswipe would be a prime candidate for impeachement (and possibly flogging). SIX YEARS PER VICTIM???
If, somehow, a gross violation of British law occurred and she was kept locked up against the law, I’d conceed that it would be troubling in an abstract sense. I don’t want the government to have the power to randomly lock up people in a way that’s against the law. On the other hand, it certainly resulted justice being done so while I’d be concerned, I wouldn’t rise to the level of outrage that some other posters have.
I wonder if Everton and Irishgirl would be complaining so loudly if the original judge had done the just and moral thing and sentenced her to a true life sentence (where she would have died in prison) and a later judge turned around and took time off her sentence?
Fenris
Well, at least some people have been paying attention :rolleyes:
Fenris:
I’m not saying she should have been released early, I’m saying she should have served her original sentence and that any variation to that should have been a decision for lawyers, psychiatrists and similar dispassionate professionals, not vote hungry politicians, tabloid newspaper editors or Rupert Murdoch.
Nothing I’ve posted about Myra Hindley has been out of misplaced compassion for her, or a lack of compassion for the kids that were murdered. I have limitless sympathy for them, and their families, as you might have detected from this in my first post.
I realise my last post was a long one, so you may not have spotted this part:
I’ve been trying to correct the errors several people from outside this country have been making about the legal meaning of a “life” sentence in English Law. So remarks like this one:
are as irrelevant as they are insulting. It’s not up to me to decide how long the sentence should have been - it’s up to the courts.
And every other court decided that keeping the bitch in jail for life was the correct sentence. And I agree. You keep making this fake charge that “politicians” kept her in jail longer. Bzzzzt. Courts did. Perhaps the courts acted at the behest of the citizens, but guess what? A responsive court system (as long as they act within the bounds of the law) is a good thing.
The fact that the original judge (let’s be charitable and simply assume he’s an idiot) fucked up and gave her a far-too-short sentence doesn’t mean that it’s engraved in stone or handed down from heaven. Don’t you believe that correcting horrible miscarriges of justice within the law is a good thing?
Why are you obessed with the “original” verdict. The fact that the first judge picked a sentence out of his ass that any moral person would be outraged by isn’t made any better because it was the first sentence she got.
The fact that the too-short sentence was handed down first is irrelevant as long as later sentences were imposed legally. And as far as I can tell, they were.
Or should a multiple murderer get off simply because one idiotic judge was presumably drunk on the job?
Fenris
Fenris,
How much is a life worth in the US?
Is every murderer sentenced to the rest of their lives behind bars?
when you start to get into economies of morality personal opinion is the only govenor in the discussion.
I do think that she should have gotten LIFE. But the judge in her case did not rule that. His ruling, regardless of our personal moral opinions of it, was entirely legal within the system and it is up to the correct bodies to review that, not the papers.
That is the point that Everton and Irishgirl are trying to make.
they are not defending Hindley.
They are not saying she should have gotten less time in prison.
they are not putting a yearly value on human life.
Um, TwistofFate , what was she sentenced to? I’ve always understood that she was sentenced to life, and that a life sentence in England means life, subject to the power of the Home Secretary to release on licence. That the Home Secretary, for what seems to me to be very good reasons, did not exercise that power in this case does not strike me as an injustice. Unless I am misunderstanding very badly, she was not sentenced to a set number of years, then kept imprisoned when her legal sentence was up.
Idiot Judge setences vile child killer to ridiculously light sentence. The press, diligent in its role as a contemporary critic of such things as the judicial system, alerts the British public to this and provokes a change in public opinion. The mistake is corrected via a legal safeguard set up, presumably, for just this sort of thing.
Is this accurate? If so, where is the controversy? Seriously. It’s all well and good whining about how the tabloids were only motivated by a desire to shift units but whatever their motives the end result was a correction of a gross error. Who cares who decided it. Frankly, the importance of preserving the publics faith in the judicial system outweighs any moral qualms you may have about the motivations behind her extended incarceration, an extension she fully deserved.
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I don’t, however.
In other words ‘It is not up to the press to criticise the judicial system.’ Because that is all they did. They merely criticised. They didn’t force the public to change their minds at gunpoint. The public, when made fully aware of her atrocities, were outraged to the point where the sentence was corrected. As Fenris said *“A responsive court system (as long as they act within the bounds of the law) is a good thing.” *
Ugh, forgot to credit. The post 2 above this one is addressed to everton and the post directly above this one is addressed to Twist of Fate
Your imagination is working overtime here. A Home Secretary is a politician, not a court. The only times her applications for release were heard came after the expiry of the original sentence; there would have been no point presenting an appeal until then.
The increases in the sentence tariff made by Home Secretaries in this case since 1985 were legal, just as the original sentence was passed lawfully – by a judge who heard the evidence. You have decided that the original sentence must have been wrong (even though you did not hear any evidence) and that the increases in the sentence were to correct the judge’s mistake. That is not correct. The relevant Home Secretaries have never claimed that the original judge made any error of jurisprudence; they did it to avoid a backlash from the tabloids.
I have already told you that I believe her failure to cooperate with the police was sufficient reason to keep her locked up. Your imaginary scenario in which politicians reduced a murder sentence for the sake of public opinion is in the Loch Ness monster category of likelihood, but for what it’s worth – yes I would strongly object.
Although there was no time limit mentioned in the original sentence, the Lord Chief Justice decided on 25 years in 1985, and that period was increased twice afterwards by Home Secretaries.
He passed the maximum sentence available. I don’t know how many times you want me to say this, but I think it was perfectly just that Myra Hindley was kept in prison until she died.
