Admitting to killing his sister and getting away with it

The law is an interesting beast, and precedents count. Say an illiterate man who has just come from Afghanistan is irritated by his infant daughter's cries and picks her up to shake her just once, unaware of just how fragile babies' heads are. The child later dies and it is discovered that she had an underlying condition and may have died anyway. Would the father be allowed to walk free?

I don't think anybody has defended him.

Some of us have tried to rationalise why, in terms of the system we have, the CPS thought a prosecution had insufficient prospect of success.

Exactly this. The Eggshell Skull Rule, or the Thin Skull Rule, which:

… takes into account the physical, social, and economic attributes of the plaintiff which might make them more susceptible to injury. It may also take into account the family and cultural environment (Kavanagh v Aktar).

As for the father stopping the police from interviewing his children, the police should have proceeded with the interview, ensuring that an appropriate adult (and/or a solicitor) is present at all times during the interview process.

The CPS have made the wrong decision IMHO. This needs to be reviewed.

Safeguarding! The children come first in this country. (20+ years of teaching experience)

People keep mentioning the recent riots as a reason these small children might not be removed from danger but that cannot be allowed to happen. It's unthinkable. Their sister has just been killed and the family are only concerned in protecting the abuser. They could be in grave danger.

If authorities were going to just not act for fear of the reaction from certain communities then what's the point in the rest of us continuing the facade of society. They've lost control, no law and order.

Because they have just seen what happened in Leeds. The lunatics are now in charge of the asylum

All the red flags. Yet social services are not even mentioned! Why did they not take the younger kids away from the reach of that killer by his own admission?!

Totally agree. And ,whilst bringing up a teenage daughter, it absolutely terrifies me.

This country doesn't give a fuck about females.

I think I read that the younger siblings were boys not girls, and that one was inside the bathroom with his sister and the other was outside but wanting to go in.
I’m not sure whether anyone knows if the screaming was in terror or just siblings messing about.
I do however feel very strongly that this case should have gone to court. And that the police slipped up badly by not insisting the siblings be interviewed.

Expect he's the kind of man who now sits online being angry women prefer to sleep with men that want to make them feel good. Or those ones who make videos saying they don't want women, but instead of doing what they say, they then spend a lot of time on the video comments trying to make women feel bad about themselves and promoting others ab use women.

Ok thanks. I find it incredibly distressing that he’s not going to trial for his sister’s death so trying to get my head around the process

Yes. Why was an adult male forcing his way into a locked bathroom with female children inside? Not normal or acceptable in any way. Then punching one of the girls in the head after forcing his way in. What kind of an abhorrent, revolting creature is this?

To everyone defending him, take a good hard look at yourself. You should be ashamed.

Well we have recently witnessed what happens when the authorities try that, riots and attacks on Emergency workers. Bloody disgrace! Too many children's lives have been ruined by the authorities pussy footing around minorities with " different traditions". One might ask why the grown up half brother was going into the bathroom with 3 young girls?

I don’t get the objections to interview by the family, is this because he hasn’t been charged yet and if he was they would have no option to object?

No idea, I'm afraid. Unless the children are in custody, which they clearly aren't, the police can interview them without parental consent provided an appropriate adult is present. I don't know why they haven't done so in this case. My guess would be that they thought they had enough evidence without interviewing the children and/or that, given their ages, their evidence would carry little weight, but that is just a guess. There is nothing in law that stops them interviewing the children.

Also do no cases run unless medical experts can say with certainty what caused a death?

Gross negligence manslaughter does not need certainty as to cause of death as here the prosecution only has to show that the defendant had a duty of care towards the deceased that they failed to fulfil, e.g. they failed to call for medical assistance when it was clearly needed. For other forms of manslaughter and murder, you need to show that the defendant's actions caused the victim's death beyond reasonable doubt. In most cases that is straightforward. It would be in this case if there hadn't been a pre-existing medical condition.

There must be Drs as expert witnesses who are called and give it could be evidence or no? It never happens

In most cases, there is no dispute as to how the deceased died. For example, if they died after being shot, there is unlikely to be any dispute as to the cause of death. Any dispute will be about who pulled the trigger. If there is a dispute, medical evidence will be needed. There is sometimes a situation where a medical expert for the prosecution gives one cause of death but one called by the defence disagrees and gives a different cause of death. It is then for the jury to decide which expert they believe (there is a serious question here as to whether juries are equipped to resolve such disputes, but that is how the system works). The experts must give their professional opinion and are supposed to be independent of whichever side called them. If an expert stated a cause of death for which there was no medical evidence, the judge would tell the jury to ignore their evidence. The expert concerned could end up being disqualified from giving expert evidence and could be struck off by the General Medical Council. The upshot of all this is that disputes about cause of death are rare and I would never expect a prosecution expert to say "could be" as that would immediately destroy the prosecution's case. I've rambled on a bit here, but I hope I've answered your question.

However, by not charging him and prosecuting him, the CPS is keeping open the option of charging him later if new evidence emerges. If he is prosecuted and found not guilty now, it becomes much harder for the CPS to bring charges later even if there is new evidence

Ok I appreciate your insight. This makes sense to me. I fear my hope that they work on finding new evidence isn’t happening and they are walking away from this

I don’t get the objections to interview by the family, is this because he hasn’t been charged yet and if he was they would have no option to object?

