Lucy Letby- An example of why the death penalty is needed?

[TheGunnShow 6,019]

38 minutes ago, Naturalcynic said:

The first two are behind a paywall and the third is basically an opinion piece with extremely weak evidence.  If you can show me some real peer-reviewed randomised double-blind controlled trials rather than some questionable opinions from sociologists who may or may not have a vested interest in claiming that women don’t have a nurturing instinct, then that would be good.

I think you missed the links in the third one. The second one basically went off oxytocin levels in men and women, and they achieved the same levels after birth, just that the men took a week or two longer. But the ability to bond was equal - and indeed this was carried out by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, the researcher and expert on maternal behaviour I mentioned earlier.

Oxytocin and the development of parenting in humans - PubMed (nih.gov)

Fathers are just as good as mothers at recognizing the cries of their baby | Nature Communications

There isn't any such evidence FOR a nurturing instinct inherent in women (summarised pithily, it's to do with time spent with the offspring and the second link makes this very clear in the summary) and indeed you even said you could not provide such in your initial response. That is the key point.

10 hours ago, Naturalcynic said:

 I can’t give you results from peer-reviewed randomised controlled trials, but really I think the evidence is all around you and is based on millennia of observational experience where it’s been overwhelmingly women who have cared for, nurtured, and raised children, or at least their own.

After all, Hitchen's Razor kicks in. What is surmised without evidence, namely the notion of "maternal instinct" can be dismissed without evidence.

Edited August 22, 2023 by TheGunnShow

[Naturalcynic 675]

4 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

I think you missed the links in the third one. The second one basically went off oxytocin levels in men and women, and they achieved the same levels after birth, just that the men took a week or two longer. But the ability to bond was equal - and indeed this was carried out by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, the researcher and expert on maternal behaviour I mentioned earlier.

Oxytocin and the development of parenting in humans - PubMed (nih.gov)

Fathers are just as good as mothers at recognizing the cries of their baby | Nature Communications

There isn't any such evidence FOR a nurturing instinct inherent in women (summarised pithily, it's to do with time spent with the offspring and the second link makes this very clear in the summary) and indeed you even said you could not provide such in your initial response. That is the key point.

After all, Hitchen's Razor kicks in. What is surmised without evidence, namely the notion of "maternal instinct" can be dismissed without evidence.

In every society worldwide it has been, and is, women who do the nurturing.  Please don’t try and claim that it’s all because of some sort of patriarchal conspiracy.

[TheGunnShow 6,019]

Just now, Naturalcynic said:

In every society worldwide it has been, and is, women who do the nurturing.  Please don’t try and claim that it’s all because of some sort of patriarchal conspiracy.

The point is that there is no evidence whatsoever for a biological instinct that is the sole preserve of women. Just because women did the majority of child-rearing in the past does not at all mean they had an intrinsic proclivity to it.

All you've got is a very weak correlation and no evidence.

[Naturalcynic 675]

8 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

The point is that there is no evidence whatsoever for a biological instinct that is the sole preserve of women. Just because women did the majority of child-rearing in the past does not at all mean they had an intrinsic proclivity to it.

All you've got is a very weak correlation and no evidence.

I think neither of us have hard evidence in the scientific sense, but as I’ve said before you seem to be trying to deny the overwhelming worldwide observational evidence from time immemorial.

[TheGunnShow 6,019]

2 minutes ago, Naturalcynic said:

I think neither of us have hard evidence in the scientific sense, but as I’ve said before you seem to be trying to deny the overwhelming worldwide observational evidence from time immemorial.

On the contrary, you appear to be confusing learned behaviour with an innate "instinct". Indeed, if you'd read the study link I provided that was NOT behind a paywall and came from a top peer-reviewed journal in Nature Communications, you'd have seen this. Essentially, the notion of "maternal instinct" was old knowledge that didn't hold up and it is now accepted that it is a result of interactions between genetics and the environment.

In fact, that link even has a PDF to download. I'll leave you this pair of screenshots anyway.




 

[Naturalcynic 675]

2 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

On the contrary, you appear to be confusing learned behaviour with an innate "instinct". Indeed, if you'd read the study link I provided that was NOT behind a paywall and came from a top peer-reviewed journal in Nature Communications, you'd have seen this. Essentially, the notion of "maternal instinct" was old knowledge that didn't hold up and it is now accepted that it is a result of interactions between genetics and the environment.

In fact, that link even has a PDF to download. I'll leave you this pair of screenshots anyway.




 

Both parents can recognise their babies’ cries.  So what?

[TheGunnShow 6,019]

15 minutes ago, Naturalcynic said:

Both parents can recognise their babies’ cries.  So what?