A) Not nearly enough
B) No. But they should be (assuming 1st degree murder)
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This is where I keep getting annoyed. The correct bodies did do the review. Unless Rupert Murdoch and the London Post, et al have a secret dungeon under their vast media empire where they kept this murderess locked away illegally, the courts did make the decision to overturn or add to the original idiotic ruling from the first judge.
The fact that the press fulfilled it’s duty and reported a grotesque miscarrige of justice is a good thing, surely.
Fenris
There are any number of miscarriages of justice that the “super, soaraway Sun” has chosen to ignore. It is a hopelessly unreliable source of right and wrong, especially in legal cases.
If we leave it to the tabloids to decide who goes to prison, who doesn’t, and how long they get then we have no justice system at all, and if you think the tabloids don’t have any influence over the decisions politicians make (in this case and others) then you’re kidding yourself.
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And yet, somehow he/they have the power to determine sentences? Without being part of the court? I accept that within the nuances of British Law the Home Secretary, when funtioning as an agent of the court somehow isn’t part of the court. but “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…”
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Then what’s the problem. If it was legal why are you griping about it unless you want her to get off with a sentence of 6 years per murdered child? You’ve said you don’t, so I am at a loss to see what your objection is, unless it’s a complaint about a free and independant press.
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Not “wrong” in the sense of illegal, “wrong” in the sense of immoral, wildly unjust and grossly disproportionate to the crimes she was found guilty of.
She was found guilty of raping, torturing and murdering five children. What more “evidence” do you need?
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And yet they keep adding to his original sentence.
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You keep saying that.
But you’ve yet to prove that a vigilant press is somehow a menace, especially since, if you’re correct, the press managed to stop a horrible murderess from going free early.
And…? It was legal, it was moral, it was just. What could your complaint possibly be?
on preview
So? Just because one can’t correct every wrong, are you saying that one shouldn’t correct any wrong?
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You do have issues with a free press, don’t you? Perhaps you should save your anger for the politicians who caved into public pressure, rather than the press for doing it’s job well.
But if you did that, I’d have to disagree there too, as I want politicians who are responsive to the public as opposed to aloof, elitist politicians who don’t care what their constituants want or need.
So what exactly are you so upset about?
Fenris
At least nearly all of us agree that it is appropriate that Hindley spent the remainder of her life in jail. There’s no question that her case has been used to further other people’s careers in the press and parliament; but Britain’s Law Lords have reviewed the actions of the various Home Secretaries since 1985, and found them to be lawful, at least according to the official record of the House of Lords:
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld199900/ldjudgmt/jd000330/hind.htm
The 1985 decision by the then Home Secretary to impose a tariff of 30 years was based only on her conviction for two murders and accessory in 1966; however, his decision was provisional; she came out in 1987 with new information on her involvement in two other murders which took place prior to those offences for which she was sentenced. This means that the 1985 Hom Sec’s provisional tariff was based on ignorance of: i) her participation in two previous murders, and ii) an incomplete knowledge of her participation in three more murders in full awareness of the fate of two earlier victims.
After Hindley made her new confession to police, her lawyers then petitioned the Home Secretary to review her tariff:
(Quote from the above link, bolding mine).
Certainly Everton’s point about Britain’s tabloid press is well taken; we here in North America have little idea how shrill, exploitative and breathtakingly biased the “SHOCK HORROR” papers can be. Certainly the Home Secretary is a political appointment, and no pol can ever completely ignore the press or public opinion (Jean Cretien notwithstanding); but surely the Law Lords’ have nothing to gain in the case?
Her freaking original sentence was Life. Life, as in Life. Why are you so unable to comprehend that word, everton & irishgirl?
What you’re really arguing is if she should’ve been paroled. Evidently the original judge had a recommendation. That’s another word you two don’t have a clue as to its meaning. Recommendation is not order. It’s a recommendation. Said recommendation was to consider her for parole after a certain number of years in the gaol. That does not guarantee a parole, but merely consideration for it.
Also evidently, the folks that actually matter in the judicial process in the UK felt that she did not qualify for it and made new recommendations.
And everton: it’s stunning that you think that someone occupying a judicial office in the UK system of justice shouldn’t be a politician. That shows a new depth of ignorance that is impossible to alleviate in one thread on the SDMB.
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*Originally posted by Fenris *
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And yet, somehow he/they have the power to determine sentences? Without being part of the court?
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This, hard as it may be for you to believe, is exactly the problem some people (including me) have with the sequence of events in this case.
This does not mean lack of sympathy with her victims or their families. It does not mean being “soft” on murderers. It means being extremely unhappy that a politician, in his capacity as minister for justice, can override decisions made by the judiciary, without any requirement for openness or due process.
Would you be happy if that were the case in the US, Fenris?
Life under the british judicial system means something different to Life under the US judicial system.
Life is generally 15 years before parole.
Shocking as the murder of children is [sub](if you don’t believe how sad things like this have made me, search against my username for ‘Bulger’ or ‘Payne’)[/sub], I was sickened by today’s Daily Mail headlines (I don’t buy newspapers, but I saw it) - “the final injustice - she died peacefully” (or words to that effect).
What she did was inexcusable and wicked.
There’s no way for justice to make the situation right.
Of course it is unfair that she lived on while her victims lay cold in their graves…
…and yet baying for her blood, hoping that she fries, wailing that she should not have died peacefully and so on - it just seems like another facet of the very same fucked-up human nature in which the original murderous acts were rooted.
She’s dead, gone, isn’t that enough?