We still keep ’em in at this age, do we?
A convicted sex offender has become the first prisoner to die from coronavirus, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) confirmed last night.
The 84 year old, one of Britain’s oldest prisoners, passed away three days ago at HMP Littlehey, Cambridgeshire.
He is understood to have been suffering underlying health issues and Covid-19 is thought only to have been detected after his death.
Food might be better than the average state OAP home.
This is partly linguistic. And partly fashion.
Harvey Weinstein trial: Jury finds Hollywood producer guilty of rape
Well sorta. He was found guilty of something called rape – rape in the third degree. Which isn’t “rape rape” and isn’t rape perhaps in the English sense of the word.
One reason we know this being that the sentence is 1 to 4 years.
It’s the “criminal sex act” which carries the much heavier possible sentence. He was actually cleared on the charge of rape, as in “rape, rape”.
This is, as I say, partly linguistic. American legal terms use rape far more widely than the English language does. But it’s also fashion. That he’s the evilest man who ever walked etc is simply known and true in certain sectors. There is an implication of this too. I guarantee there will be a Guardian column after sentencing comparing his sentence for “third degree rape and a criminal sex act”, comparing it to rapey rape sentences and demanding to know why he was treated so leniently.
A police force has apologised for publishing leaflets linking rape to drinking alcohol after sparking accusations of ‘victim blaming’.
The flyers, which were distributed in Belfast, were discontinued several years ago, describe alcohol as “the number one date rape drug” and advise people to be wary of potential sexual assaults while drinking.
Sara Haller, who posted an image of the leaflets on Facebook, which has since been shared hundreds of times, wrote: “The tone, language and arguments all add up to ultimately saying that if you’re intoxicated you’re allowed to be raped.
“The issue with this leaflet is that the core message it gives out is that those who are raped are responsible for it.”
No Honey. The leaflet states that if you are drunk to incapacitation then you’re more likely to get raped than if you’re not. Just as you’re more likely to get mugged if you are than if you’re not.
A freed terrorist strikes again: two stabbed in Streatham attack
Sudesh Amman, 20, the terrorist who stabbed two people on a busy London street on Sunday was released halfway through his prison sentence
Can’t quite put my finger on exactly how……
A freed terrorist strikes again: two stabbed in Streatham attack
Sudesh Amman, 20, the terrorist who stabbed two people on a busy London street on Sunday was released halfway through his prison sentence
Can’t quite put my finger on exactly how……
Man convicted of race hate crime for wearing Make America Great Again hat
What actually happened is that:
Sambrook admitted racially aggravated harassment
And that one incident of this occurred while he was wearing a MAGA hat.
Reading between as it were the most likely here is that he wanted to torment is ex-, who is mixed race, and therefore used race stuff to torment her. Rather than it being racism in intent, as it were…..
A thieving mechanic was crushed to death after a car fell on him while he was stealing its catalytic converter, an inquest heard.
Gary Gray, 38, died after the jack holding up the Vauxhall Astra came loose, causing the full weight of the vehicle to slam down and suffocate him.
An inquest heard that he had broken in after hours and had been attempting to steal a catalytic converter from the car’s exhaust system, which could then be sold on for around £60.
It’s not justice because the death penalty isn’t the appropriate punishment for tea leafing a cat converter. It’s not funny because the bloke’s dead.
But it is something.
Dylann Roof: white supremacist appeals death penalty on mental health grounds
After all, we do all think he’s nuts.
Just can’t help myself.
So there’s this claim that recognition can be done with just the one piccie now, as mentioned earlier in the day.
There’s also that mess with Google’s piccie recognition tech not being able to distinguish between melanin enhancement and a gorilla.
Assuming the problem persists still – a reasonable one – that means that the crime fighting ability of the piccie recognition technology is rather low. The very people we want to be able to identify are those we cannot.
Society is, as we all know, afflicted with a surfeit of gorilla crime these days.
How can this possibly be tried?
The gang rape of a teenager more than 40 years ago by members of a touring rugby team is being investigated by detectives.
The 17-year-old victim was subjected to multiple rapes by several men at a hotel in Plymouth in 1978. She has now made a direct appeal to two witnesses to name her attackers.
Devon and Cornwall Police said the men were thought to be part of a rugby club visiting Plymouth from South Wales.
The alleged offences took place on a Saturday in late January or early February in 1978 at the now closed Strathmore Hotel in Elliot Street.
Seriously, how could a trial on this take place?
James Healy, 40, was one of a group of men who admitted carrying out a “frenzied attack” on the Guardian journalist outside a north London pub in August last year.
Prosecutors claimed the attack was motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation and political views.
But Healy insisted he did recognise Mr Jones and had clashed with him simply because he had bumped into him, spilling his drink and had failed to apologise.
It’s so difficult to know who to believe, eh? Although his mates:
Ambrose and Tracey previously both denied a charge of ABH and the charge was left to lie on file, with prosecutors accepting their actions were not motivated by homophobia.
This is one of those lovely little bits:
Responsible Child (BBC Two) is a drama built around one extraordinary fact – that, in England and Wales, children as young as 10 can be tried for murder as if they were adults. Think for a moment of any 10-year-olds you know and imagine them in crown court being assumed to have the capacity of a grown man or woman. In fact, 7,057 of their pre-pubescent peers have been through exactly that since 1995.
Hmm. Well.
The thing is the law was changed in 1997. Yes, after the election, this is Blair, same act that brought in ASBOs.
