# What Exactly Did Brits Think We'd Do to Louise Woodward? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 9, 2014, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724 "2014-04-09T15:46:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/21 "2014-04-09T18:53:49Z")
Speaking personally, it’s not ‘the system’ because it is common law and based on the British system - it’s that the quality of defence attorney is seen to be … variable. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/22 "2014-04-09T19:00:10Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > the thing with a lot of countries is that they have very negative views of other countries’ prison conditions and the harshness of their justice systems. The USA is notorious elsewhere for very harsh sentences and easily swayed juries, I suppose. The fact that a jury convicted her of a crime, then the judge had to declare the facts warranted a lesser charge, simply proves the point. This seems to be pretty close to a universally-held perception: That _your_ prisons are shining beacons of rehabilitation, while that other country will toss you into a shit-filled pit where rats will knaw your your eyes out. ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/23 "2014-04-09T19:46:59Z")
It’s a common trope here that the US criminal justice systems chews you up and spits you out. That many defendants have been poorly represented by inadequate public defenders. That an aquittal is particularly difficult to get if you are foreign, even rich and foreign. That the prosecutorial system is keen to overcharge defendants in the expectation that they will settle for a plea-bargain. The _Guardian_ often prints articles of this type. (I make no comment on whether these sentiments are objectively true). And increasingly, there is a feeling that “civilised countries don’t execute people, regardless of what they have done”. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/24 "2014-04-09T19:56:04Z")
It is a fact that the USA has [a larger proportion of its population in prison than any other country in the world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate), in most cases by a long way, and that the USA has the death penalty, whereas other first-world countries do not. America is also a far more violent society, in general, than Britain is, with a much higher murder rate (although this does not go very far to account for the vastly higher incarceration rate), and it is almost certainly the case that this carries over to having far more violent prisons. I do not have statistics to hand, but I would be quite surprised if the murder rate, and general levels of violence, _within_ American prisons were not far higher than those in British ones. Likewise, America is, politically, far to the right of Britain (and the rest of the first world), and right-wing politicians usually support and promote harsher punishment for criminals (which translates to both longer sentences and harsher conditions), and disparage and defund any rehabilitative functions of prison far more than do more left-wing ones. Does anyone here doubt that Norwegian prisons are much cushier (and safer for prisoners) than American ones? Why then should it be implausible that the same would be true (though, no doubt, to a lesser extent) of British prisons? In the light of this, I do not see any irrationality whatsoever in British people believing that (quite apart from any doubts about the fairness and objectivity of the courts) someone convicted of a crime in the United States is likely to suffer far more during their punishment than someone convicted of a similar crime in the U.K. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/25 "2014-04-09T20:05:20Z")
Aside from the fact that Massachusetts outlawed the death penalty in 1982, so even if Woodward had been tried for 1st degree murder, she would not have been eligible for the death penalty, it’s possible that a lot of people outside the US know only that “they have it there.” They may hear Texas stats (the single state responsible for more than 2/3 of all executions), and think someone in every state is executed every day. I live in a death penalty state (Indiana), but we have not had an execution in several years (although if you watch _The Good Wife_, we had two in the past year alone, both lost on appeal, probably because the defendants used Lockhart-Gardner for their appeals, instead of law firms that specialize in death penalty appeals). So, a number of people in the UK may have been afraid that somehow Woodward could have gotten a death sentence. FWIW, you can’t get the death penalty, in death penalty states, for anything but first degree murder with a special circumstance-- except in Louisiana, where you can get it for child rape, so if you ever rape a child in Louisiana, you ought to kill it as well and not leave a witness, since the penalty is the same. Oh, and treason, in federal court, but that hasn’t been handed down since the Rosenbergs in the 1950s. ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/26 "2014-04-09T20:34:09Z")
Everything that njtt says. We have the impression, via our media and statistics, that the US justice system is one of punishment and revenge first… rehabilitation? Meh. Vast prison populations, extreme sentences, and the death penalty - unacceptable in a civilised society. The impression may not be wholly correct, but it’s an impression, nonetheless, which strikes us as pretty harsh in a modern, civilised country. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/27 "2014-04-09T20:36:18Z")
The Rosenbergs were actually executed for espionage, not treason. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/28 "2014-04-09T20:59:52Z")
“Treason” is specifically defined in the Constitution, and can only exist when the US is in a state of war. This was done because the Founding Fathers were well aware of how casually accusations of treason get thrown around in other countries, and wanted to nip that in the bud. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/29 "2014-04-09T21:11:32Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > “Treason” is specifically defined in the Constitution, and can only exist when the US is in a state of war. This was done because the Founding Fathers were well aware of how casually accusations of treason get thrown around in other countries, and wanted to nip that in the bud. A state of war actually has nothing to do with it. > [@Article III Section § 3](#): > > Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The country does not have to be in a state of war to have enemies to adhere to. The founding fathers were also well aware that the Congress could simply create other crimes with the same penalty as treason (like sedition or espionage, which they did) so the actual purpose of defining it in the Constitution was more symbolic than revolutionary. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/30 "2014-04-09T21:22:39Z")
