4 Years For Murder.....

[ToraToraTora]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-35917537
When are we going to start punishing these lowlives?

[THECORBYLOON]

Scots criminal court, fifteen on a jury.

[douglas9401]

"he took a knife to school and plunged it into the heart of another pupil. Premeditated murder. How can it possibly be anything else?"

He took the knife to school, there was an argument about nothing much which developed into a fight in which the knife was produced. A stabbing took place and a young man died.

Do you even know what 'premeditated' means?

[ToraToraTora]

yes bringing in a knife means that he thought it must be necessary, thus he'd previously thought about using it. At the age of 16 I'd say he knew that the heart was a vital organ and it's location on the body, thus he targeted it with his knife. QED

[douglas9401]

It's actually 'premeditated knife carrying' rather than 'premeditated murder' then.
As for knowing where the heart's located, it's not like in the cartoons.

[murraymints]

surely someone at the school was aware of his knife carrying habit..it ought to have been picked up and acted on before this had to happen

[Ellipsis]

I have been on a jury that was offered options of a greater and lesser charge. It was obvious that the perpetrator was guilty of something, but we eventually found him guilty of the lesser charge. If we had been offered the more serious charge or nothing, personally I would have gone for the more serious charge, but I think we'd have had trouble getting a unanimous verdict or even a sufficient majority.

It's a chain of events. The prosecution knows the defence will be able to put up a good argument against murder. They take the safe route of two options, a greater or lesser charge. The very fact they've taken the safe route means the lesser charge is likely to be chosen. And then, especially with no previous crimes, the judge's hands are tied. It's almost inevitable.

[Ellipsis]

^^ Just to add, in my case, when the accused's previous crimes were read out, it was obvious we should have found him guilty of the more serious charge!

[ToraToraTora]

so the system is set up to con the jury Elipsis?

[THECORBYLOON]

The idea is that the jury reaches a verdict based only on the evidence presented so that they are not influenced by the accused's past history. What method would you rather have?

[ToraToraTora]

form is not irrelevant, it does help the jury. Past convictions should be made available. In this case there were none so no help but in the case elipsis was involved in I think he would have found it helpful.

Elipsis, would it have helped you and your fellow jurors?

[jim360]

Sometimes form can be relevant, to an extent. I suppose, after all, that's the motivation behind the "good character" defence. I was told of one case where the defendant was found not guilty altogether, because the jury was required to be unanimous but one old lady insisted that the way the boy looked he "clearly couldn't hurt a fly" -- despite all the evidence against him. Apparently, after the verdict was returned, the multiple previous offences were read out and this particular juror couldn't escape fast enough!

But that said, I don't think that making the jury aware of previous offences before reaching their verdict should be introduced as a matter of course. If someone has a string of previous convictions it might make it more reasonable to suspect them of committing this offence, but in the end the only thing that matters in reaching a verdict has to be the evidence for that particular case -- in particular if the offences are different anyway. The whole point of the jury system relies on the jurors being dispassionate, and motivated only by returning the correct verdict based on evidence. It seems to me that this principle doesn't hold if you enter knowing that he is "clearly a nasty piece of work" and therefore decide to find him guilty of... well, whatever he was hauled into court for, I suppose, and who cares what that actually was if you are convicting a man based on his past?

I suppose sometimes people who did what they were accused off get away with it on occasion as a result -- for sure, the system isn't perfect. But in that case you need better, or more convincing, evidence.

[THECORBYLOON]

It may be that previous convictions would influence a decision based upon a balance of probability such as in a civil case but the bar is much higher in criminal cases where guilt has to be beyond reasonable doubt.

[Ellipsis]

> Elipsis, would it have helped you and your fellow jurors?

I think there's no doubt we would have found him guilty of the more serious charge. Most of the jury were aghast at how strongly they had been arguing for him. But the judge did a great job, going back over all his past history, finding every bit of leniency that had ever been applied, finding everything that he could add to the sentence, so that the accused ended up with a long sentence (longer than the case in the OP), when he'd only been found guilty of quite a minor crime.

Whether that's a better system is debatable. I've done jury duty twice and have the impression that "the system" is set up to be as fair as possible to the accused, which is nice to know should I one day find myself in that position, but on the other hand appears very wasteful when most crimes seem to be repeat offences from small numbers of people ...