Almost as if men can do parent-related things as well as women given the chance?

Anyway, if you still somehow believe in this notion of a maternal instinct, let's have some peer-reviewed evidence showing that there is an instinct for this, purely innate within women. Not the outcomes of behaviours, but pure instincts which do not require prior learning.

[cambridgeshire canary 6,818]

1 hour ago, How I Wrote Elastic Man said:

Vardags whole life orders

"CAN A WHOLE-LIFE PRISONER EVER BE RELEASED?

The only mechanism by which a whole-life prisoner may ever be released is on “exceptional compassionate grounds”. By reference to the 2009 compassionate release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi (convicted in Scotland, where there is no WLO), this could occur, for example, if a prisoner had terminal cancer. No whole-life prisoner has ever been released this way, and indeed several WLO prisoners have become terminally ill and died in prison. The compassionate release mechanism keeps the WLO compliant with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right not to be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment) per the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Hutchinson v the United Kingdom [2017]."

 

 

Albert Dryden also got out much earlier as he was dying if I remember right. He did not have a whole life order mind but had killed someone and was supposed to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,600]

 

25 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

Almost as if men can do parent-related things as well as women given the chance?

Anyway, if you still somehow believe in this notion of a maternal instinct, let's have some peer-reviewed evidence showing that there is an instinct for this, purely innate within women. Not the outcomes of behaviours, but pure instincts which do not require prior learning.

I dare you to make this argument in a room full of mothers...

[Naturalcynic 675]

22 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

Almost as if men can do parent-related things as well as women given the chance?

Anyway, if you still somehow believe in this notion of a maternal instinct, let's have some peer-reviewed evidence showing that there is an instinct for this, purely innate within women. Not the outcomes of behaviours, but pure instincts which do not require prior learning.

I really think that looking at the overwhelming majority of the animal kingdom, of which clearly we are a part, it is the females that carry the foetus, give birth to the baby, suckle the infant and generally care for it up until such time as it is able to fend for itself.  This isn’t a behaviour that is imposed on them by dominant males, but is a basic instinct.  If it wasn’t, then their offspring wouldn’t survive and their genes wouldn’t be passed on to subsequent generations.

[TheGunnShow 6,019]

18 minutes ago, Naturalcynic said:

I really think that looking at the overwhelming majority of the animal kingdom, of which clearly we are a part, it is the females that carry the foetus, give birth to the baby, suckle the infant and generally care for it up until such time as it is able to fend for itself.  This isn’t a behaviour that is imposed on them by dominant males, but is a basic instinct.  If it wasn’t, then their offspring wouldn’t survive and their genes wouldn’t be passed on to subsequent generations.

Whilst it's true that the bit in bold is not imposed (but only women can do it, this would be reversed if guys could give birth), general care of children is a very intensively learned process and not an innate instinct. As the bits I put in before showed, men can be just as adept and bond just as intensely (oxytocin levels) with their children given the chance.

But women were definitely subject to being told for a very long time that they were most valuable as mothers. That is totally undeniable.

[Aggy 766]

10 hours ago, Fen Canary said:

It’s also a lot cheaper 

Is it? 

This is on the US supreme court’s website:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/urls_cited/ot2016/16-5247/16-5247-2.pdf

A number of examples but probably the most relevant: 

Defense costs for death penalty trials in Kansas averaged about $400,000 per case, compared to $100,000 per case when the death penalty was not sought. (Kansas Judicial Council, 2014).

Enforcing the death penalty costs Florida $51 million a year above what it would cost to punish all first-degree murderers with life in prison without parole.
(Palm Beach Post, January 4, 2000).

The most comprehensive study in the country found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of sentencing murderers to life imprisonment. The majority of those costs occur at the trial level. (Duke University, May 1993).

In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. (Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1992).

 

[Naturalcynic 675]

1 minute ago, TheGunnShow said:

Whilst it's true that the bit in bold is not imposed (but only women can do it, this would be reversed if guys could give birth), general care of children is a very intensively learned process and not an innate instinct. As the bits I put in before showed, men can be just as adept and bond just as intensely (oxytocin levels) with their children given the chance.

But women were definitely subject to being told for a very long time that they were most valuable as mothers. That is totally undeniable.

Haha, next you’ll be claiming that men can chest-feed.

[TheGunnShow 6,019]

32 minutes ago, Naturalcynic said:

Haha, next you’ll be claiming that men can chest-feed.

You'll have to explain how you came to that conclusion from my previous comment. That leap seems to require Moon gravity to pull off.

[Fen Canary 870]

46 minutes ago, Aggy said:

Is it? 

