4 ms·

My understanding is that in the US there are different degrees of "murder", the less-serious ones are equivalent to some variants of manslaughter in the UK, whi

by hnfong 3y ago

My understanding is that in the US there are different degrees of "murder", the less-serious ones are equivalent to some variants of manslaughter in the UK, while in the UK, "murder" refers only to the kind that gets you a mandatory life sentence.

tialaramex 3y ago
Best to speak specifically of England (and Wales), some of the UK's countries have different laws. Yes, "X degree Murder" isn't a thing in the English system and the sentence for Murder will be life imprisonment (what Americans might call "indeterminate" life because you can get parole) England used to have an oddity where the Home Secretary (ie a government minister, a politician) gets to decide whether some people can be paroled. As you might expect it's not popular politically to parole famous criminals and so certain people regardless of how long ago the crime was committed and other circumstances were refused parole. The Supreme Court eventually concluded this isn't justice, and took away this power. In their ruling (which I fixed a typo in) they looked at a whole suite of interesting cases where people were currently basically facing life with no possibility of parole 1. They decided they need to pick the worst possible criminal circumstance and single that out for this punishment, as punishment is all it is, any other possible purpose isn't circumvented by the existing parole institution - if we want people to show remorse, to accept what they did and why it's wrong, to be useful in their community, or whatever - stuff like that is already what parole is for. 2. They decided that circumstance should be two more separate murders. So e.g. you kill Bill with a hammer, and his wife walks in on you, she tries to intervene, you struggle and stab her, that is two murders, but it's not two separate murders, you could still be paroled some day. Whereas if you've got a habit of hiring prostitutes and then murdering them to relieve stress after a long week at work, those are separate murders, so if you get convicted for two (or more) that's life-means-life. 3. A lot of the really awful people whose cases were front of them haven't committed two separate murders. But, they point out, just because the law doesn't refuse these people the possibility of parole now that a politician doesn't get to decide, it doesn't magically mean they're granted parole. Paroling the guy who just really likes raping old ladies isn't going to happen. He's not even remorseful, he still wants to do it again, so obviously we can't let him out of prison, but we don't need to change his sentence - he's already going to be in prison for the rest of his life anyway. This reminds me of the situation for Anders Breivik. He killed a whole bunch of kids, but in his country the maximum was 21 years. But Breivik is never getting out, he still believes what he did was good. So in effect it's exactly the same as life-means-life for him, it only makes a difference where it should, for the people who change. [Edited to fix Breivik's sentence, which I had previously mistakenly believed was Life, in fact it's 21 years and they'll just extend it as necessary until he's dead or stops being a Nazi terrorist]

by hnfong 3y ago

tialaramex 3y ago

Best to speak specifically of England (and Wales), some of the UK's countries have different laws. Yes, "X degree Murder" isn't a thing in the English system and the sentence for Murder will be life imprisonment (what Americans might call "indeterminate" life because you can get parole) England used to have an oddity where the Home Secretary (ie a government minister, a politician) gets to decide whether some people can be paroled. As you might expect it's not popular politically to parole famous criminals and so certain people regardless of how long ago the crime was committed and other circumstances were refused parole. The Supreme Court eventually concluded this isn't justice, and took away this power. In their ruling (which I fixed a typo in) they looked at a whole suite of interesting cases where people were currently basically facing life with no possibility of parole 1. They decided they need to pick the worst possible criminal circumstance and single that out for this punishment, as punishment is all it is, any other possible purpose isn't circumvented by the existing parole institution - if we want people to show remorse, to accept what they did and why it's wrong, to be useful in their community, or whatever - stuff like that is already what parole is for. 2. They decided that circumstance should be two more separate murders. So e.g. you kill Bill with a hammer, and his wife walks in on you, she tries to intervene, you struggle and stab her, that is two murders, but it's not two separate murders, you could still be paroled some day. Whereas if you've got a habit of hiring prostitutes and then murdering them to relieve stress after a long week at work, those are separate murders, so if you get convicted for two (or more) that's life-means-life. 3. A lot of the really awful people whose cases were front of them haven't committed two separate murders. But, they point out, just because the law doesn't refuse these people the possibility of parole now that a politician doesn't get to decide, it doesn't magically mean they're granted parole. Paroling the guy who just really likes raping old ladies isn't going to happen. He's not even remorseful, he still wants to do it again, so obviously we can't let him out of prison, but we don't need to change his sentence - he's already going to be in prison for the rest of his life anyway. This reminds me of the situation for Anders Breivik. He killed a whole bunch of kids, but in his country the maximum was 21 years. But Breivik is never getting out, he still believes what he did was good. So in effect it's exactly the same as life-means-life for him, it only makes a difference where it should, for the people who change. [Edited to fix Breivik's sentence, which I had previously mistakenly believed was Life, in fact it's 21 years and they'll just extend it as necessary until he's dead or stops being a Nazi terrorist]