Also do no cases run unless medical experts can say with certainty what caused a death?

There must be Drs as expert witnesses who are called and give it could be evidence or no? It never happens

I don't regard myself as remotely woke, and I doubt those who know me would either. My view of what happened at Manchester Airport has nothing to do with the man being Muslim. Indeed, I didn't know he was Muslim when I saw one of the videos and expressed a view. The man was on the ground. He had been tasered and subdued. Kicking him in the head and stamping on his head was unjustified and could have killed him. I would say the same regardless of the religion, colour, race, etc. of the person on the ground. And here we clearly have proof beyond a reasonable doubt - there are multiple videos of what happened.

No, it is not fine that a man can punch an 11-year-old girl in the face. But we need proof that is what happened. The text message on its own is not enough. If there is proof, he should be prosecuted for child abuse. Unfortunately, every day people get away with assaulting others, sometimes minors, because there is not enough evidence to show beyond reasonable doubt that they did so.

As far as I can see there are three main things he could be charged with - murder, manslaughter and/or child abuse (which is the charge for an adult who assaults a child).

For murder there needs to be intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm. Whilst some people have talked about murder on this thread, I haven't seen anything that would class as evidence of intent.

There are several types of manslaughter. In this case we would be looking at unlawful act manslaughter - he did something unlawful involving danger of some harm (assaulted her) and this led to her death. In order to get a conviction, the prosecution needs to prove beyond reasonable doubt that his unlawful act caused her death. That is where the problem lies in this case. "Could have" and "likely" are fine for an inquest, which works on the balance of probabilities, but they are not enough for a criminal conviction. The prosecution needs the medical experts to say that the assault definitely caused her death. Without that, a prosecution would fail. Indeed, without that there is a good chance that the judge would either throw the case out before it got to the jury or would direct the jury to return a not guilty verdict. There is, therefore, little point in prosecuting him since the outcome is already known - he would be found not guilty. However, by not charging him and prosecuting him, the CPS is keeping open the option of charging him later if new evidence emerges. If he is prosecuted and found not guilty now, it becomes much harder for the CPS to bring charges later even if there is new evidence.

That leaves us with child abuse. Since the police thought there was enough evidence for a manslaughter charge, there really ought to be enough evidence for a child abuse charge. Assuming the CPS is doing its job properly, there are two possible reasons why he isn't being charged. Firstly, they could have decided it is not in the public interest to charge him. That seems unlikely. I certainly can't see any reason that it would not be in the public interest to charge him. The other possible reason is that the CPS don't think there is enough evidence to give a reasonable prospect of conviction. Whilst everyone in the inquest accepted that there had been some kind of assault, the only actual evidence of this appears to be a text message from the brother to his girlfriend. If that is the only evidence, the police should have done more to establish a case, including interviewing the siblings regardless of the family's objections. However, if the evidence is better and the police are right, my view is that he should be charged.

This is not the jury though it’s the coroner. I get what a jury needs for guilty verdict

Maybe a trial with all evidence before a jury would convict. Or maybe not but at least it would move from likely to going through the process

Atm there’s a brother who likely caused the death of his sister with a punch and that’s it, nothing more

Right. A policeman kicks a violent man who has already severed injured others. Adult to adult, and some may argue, justified violence. But there is a woke outcry because the violent man is a Muslim, and heaven forbid we call out anyone not white or Christian for bad behaviour.

So another man cannot cannot physically attack a violent man. But a violent man can punch an 11 year old girl in the face and that’s just fine.

There is something deeply wrong with this world if this state of affairs is accepted.

In order to convict for manslaughter, or any other criminal offence, a jury needs to be so sure they are certain that the offence is made out.

Likley is not enough. While that seems hard here it's one of the 'golden threads' in our justice system that mitigates against the abuse of power.

Whether, the Coroner having found, but on balance of probability not certainty, that the girl was unlawfully killed leads to a further review of prospective criminal charges remains to be seen.

Your pp mentioned could have and likely from coroner

I don’t get how someone who likely has caused a death can walk away without trial

Can you say more on why this doesn’t meet a bar for justice as knowing he likely killed her and this outcome is bizarre to me

As the victim was a child, the offence would be child cruelty which is treated as a more serious offence than the adult equivalents you mention.

I have said several times that the texts are potentially evidence (although in some circumstances the courts will exclude text messages) but, on their own, they are not enough and at the moment that appears to be the only evidence the authorities have. This feels to me like a case where the police thought they'd got enough for a manslaughter charge and stopped investigating instead of carrying on and making sure they could charge him with something else if the medical evidence didn't support manslaughter. That is not good enough. If his text messages accurately describe what he did, he should be facing a charge.

I may have misunderstood a poster's points, but I have never misunderstood them deliberately. I have said on a few occasions that, if the evidence is there, he should be charged with child cruelty, but some posters attacked me for that. I have not sought to insult anyone. My apologies if you think I have.

Girls just aren’t as important in that culture 🤷‍♀️ At least to the father anyway otherwise he would let the other kids be interviewed rather than saving his son’s skin.