Crime

A man has been sentenced to death in Singapore via a Zoom video-call for his role in a drug deal, the city-state’s first case where capital punishment has been delivered remotely.

It’s the sentence of capital punishment which has been delivered remotely, not the capital punishment.

At which point we can descend ever further into pendantry hell. For capital punishment is always, but always, delivered personally and directly. Well, from the point of view of the executee that is. It’s usually rather remote from the courtroom and the judge….

Ambulances visited the property of a solicitor on several occasions in the weeks before she was shot dead while at home with her children, neighbours have said.

Silke Hartshorne-Jones suffered fatal gunshot wounds in the early hours of Sunday morning at the 17th century farmhouse where she lived with husband Peter, a 51-year-old gun dealer, and twin eight-year-old sons.

Police were called to the Grade-II listed Chestnut Farm in Barham, near Ipswich, at 4.45am but were unable to save the critically injured victim, who was in her early 40s.

A 51-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of murder by Suffolk Police.

I assume that unless the police actually say “Peter Hartshorne-Jones was arrested” then the newspaper can’t say that. Therefore this circumlotion. Not that we’re left in a great deal of doubt…..

She has since lodged an appeal against her public mischief conviction to Cyprus’s supreme court. The 12 men were released without charge.

The documentary will be a chance for Emily’s friends, who found her shortly after the alleged rape, to tell their stories for the first time.

The programme will explore “inconsistencies in the suspects’ account” of that night, with a former Home Office adviser re-examining the evidence.

Former DCI David Gee told the programme that if the alleged events had occurred in the UK, there appeared to be enough evidence to charge at least one man with rape.

And what was the situation under Cypriot law? After all, we have stopped this colonialist idea that we get to determine what foreign law is, haven’t we?

Authorities in Bangladesh have executed a killer of the country’s independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, nearly 45 years after his assassination.

Abdul Majed, a former military captain, was hanged at the central jail at Keraniganj near the capital, Dhaka, at one minute past midnight on Saturday, Inspector General of Prisons Brig. Gen. A.K.M. Mustafa Kamal Pasha said.

Asaduzzaman Khan, the country’s home minister, said Majed was arrested in Dhaka on Tuesday. He had publicly announced his involvement in the assassination and is believed to have only recently returned to Bangladesh after hiding in India for many years.

Sure, there’s the 45 years there. But arrest on Tuesday – actually being taken into custody that is – execution on Saturday?

Not really messing about there. As it was unlikely they would given that the bloke he was hanged for killing was the Pops of the current Prime Minister….

The police have also said they are worried about something called “crime” being committed during this lockdown. I think it is time we created some sort of institution — perhaps uniformed and given special powers — to fight this while the police harass people out for a walk and poke through our groceries.

Although, actually, it’s not all that funny, is it?

This might be something to not worry about very much:

About 300,000 paedophiles are sharing sexual images or abusing children on the dark web, nearly four times previous estimates, Britain’s National Crime Agency has revealed.

What we’re worried about is people abusing children. Actual live humans being harmed.

The worry about online pornography is that it leads to – either in its production or by stimulating the desire for action – live human beings being harmed.

That is, the online bit is measuring a proxy and not direct harm. What we want to know about is direct harm, not the proxy.

And the general finding is that more of the proxy leads to less of the harm. They’re substitutes, not complements.

The real difficulty here being to get anyone to accept the evidence……

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?