This is on the US supreme court’s website:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/urls_cited/ot2016/16-5247/16-5247-2.pdf

A number of examples but probably the most relevant: 

Defense costs for death penalty trials in Kansas averaged about $400,000 per case, compared to $100,000 per case when the death penalty was not sought. (Kansas Judicial Council, 2014).

Enforcing the death penalty costs Florida $51 million a year above what it would cost to punish all first-degree murderers with life in prison without parole.
(Palm Beach Post, January 4, 2000).

The most comprehensive study in the country found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of sentencing murderers to life imprisonment. The majority of those costs occur at the trial level. (Duke University, May 1993).

In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. (Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1992).

 

To be fair the yanks are idiots in that regard. They lock people up in maximum security prisons for longer than most countries impose a life sentence for, only to bump them off at the end. Letting somebody spend 30 years on death row then topping them when they’re old defeats the purpose of having a death penalty.

This isn’t an argument for or against it’s use, just point out what I consider the absurdity of the Americans use of it 

[horsefly 4,318]

16 hours ago, Fen Canary said:

Letting somebody spend 30 years on death row then topping them when they’re old defeats the purpose of having a death penalty.

That's a very bizarre take. The fundamental justification for permitting the death sentence is that it is an act demanded by retributive justice (i.e. a life for a life). There is no case for making fundamental to its justification the idea that it acts as a deterrent. Firstly the empirical evidence shows that it doesn't deter, but more importantly if we take deterrence to be fundamental then it opens the possibility of claiming the death penalty should be available for lots of other crimes, such as rape for example (Notoriously, in 1989 Donald Trump took out a full-page advert calling for the death penalty for convicted black and Latino rapists, including a 15-year-old. They were known as the Central Park Five, and all of them were exonerated in 2002 by DNA evidence and the confession of the real perpetrator. Trump is still yet to apologise to those men  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/17/central-park-five-donald-trump-jogger-rape-case-new-york)

Given that a death sentence is the most profound and irreversible sentence possible, it is essential that the person in receipt of it is given every proper judicial opportunity to appeal that decision. Otherwise there is no available moral/judicial defence of the death penalty in terms of retributive justice. The length of time that process takes is irrelevant to justification. That it typically involves decades is almost certainly inevitable. That this means a death sentence turns out to be far more costly than a life sentence is equally inevitable where the sentence is contested. Justice costs what it costs, and if one wishes to make the death penalty an option then one must accept the extra cost that judicial process must involve. 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,600]

57 minutes ago, horsefly said:

it is essential that the person in receipt of it is given every proper judicial opportunity to appeal that decision. Otherwise there is no available moral/judicial defence of the death penalty in terms of retributive justice. The length of time that process takes is irrelevant to justification. That it typically involves decades is almost certainly inevitable.

There is no possible basis to doubt that the correct verdict has been found over Letby. Written notes in her own hand, a parent actually witnessing an attack on a child who died, but who was fobbed off. What possible evidence could ever appear that could call any of it into question?

It's impossible that this was the wrong verdict, and I don't use the word impossible lightly. If that's the case, were a death sentence to be an option, then there's no justification for decades of procrastination over it. But that goes back to what I was saying about only potentially applying it where the degree of certainty of a correct verdict is so great.

[dylanisabaddog 5,010]

6 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

There is no possible basis to doubt that the correct verdict has been found over Letby. Written notes in her own hand, a parent actually witnessing an attack on a child who died, but who was fobbed off. What possible evidence could ever appear that could call any of it into question?

It's impossible that this was the wrong verdict, and I don't use the word impossible lightly. If that's the case, were a death sentence to be an option, then there's no justification for decades of procrastination over it. But that goes back to what I was saying about only potentially applying it where the degree of certainty of a correct verdict is so great.

Oh dear. Here are 190 reasons why you're wrong 

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence

[horsefly 4,318]

36 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

There is no possible basis to doubt that the correct verdict has been found over Letby. Written notes in her own hand, a parent actually witnessing an attack on a child who died, but who was fobbed off. What possible evidence could ever appear that could call any of it into question?

It's impossible that this was the wrong verdict, and I don't use the word impossible lightly. If that's the case, were a death sentence to be an option, then there's no justification for decades of procrastination over it. But that goes back to what I was saying about only potentially applying it where the degree of certainty of a correct verdict is so great.

That's far too bold. It is certainly not "impossible" that discovery of mitigating factors could lead to a review of her level of criminal responsibility. Do you know anything about her psychological state and the possibility that there may be potential to review those aspects of her  responsibility? Likewise, none of us has been privy to all the details of the evidence or the discussions of the jury (which found not guilty on several charges). Even if it appears that the conviction looks very convincing it remains the case that such "impossibility of their innocence" is at best a rarity in murder convictions. There have been far too many cases in the past when "certainty" of someone's guilt has been replaced by acknowledgement of their innocence.