Before it was an absolute rule that a child under 7 couldn’t commit a crime. One between 7 and 14 was assumed to be incapable but this assumption could be rebutted. Then Blair:
5. Section 34 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (“section 34”) provided:
“Abolition of rebuttable presumption that a child is doli incapax
The rebuttable presumption of criminal law that a child aged 10 or over is incapable of committing an offence is hereby abolished.”
So, who should we blame for this state of affairs then? Be sure that it’s not going to be nice liberal and lefty legal reformers, eh?
Just a little hint for the writer in The Guardian. There haven’t been 7 thousand and change such prosecutions for murder…..
Reading it I think at times of a bloke in the schmutter trade. And then think, nah, there’re clues here that it’s not him. There has been stuff about him and NDAs, yes, but still, not him:
One of Britain’s wealthiest men is under police investigation over allegations of rape and sexual assault, The Times can reveal.
The multimillionaire businessman, whose identity is protected by court orders and who has been referred to as Mr X, agreed financial settlements last year with two former female employees who accused him of assaulting them.
Why not him?
Wide-ranging secrecy orders imposed by a senior High Court judge mean that The Times cannot name the businessman, who has extensive establishment connections,….
Not quite how we would describe that individual, is it, establishment, quite the opposite?
The judge said that the case involved “allegations of sexual offences” against “a public figure with a well-known family name”.
Not really.
Mr X, who is married with grown-up children, has homes in London, the countryside and overseas.
So, if not him, then who?
Comments closed, obviously.
Three men have admitted being involved in a late-night assault on Guardian journalist Owen Jones outside a pub in Islington, north London.
At a short plea hearing on Wednesday afternoon at Snaresbrook crown court, James Healy, 39, from Portsmouth, Liam Tracey, 34, from Camden, London; and Charlie Ambrose, 29, from Brighton, all pleaded guilty to affray.
Healy admitted a further charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. He denies the attack was motivated by homophobia and will now face a trial of issue in front of a judge to decide whether that was the case.
The three men face the possibility of custodial sentences following the attack on the journalist and political activist in the summer.
Custodial sentences for affray? Likely or not? Homophobic ABH perhaps, but affray?
Russian authorities have detained a man who built a fake frontier post in the woods near the country’s border with Finland and promised migrant workers he could smuggle them into the European Union.
The man erected mock border posts and charged four men from south Asia more than $10,000 to take them to EU member Finland, the Russian border guard service said on Wednesday.
Sure, bit hard on the migrants but that is actually quite glorious.
Boris Johnson has condemned the early release of criminals after it emerged that the man who carried out the latest London Bridge terror attack was a convicted Islamist who had been freed from prison on an electronic tag.
Two people were murdered and at least three more seriously injured, when the suspected jihadist, wearing a fake suicide vest, went on a rampage at a criminal justice seminar he was attending.
That supervision after early release is working well then.
Khan, along with two co-conspirators, originally received an indeterminate sentence for public protection but this was quashed at the Court of Appeal in April 2013 and he was given a 16-year jail term. In February 2012, Khan was ordered to serve at least eight years in prison.
Profile: Judge warned about killer’s release
1:21am
Khan was part of Stock Exchange plot
Usman Khan was convicted in 2012 for his role in the Stock Exchange plot, a Christmas bomb attack on the London Stock Exchange, the American embassy and the home of Boris Johnson, who was then the London mayor.
Should be out yet then, should he?
Rape cases should be investigated through a grand jury-style system to encourage more victims to take their attackers to court, a senior judge has proposed.
Peter Murphy, a circuit judge, said the process – similar to investigating magistrates in Europe – would provide victims with greater privacy by enabling a judge to decide what information about their sexual past could be disclosed to police and prosecutors.
The judge or magistrate would work with police and prosecutors to ensure only relevant information was divulged in order to assuage victims’ fears that their sexual past will be trawled over and exposed to the defence.
Because that puts the decisions into the hands of the trained class that directs the grand jury. That trained class that has a rather different definition of rape from the rest of us out here.
It’s we the peeps that get to decide what is a crime…..
Teenager stabbed to death at council-run knife awareness course for young offenders, police reveal
Less than a third of sexual violence reports in New Zealand lead to a court case, and only 11% to a conviction, the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken in the country has found.
The Ministry of Justice report, which looked at tens of thousands of cases over four years, “does not make for happy reading” and highlighted just how many people face barriers to justice, said Jan Logie, under-secretary to the minister of justice.
The report, called Attrition and Progression: Reported Sexual Violence Victimisations in the Criminal Justice System, looked at 23,739 claims of sexual violence reported to police between July 2014 and June 2018. For every 100 cases, 31 reached court and only six resulted in a jail term. Of all cases, nearly two-thirds involved a child.
Seems better than the average 4%* or so convictions we get for reports of burglary in the UK…..
*Mebbe right, mebbe not…..
AHM Passport Office worker stole dozens of children’s ID photographs before using them to create sickening sexual images, a court heard.
James Close, 36, admitted stealing 30 pictures from HM Passport Office in Durham last year before making indecent images for his own purposes.
The point and purpose is to protect children, yes? So, how may were harmed here and in what manner?
Of course, we also have that old point that the existence of the child imagery reduces the number of attacks on children. Therefore, logically, we should be welcoming this alternative use of subsidised imagery.
Yes, of course, few are willing to argue that but then few are willing to follow logic.