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

[dylanisabaddog 5,006]

7 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

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.

I despair. You have been given 190 examples as to why the death penalty doesn't work. 

Would you really kill someone to prove a point? 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,597]

1 minute ago, dylanisabaddog said:

I despair. You have been given 190 examples as to why the death penalty doesn't work. 

Would you really kill someone to prove a point? 

I'm talking about Lucy Letby. Those 190 cases in the US have nothing to do with her.

[Aggy 766]

1 minute ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

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.

But what you seem to be suggesting is that you don’t decide which bar to use until the jury come to make their decision?  

[dylanisabaddog 5,006]

1 minute ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

I'm talking about Lucy Letby. Those 190 cases in the US have nothing to do with her.

So you just want to kill her? Not anyone else? 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,597]

Just now, Aggy said:

But what you seem to be suggesting is that you don’t decide which bar to use until the jury come to make their decision?  

I'm saying you use the bar if you're judging for the death penalty. Then if found not guilty on that bar, reconsider the evidence on grounds of beyond reasonable doubt for a prison sentence.

Why anyone should be concerned for the life of Lucy Letby is beyond me.

[dylanisabaddog 5,006]

2 minutes ago, Aggy said:

But what you seem to be suggesting is that you don’t decide which bar to use until the jury come to make their decision?  

A jury of 12 should represent a balanced view. But statistically you will occasionally get 12 people who can't tie their shoelaces. 

 

Edited August 23, 2023 by dylanisabaddog

[littleyellowbirdie 2,597]

Just now, dylanisabaddog said:

So you just want to kill her? Not anyone else? 

That's what the threads about. I'd be happy to see the principle extended to other cases where there's the degree of certainty, especially where the degree of certainty is so high.

Should have happened for the police officer who murdered Sarah Everard as well. The breach of trust in both cases is too much for prison to be enough.

 

[horsefly 4,318]

19 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

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.

Bizarre! It's a very obvious principle of our system of law that the mental state of a perpetrator does matter. The comparison with a dog is completely irrelevant. And who has said the "lives of victims" don't matter"? The delivery of a full-term life sentence expresses precisely the opposite.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,597]

3 minutes ago, horsefly said:

Bizarre! It's a very obvious principle of our system of law that the mental state of a perpetrator does matter. The comparison with a dog is completely irrelevant. And who has said the "lives of victims" don't matter"? The delivery of a full-term life sentence expresses precisely the opposite.

Yeah. It's a principle I don't agree with. You're either a danger to others or you're not.

But that's a whole other rabbit hole. Letby's clearly not insane; just evil.

Edited August 23, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[horsefly 4,318]

1 minute ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Yeah. It's a principle I don't agree with. You're either a danger to others or you're not.

She is serving a full-term life sentence.

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

24 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

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.

I think its been pointed out it is far more expensive to execute someone. The last peopl executed in this country were hung. I very much doubt that would be the method even if the death penalty were restored. And now with our Supreme Court, the cost would be phenomenal.

[Aggy 766]

11 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

I'm saying you use the bar if you're judging for the death penalty. Then if found not guilty on that bar, reconsider the evidence on grounds of beyond reasonable doubt for a prison sentence.

 

I’m not aware of anywhere that does that. In America they decide guilty or not guilty, and only then is the jury able to say whether the death penalty is on the cards.

You can’t change the level of innocence you need to prove halfway through a trial. 

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

6 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Yeah. It's a principle I don't agree with. You're either a danger to others or you're not.

But that's a whole other rabbit hole. Letby's clearly not insane; just evil.

Evil predisposes the opposite exists. It doesn't exist. She has definitely something wrong in her brain.

Revenge exists of course.

[TheGunnShow 6,019]

3 minutes ago, horsefly said:

She is serving a full-term life sentence.

Exactly, this is a classic example of the term "life means life". Precisely how it should be, IMO.

[dylanisabaddog 5,006]

8 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Yeah. It's a principle I don't agree with. You're either a danger to others or you're not.

But that's a whole other rabbit hole. Letby's clearly not insane; just evil.

Absolutely hilarious. Not insane, just evil. My God 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,597]

Just now, keelansgrandad said:

I think its been pointed out it is far more expensive to execute someone. The last peopl executed in this country were hung. I very much doubt that would be the method even if the death penalty were restored. And now with our Supreme Court, the cost would be phenomenal.

