Should Lucy Letby have been allowed to miss her sentencing?
Should Lucy Letby have been allowed to miss her sentencing?
Until a few years ago I had never heard of a single case of a murderer declining to go into the dock to hear their sentence. I doubt whether any of them even realised that they had the choice. Yet in recent years, the word seems to have spread and something of a fashion has
I'm listening to LBC callers say that forcing the convict to attend their sentencing hearing 'smacks of medievalism'. All kinds of hell-fire would be unleashed if this law was overturned.
Yet in the US and other countries, convicts are forced to attend their sentencing hearings and the sky didn't fall. What is so fucking special about the UK?
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Ok I don't really have an opinion on this particular thing, but in general - if the US forces people to do something and the UK doesn't, I'm willing to give UK the benefit of the doubt.
And more in general, if in doubt, then giving people more freedom is not a bad thing. It never happens these days though - citizen rights keep being constantly eroded everywhere, so it may be worth fighting even for little things like this to keep the idea in mind.
in general... giving people more freedom is not a bad thing
This is my stance. Before sentencing, we must give the defendant as much freedom as realistically possible (even in fringe cases where we 'know' beforehand that they'll die behind bars).
citizen rights keep being constantly eroded everywhere, so it may be worth fighting even for little things like this to keep the idea in mind.
Might be an unpopular opinion around here but I don't think that after this sort of crime you're still a citizen. You've moved yourself outside of the accepted definition of citizen to something else. I'm not saying you no longer have any rights, of course you do. But I don't think you should be afforded citizens rights as we know them. Call it criminal rights or whatever you want but you're no longer a citizen if you choose so brazenly to murder defenceless babies in the way she did. And given that, I don't think criminals should be allowed to skip sentencing.
Sounds like bullshit to me.
Which part?
You're saying that "citizen rights keep being constantly eroded everywhere" so we should allow actual murderers of children to not attend sentencing for this reason? Wouldn't want to hurt their sense of rights.
Not a chance. I'm not suggesting forcing everyone to appear at their sentence hearing, but for crimes like the one discussed, then they should be made to show up. It's not often murders of at least seven human life's appear in UK courts, but on the rare instances they are, they should definitely be made to show up for sentencing
Firstly, I'm not the one who was arguing anything, so it's weird to quote at me. Just like you are not the person I was querying because I was interested in what they think is bullshit in the above post.
For the record though, I find your assertion to be a very arbitrary distinction. I don't see what it changes having them there aside from a chance for a Game of Thrones style "Shame" walk. And I don't see where the line would be where you lose the same human rights as everyone else.
Im happy to draw the line if you want. If you actively take away the lives of multiple people, then your "human rights" (what human rights are being violated?) should be inconvenienced a little and you are made to sit in court.
It's just weird that youd link this scenario to a TV show scene.