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

52 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

There is no possible basis to doubt that the correct verdict has been found over Letby. Written notes in her own hand, a parent actually witnessing an attack on a child who died, but who was fobbed off. What possible evidence could ever appear that could call any of it into question?

It's impossible that this was the wrong verdict, and I don't use the word impossible lightly. If that's the case, were a death sentence to be an option, then there's no justification for decades of procrastination over it. But that goes back to what I was saying about only potentially applying it where the degree of certainty of a correct verdict is so great.

Even beyond reasonable doubt has come up short many times.

[Herman 9,836]

1 hour ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

There is no possible basis to doubt that the correct verdict has been found over Letby. Written notes in her own hand, a parent actually witnessing an attack on a child who died, but who was fobbed off. What possible evidence could ever appear that could call any of it into question?

It's impossible that this was the wrong verdict, and I don't use the word impossible lightly. If that's the case, were a death sentence to be an option, then there's no justification for decades of procrastination over it. But that goes back to what I was saying about only potentially applying it where the degree of certainty of a correct verdict is so great.

But you can't have a judicial system where you have innocent, guilty and definitely guilty. It makes it a farce.

[Nuff Said 5,178]

23 hours ago, Naturalcynic said:

Sometimes you just have to believe your own eyes and experiences rather than attempting to deny the glaringly obvious.

Come off it, you’ll be telling us to do our own research next.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,600]

19 minutes ago, Herman said:

But you can't have a judicial system where you have innocent, guilty and definitely guilty. It makes it a farce.

Why? It seems perfectly reasonable to me to have a bar of beyond reasonable doubt where the sentence is reversible, and no possible doubt for a crime where the sentence isn't reversible.

Scotland has Guilty, not guilty, and not proven. Why should what I'm saying be considered any more farcial than that?

[littleyellowbirdie 2,600]

43 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

Even beyond reasonable doubt has come up short many times.

You've totally missed my point. I was talking about beyond possible doubt, i.e. where it's completely inconceivable that there's a mistake in the verdict, as is the case with Lucy Letby. Beyond reasonable doubt and beyond possible doubt are very different things.

Edited August 23, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[littleyellowbirdie 2,600]

1 hour ago, dylanisabaddog said:

Oh dear. Here are 190 reasons why you're wrong 

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence

What has any of that got to do with Lucy Letby's guilt?

[littleyellowbirdie 2,600]

1 hour ago, horsefly said:

That's far too bold. It is certainly not "impossible" that discovery of mitigating factors could lead to a review of her level of criminal responsibility. Do you know anything about her psychological state and the possibility that there may be potential to review those aspects of her  responsibility? Likewise, none of us has been privy to all the details of the evidence or the discussions of the jury (which found not guilty on several charges). Even if it appears that the conviction looks very convincing it remains the case that such "impossibility of their innocence" is at best a rarity in murder convictions. There have been far too many cases in the past when "certainty" of someone's guilt has been replaced by acknowledgement of their innocence.

Mitigating factors? Why should anyone care about her mental state. Does anyone care about the mental state of a dog when it's put down after it bites someone?

The value you put on human life in terms of the scope of the criminal justice system is insanely high, yet somehow lives of victims, or potential future victims, as with released prisoners who kill again, don't matter.

Edited August 23, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[dylanisabaddog 5,010]

6 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

What has any of that got to do with Lucy Letby's guilt?

Seek help before it's too late. 

Let's start killing people who we're absolutely certain are guilty. What could possibly go wrong? 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,600]

Just now, dylanisabaddog said:

Seek help before it's too late. 

Let's start killing people who we're absolutely certain are guilty. What could possibly go wrong? 

Nothing could go wrong if Lucy Letby is killed. We'll save a fortune on the additional supervision preventing other inmates from killing her for the next several decades.

[Herman 9,836]

28 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Why? It seems perfectly reasonable to me to have a bar of beyond reasonable doubt where the sentence is reversible, and no possible doubt for a crime where the sentence isn't reversible.

Scotland has Guilty, not guilty, and not proven. Why should what I'm saying be considered any more farcial than that?

Ludicrous. With all the available evidence you are either guilty or innocent.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,600]

2 minutes ago, Herman said:

Ludicrous. With all the available evidence you are either guilty or innocent.

No you aren't. You're found guilty or innocent based on the evidence, and based on the bar for evidence that is required for a conviction. Someone who's found guilty with a bar of beyond reasonable doubt may not be found guilty against a bar of no possible doubt.