It doesn't have to be. Like I said, there would be no need to procrastinate for 10 years over Letby. The evidence is overwhelmingly conclusive.

I'm done. I can't really be arsed any more as I don't care strongly enough either way, but people who spend this much effort speaking on behalf of a serial child-killing nurse are pretty f*ked up in my book. My thoughts are with the poor parents of the dead children at her hands, and the ones left caring for children with permanent damage because of her, someone they should have been able to trust.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,597]

1 minute ago, dylanisabaddog said:

Absolutely hilarious. Not insane, just evil. My God 

That was actually her own statement; That she was evil. Clearly knows the difference between right and wrong and did it anyway.

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

5 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

It doesn't have to be. Like I said, there would be no need to procrastinate for 10 years over Letby. The evidence is overwhelmingly conclusive.

I'm done. I can't really be arsed any more as I don't care strongly enough either way, but people who spend this much effort speaking on behalf of a serial child-killing nurse are pretty f*ked up in my book. My thoughts are with the poor parents of the dead children at her hands, and the ones left caring for children with permanent damage because of her, someone they should have been able to trust.

I think you would find there would be so much procrastination over Letby. Those even more vehemently anti capital punishment would object legally because its not just this case, its every case that matters. It is indisputable she did it but we can't pick and choose the penalties depending on emotion.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,597]

7 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

I think you would find there would be so much procrastination over Letby. Those even more vehemently anti capital punishment would object legally because its not just this case, its every case that matters. It is indisputable she did it but we can't pick and choose the penalties depending on emotion.

All penalties should be picked on a case by case basis. Law is supposed to be a guide from which judges interpret what's applicable to specific situations. To say a clear cut case shouldn't be dealt with as a clearcut case because of the existence of more complicated cases is just obfuscation.

It's all just deflection from a basic dogmatic belief that the justice system should never kill anyone under any circumstances, which I reject.

Edited August 23, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[horsefly 4,318]

23 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

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.

What on earth could "no possible doubt" mean in the context of a jury's judgement? How on earth could you expect a jury to convict anyone at all if that is the bar that has to be reached? How could a jury ever know that it is impossible that new evidence could arise that would affect their verdict? For example, in the present case, how could any member of the jury know that it is impossible that advances in medical science might show Letby is a sufferer of a previously unrecognised form of mental illness? They reached their verdict of guilty because they collectively agreed that was reasonable given the evidence. It would be utterly absurd to burden a jury with an impossible responsibility. That is precisely why the accepted standard for guilt is beyond reasonable doubt. Inventing a category of "no possible doubt" in order to justify killing a criminal one finds particularly abhorrent wouldn't even begin to pass the rigours of jurisprudence. 

[Aggy 766]

9 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

All penalties should be picked on a case by case basis. Law is supposed to be a guide from which judges interpret what's applicable to specific situations. To say a clear cut case shouldn't be dealt with as a clearcut case because of the existence of more complicated cases is just obfuscation.

 

I don’t disagree with that in fairness 

The bit where your argument falls down is where you’re applying different levels of guilt at random points throughout - “we can’t get you for this so we’ll make it easier and try again for something else”. 

Taking that trail of thought further though, if we had a system where the jury announced a percentage of how guilty they thought the accused was (eg; we’re 60 per cent sure you’re guilty so 3 years inside vs 100 per cent sure you’re guilty so death penalty)… where on that scale would you place the death penalty? How sure would the jury need to be before the death penalty could be imposed? 100 per cent? 99? 95?

Edited August 23, 2023 by Aggy

[horsefly 4,318]

25 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

It doesn't have to be. Like I said, there would be no need to procrastinate for 10 years over Letby. The evidence is overwhelmingly conclusive.

I'm done. I can't really be arsed any more as I don't care strongly enough either way, but people who spend this much effort speaking on behalf of a serial child-killing nurse are pretty f*ked up in my book. My thoughts are with the poor parents of the dead children at her hands, and the ones left caring for children with permanent damage because of her, someone they should have been able to trust.

I'm afraid you're being very disingenuous. No one at all has been "speaking on behalf" of Letby. People have spoken exclusively against the idea that the death penalty should be available as a form of punishment for murder. To argue that position in no way suggests one has sympathy for the person who has committed abominable crimes.