You can’t be executed for raping a child under the age of twelve in Louisiana. This was ruled on by the SCOTUS in _Kennedy v. Louisiana_. Historically (as in back to the merry olde England) rape was punished by death off and on (it’s mentioned in the Canterbury Tales even) and this was true in the early United States as well. The plot of _To Kill a Mockingbird_ revolves around a man sentenced to death for rape (set in the 1930s.) However since the SCOTUS abolished the death penalty (and then re-instated it some years later), no State has executed anyone for any crime other than murder AFAIK. In fact no State even had such laws on the books. Although the UCMJ did add a death penalty option for child rape in the early 2000s (never exercised.) Louisiana, in a period of I guess yearning for the bygone age passed a law in 1995 that allowed for the death penalty when an adult rapes a child under the age of 12. I don’t believe anyone other than Patrick Kennedy had even been sentenced under the law, it was sort of a nuclear type option prosecutors didn’t use. In his case, he raped his eight year old step daughter in an extremely brutal way that basically left her near death. In oral arguments the lawyer arguing for Louisiana noted that, “He raped her so brutally that he tore her entire perineal opening from her vaginal opening and to her anal opening. He tore her vagina on the interior such that it separated partially from her cervix and allowed her rectum to protrude into her vagina.” This created a situation in which there was immense public outcry directed at the crime due to its brutality. Further, the prosecutor was probably inclined to think if anyone should be sentenced to death under the law it was this guy. But even still, the prosecution offered a plea agreement that would have spared Kennedy from the death penalty. Kennedy was not willing to plead guilty though, and the prosecutor at that point probably felt he had to go forward with requesting the DP, and given the brutality of the crime it was the perfect storm for a jury to impose it. Once his death sentence (and the law that spawned it) were set aside by the SCOTUS he was automatically sentenced to life in prison without parole. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/31 "2014-04-09T21:28:42Z")
Louise Woodward was indeed being scapegoated. A prosecution expert stated something about it being a 1 in 1000 chance that the child was not shaken based on the forensics. That’s sort of the definition of reasonable doubt right there. We have a history here of prosecuting the first foreigner we can find when there’s no open and shut case. A Swiss au pair was accused of setting fire to a home in New York where a baby died. There was no evidence she was responsible. Not far away from that around 1980 the entire group of executives from Arrow Electronics died in a fire at a hotel convention center. An immigrant bus boy was blamed, again without evidence, even though there were hundreds of people in the area who could have started a fire. Despite that, I think it happens in most countries, such as Italy where Amanda Knox was convicted of murder based on little if no evidence at all. ---
**Author:** ![Anomie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4491bb/32.png) [@Anomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anomie)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/32 "2014-04-10T05:28:25Z")
All of the above. Plus, popular culture is full of American wrongful convictions. Off the top of my head I can think of: [The Hurricane](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hurricane_(1999_film)) [The Trials of Darryl Hunt](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446055/) [Capturing the Friedmans](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capturing_the_Friedmans) [Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost:_The_Child_Murders_at_Robin_Hood_Hills) [Witch Hunt](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1196112/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3) …not to mention endless episodes of Dateline and 48 Hours about: [Timothy Masters](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Hettrick_murder_case) [Ryan Ferguson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Ferguson_(wrongful_conviction)) [David Camm](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Camm) Combine that with OJ getting off–and the farce of so many other notable trials–it’s not hard to see how people could have the sense that American justice is _unreliable_. However, given the population of the US–and its dominance of popular culture in the Anglosphere–it’s quite possibly just statistical happenstance. ---
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/33 "2014-04-10T05:29:44Z")
This was also just a few years after the OJ Simpson trial, and I recall a few Brits pointed to that as evidence that the US justice system was hopelessly unreliable. (Don’t shoot the messenger: I’m only reporting what \*they \*said.) ---
**Author:** ![MarcusF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/67e7ee/32.png) [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/34 "2014-04-10T06:25:30Z")
Just to support what has already been said, it was recently announced that Woodward was pregnant and someone wrote into the [Daily Mail](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2517120/Louise-Woodward-parenting-classes-sake-child.html) with a comment on the story saying: > [@](#): > > Its a shame that the mockery of a US justice system allowed theis case to go to court at all. Even the sates own chief witness appaers tio noe believe that the tragic death occured as a result of an injury that occured some time before Mathews death. Only a justice system like the US: 1) allowed the prosecution to talk openly about the case before the trial; 2) had a biased jury who had made up their minds before the trial began; 3) allowed the Eppens to discuss the case on US television whilst the jury were deliberating. Our system is far from perfect but a judge in this country would have thrown the case out before a verdict was a… Now the Daily Mail (and its readers) are not known for their goodwill to foreigners but I think this sort of sums up the thinking at the time. One other thing from the OP: you are innocent until proven guilty in the UK just as in the States. ---
