the use of the word 'alleged'

Dittany you are wrong.

There are statutory guideline for the way journalists report court cases. The penlaty for prejudicing a trial can be prison.

It may be the burglary stories yiu have read have not actually gone to court, or the defendant has pleaded guilty ( far morelikely for these sort of crimes, than for rape) or the case is sentencing.

I agree with Joni

In the Belfast murder they say 'accused of' which is tantamount to alleged.

I'm not dissing you Evil, I'm really not, but I just didn't see the pattern in the way you do.

I'm not saying that dittany. I think everything should be alleged until a conviction is secured. My own very personal view of the way things work is that on the whole that happens but I can see that in some instances that doesn't and as I've said before, I think that's wrong.

The conviction rate for sexual offences is disgracefully low. However I don't think that's substantially down to whether the use of the word alleged is or isn't used in the press prior to trial. The way that victims are encouraged to report offences and how they are dealt with subsequently is more material in my opinion. I also think that juries are too timid when it comes to deciding whether a person is guilty of this type of offence. I often think they'd rather protect the reputation of the perpetrator rather than believe the woman

this chap is using the "accident" defence in a murder trial btw.

A bit rude to dismiss my comment, tell me I'm wrong, ask me where on earth I got such a radical idea (I have already said where) and then not even bother to acknowledge my replies.

Um, joni ... this is the last page of a thread, we've had this discussion already.

Hello joni?

If you google alleged burglary you should find lots of examples of it being reported as such.

Perhaps in the Gerrard case the journo thought it OK to describe the incident as a burglary because there was sufficient information to establish that a burglary had taken place (which I think is wrong btw). However once charged the person involved could only ever be described as an alleged burglar.

I did say earlier why I thought it was a pattern - mistakenly assumed that you'd read the thread obviously.

I don't actually want to think this bias exists, I'd rather it didn't.

because I googled "alleged victim" and I also searched the BBC site for "alleged victim" and 95%+ of the results were about cases of rape, sexual assault or sexual abuse.

You are wrong I'm afraid EvilAnts. I can't explain why you think it's a pattern.

how does that explain the pattern I noted of "alleged victim" only being used in rape cases then?

I think people are tying themselves up in knots here. There is no reason why sexual offences are treated any differently to other offences by the media, criminal justice system etc.

All offences that have yet to be determined by the courts are alleged offences. Journalists are under a strict obligation to report them as thus. Once a convistion has been acheived, the alleged status no longer applies.

Interesting Prof, though in the suicide or accident case then I imagine that it's very unlikely that the case would be treated as murder as there would be no evidence that the person was intentionally killed by another person. Hence the CPS wouldn't proceed.

Outside of fiction, and a couple of notorious high profile cases (which tend to be high profile because they are very unusual), the 'defence' that the murder was suicide or accident are incredibly few and far between. I think most coroners are able to tell the difference between suicide, accident and murder.

Good point on the insanity defence though

Love a good whodunnit - now what do you think of my alternative rape charge plan?

There was an episode of Boston Legal where A was charged with murdering B. Eventually it emerged that B had committed suicide and that C, happening upon the scene, had rearranged things to make it look like a murder rather than suicide (because C was the beneficiary of B's life insurance policy, which had a suicide exclusion).

Well, if it's suicide or accident then the person fairly clearly hasn't been intentionally killed by another person. And an insanity defence can run to the fact that the defendant was incapable of forming an intention so the victim was not intentionally killed.

EvilAnts
PMSL!

Not if it is suicide surely? I have read of cases where it was claimed that the victim killed him/herself.

That's really interesting Prof. Do you think we could introduce "fucking without due care and attention" and ramp up the rape conviction rates?

Gosh, this is going to get jurisprudential...!

Technically, in any of the situations above, the person has been murdered under the common law requirements of murder, i.e. intentionally killed by another person. The defence under certain circumstances is not that any of those requirements have not been met, but rather that the accused has a defence to the charge of murder (such as provocation).

So, for example, if a person is judged to have acted in self-defence then the victim has still been murdered, but the accused is not guilty by reason of self-defence.

Random OT fact -- the elements of manslaughter and death by dangerous driving are exactly the same (except that in DbDD there needs additionally to have been driving involved) but they found that juries were reluctant to convict of manslaughter in driving cases. So they created a new offence, with exactly the same things that needed to be proved to establish guilt, and hey presto juries were far more willing to convict. Which shows something about the power of language in criminal cases so maybe isn't quite so OT after all.

Yes, I do agree with dittany there -- the defence when someone is arrested and the case comes to trial may be that the person actually killed himself, or that the person who killed him was insane, or that there was provocation, or that it was an accident (in each of which cases it wouldn't be murder). But I think they should say "alleged murder" i.e. to the extent that they don't already, extend the routine use of "alleged" out to cover any cases where the very existence or otherwise of a crime, or of a specific crime, could form the basis of a defence in court. I do definitely think that they should be consistent about that.