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

15 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

All penalties should be picked on a case by case basis. Law is supposed to be a guide from which judges interpret what's applicable to specific situations. To say a clear cut case shouldn't be dealt with as a clearcut case because of the existence of more complicated cases is just obfuscation.

It's all just deflection from a basic dogmatic belief that the justice system should never kill anyone under any circumstances, which I reject.

We are getting nowhere on this one. You were close to losing it on an earlier post and I throw in the towel.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,597]

2 minutes ago, Aggy said:

I don’t disagree with that in fairness 

The bit where your argument falls down is where you’re applying different levels of guilt at random points throughout - “we can’t get you for this so we’ll make it easier and try again for something else”. 

Taking that trail of thought further though, if we had a system where the jury announced a percentage of how guilty they thought the accused was (eg; we’re 60 per cent sure you’re guilty so 3 years inside vs 100 per cent sure you’re guilty so death penalty)… where on that scale would you place the death penalty? How sure would the jury need to be before the death penalty could be imposed? 100 per cent? 99? 95?

It's not applying'level's of guilt it's applying a different bar for guilt, respecting the fact that death is irreversible. In fact, you've laid it out very well in your final paragraph with the probabilities.

If it was the case that we could only be 90% certain that Letby's a serial child-killing nurse who betrayed the trust of those parents, then going to prison seems an acceptable approach to allow for that 10% uncertainty. But it's not 90%; it's 100%. She killed those children. Like the judge said, there's no mitigation for her crimes both the murders and the breach of trust. She was seen by a parent attacking a child, only getting away with it by fobbing her off that it was from a tube in its nose. She wrote notes about her crimes and declaring her own actions 'evil'.  It's a failure of our laws that she can continue breathing in my view.

Justice is blind, but in some circumstances it's less blind than others.

 

[Midlands Yellow 4,083]

25 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

All penalties should be picked on a case by case basis. Law is supposed to be a guide from which judges interpret what's applicable to specific situations. To say a clear cut case shouldn't be dealt with as a clearcut case because of the existence of more complicated cases is just obfuscation.

It's all just deflection from a basic dogmatic belief that the justice system should never kill anyone under any circumstances, which I reject.

 

 

3 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

It's not applying'level's of guilt it's applying a different bar for guilt, respecting the fact that death is irreversible. In fact, you've laid it out very well in your final paragraph with the probabilities.

If it was the case that we could only be 90% certain that Letby's a serial child-killing nurse who betrayed the trust of those parents, then going to prison seems an acceptable approach to allow for that 10% uncertainty. But it's not 90%; it's 100%. She killed those children. Like the judge said, there's no mitigation for her crimes both the murders and the breach of trust. She was seen by a parent attacking a child, only getting away with it by fobbing her off that it was from a tube in its nose. She wrote notes about her crimes and declaring her own actions 'evil'.  It's a failure of our laws that she can continue breathing in my view.

Justice is blind, but in some circumstances it's less blind than others.

 

The only person who should execute this lady is herself, if she does then fair enough. 

Edited August 23, 2023 by Midlands Yellow

[littleyellowbirdie 2,597]

Just now, Midlands Yellow said:

There’s more chance of Dean Smith landing a top job than the death penalty being reintroduced. 

 

The only person who should execute this lady is herself, if she does then fair enough. 

She won't be given the chance. Extra money will have to be spent protecting her from other inmates.

[Midlands Yellow 4,083]

10 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

She won't be given the chance. Extra money will have to be spent protecting her from other inmates.

It’s not the hardest thing to do over time, if you’re determined it happens. I’ve seen it plenty at work. 

[horsefly 4,318]

9 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

It's a failure of our laws that she can continue breathing in my view.

For many of us it is the sign of a civilised society that she can. It's precisely an expression of the moral conscience that separates us from such despicable people.

[TheGunnShow 6,019]

4 minutes ago, horsefly said:

For many of us it is the sign of a civilised society that she can. It's precisely an expression of the moral conscience that separates us from such despicable people.

Well, arguably the world's most civilised country didn't kill Anders Breivik, and his crimes were far more deadly than those of Letby.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,597]

1 hour ago, horsefly said:

For many of us it is the sign of a civilised society that she can. It's precisely an expression of the moral conscience that separates us from such despicable people.

And yet we'll cheerfully kill tormented dogs for biting people.