**Author:** ![Anomie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4491bb/32.png) [@Anomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anomie)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/35 "2014-04-10T06:41:54Z")
> [@MarcusF](#): > > 1. allowed the prosecution to talk openly about the case before the trial Yeah, in Australia people go to jail for talking about cases sub judice. Given Nancy Grace, I think that’s a ‘good thing’. …also I think it’s a ‘good thing’ that our prosecutors are public servants, not wannabe politicians. ---
**Author:** ![gracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e7dd6/32.png) [@gracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gracer)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/36 "2014-04-10T06:45:59Z")
> [@SanVito](#): > > Everything that njtt says. We have the impression, via our media and statistics, that the US justice system is one of punishment and revenge first… rehabilitation? Meh. Vast prison populations, extreme sentences, and the death penalty - unacceptable in a civilised society. The impression may not be wholly correct, but it’s an impression, nonetheless, which strikes us as pretty harsh in a modern, civilised country. I too recall it being largely this. The US system is seen as barbaric, with revenge being served before justice, prisoners free to rape, maim and kill each other, inhuman isolation and the death penalty on top of that. I don’t think whether the death penalty was on the table for Woodward was relevant: the fact that the country has the death penalty at all constituted proof that the system was uncivilised. That impression is probably a good deal stronger now, so much tv has been made of US prisons. I regularly hear that Amnesty International criticises the prison conditions in the US, eg the [Annual Report 2013](http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/usa/report-2013#section-157-6): “Thousands of prisoners across the USA remained in isolation in “super-maximum security” prisons. They were confined to cells for 22-24 hours a day, without adequate access to natural light, exercise or rehabilitation programmes. Conditions in such facilities violated international standards and in some cases amounted to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” The Annual Report on the UK doesn’t have a section on prisons. If you see how on these boards Italy is made out to be a banana republic when they’re prosecuting an American white girl, it doesn’t seem at all strange that the same would happen when it’s the US justice system being scrutinised. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/37 "2014-04-10T08:20:25Z")
The reason for the US being cited for treatment of prisoners and othe countires not is because it hasn’t incorported human rights legislation. At one point I may have read about a conflict with the national constitution … I think. ---
**Author:** ![bucketybuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@bucketybuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bucketybuck)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/38 "2014-04-10T08:24:03Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Louise Woodward was indeed being scapegoated. A prosecution expert stated something about it being a 1 in 1000 chance that the child was not shaken based on the forensics. The Wiki article has an interesting quote: > [@](#): > > Patrick Barnes, a pediatric radiologist at Stanford University, was a key prosecution witness in the trial, but in 2011 he declared that he wouldn’t give the same testimony today. He said there’s been a revolution in the understanding of head injuries in the past decade, partly due to advances in MRI brain scanning technology: “We started realizing there were a number of medical conditions that can affect a baby’s brain and look like the findings that we used to attribute to shaken baby syndrome or child abuse” ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/39 "2014-04-10T08:24:36Z")
A problem seems to be that although some non-Americans may dislike ‘America’ for real or fancied reasons, and frankly most of us can’t be bothered, they generally like ‘Americans’ and wish them well. But there’s a perception this is not reciprocated. To illustrate: yesterday I came across on the web, ‘_Fidel Castro Raped My Teen-Age Daughter_’. Slightly surprised since it seems something that would have gained more traction if true, I checked the date, 1960, and after a while, maybe 45 seconds, came to the judicial opinion it was propaganda. OK, but it was still relevant to the denizens of the respected **[Free Republic](http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3017678/posts)**, average Americans, in 2013. The story is examined **[here](http://cubaninsider.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/a-fidel-castro-classic-flashback.html)** in a blog which demonstrates the same conclusion. With a Police Gazette cover of the original which adds **Oranges Can Be A Danger To Your Health**. Anyway it introduced me to the late Beverly Aadland. lover of Errol Flynn, so it wasn’t wasted time. Judges are pretty much the same everywhere, and apart from that weird electing judges thing, we would feel as safe with an American judge as a Russian or Colombian one; it’s the juries that worry us. The last commentator in the Free Republic thread states, in regard to Fidel Castro Raped My Daughter: - Our children need to be taught NEVER to trust a foreigner. There are far too many stories like this. Once you leave the USA you are no more than a slave in whatever country you go to. More and more I believe we just need to neutron bomb the entire non-english speaking world (except Israel) and just start over.\* Now I’m grateful for his permitting the other English-speaking nations to exist ( and Israel ), but I wouldn’t want to be a foreigner with him as a juryman. And we don’t know how typical his views are with his countrymen. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724/40 "2014-04-10T10:29:40Z")
Isn’t the idea that American prisons and jails are hellholes prevalent even amongst Americans? Reading around online I seem to get that impression. Overcrowded, terrible conditions, largely run by Aryan/Black/Hispanic gangs, horrendous violence, and so on. Documentaries like Louis Theroux’s one on the Miami Megajail only entrench that idea in the minds of the British, and this idea that American prisons are barbaric is certainly nothing new, over here. Further, there’s the weird obsession amongst many online Americans with prison rape. It’s not at all uncommon to see otherwise intelligent people wishing rape, or hinting at it, on prisoners when commenting on a conviction, even on boards like this one. That possibly doesn’t help with impressions. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-did-brits-think-wed-do-to-louise-woodward/685724.md?page=3)