Teenager guilty of murder.

I’m looking for it scrollingleaves, there are so many articles I am having trouble refinding it!

I did find the judge’s comments on the bodycam diagnosing psychiatrist:

”The prosecution relied on the evidence of Dr Harding, but I regret to say that I found his evidence somewhat unsatisfactory. It is apparent he had formed a clear and unshakeable view of your culpability from the time of his very first meeting with you.
He had told the police that you ought to be prosecuted, a surprising opinion for an expert called to give evidence on a defendant’s mental state to express and one which he agreed in his oral evidence ought not to have appeared in his report.
I also regard it as unfortunate that Dr Harding did not know, or at least was unable to call to mind, the standard of proof that would have to be applied by the court considering his opinion.
In my view, he demonstrated in his oral evidence an inflexibility of thinking that seemed to me unhelpful in as complex and difficult a case as this one.”

@AP5Diva
I thought the perpetrator had been charged with murder.

So if she plead guilty she would be pleading guilty to murder.

Did the judge say, words to the affect that: ‘If you plead guilty to murder, we will change the charge to Infanticide and find you guilty of Infanticide instead.’?

( For anyone who has not rtft. Murder and Infanticide are both crimes under U.K. law involving deliberate killing)

Sorry, it was AP5Diva who wrote this reply:
She was offered a conviction for infanticide if she pled guilty. So not only would the sentence have been shorter, she would not have been convicted of
murder.

AP5Diva · Today 12:13

Iwasafool · Today 11:36

So in this case she'd have got less than 12 years if she pled guilty? I wonder how much they would have knocked off the sentence.

She was offered a conviction for infanticide if she pled guilty. So not only would the sentence have been shorter, she would not have been convicted of
murder.

I missed that detail. I did not see it on the judge’s sentence summing up. If it isn’t too much trouble would you link where you saw that?

So this sentence of ‘Murder’ rather than ‘Infanticide’ is entirely down to her not admitting she did it?

The manner in which you kill shouldn’t affect whether you are charged with infanticide or murder, or in other cases manslaughter or murder. The difference between the two crimes hinge upon the mental state of the mother at the time of the killing- not the manner in which she carried out the killing. As scrollingleaves has noted, infanticide only requires the mother to have a disturbed mental state.

At any rate, she has been given the minimum sentence for a child convicted of murder, so the judge doesn’t deem her actions to warrant adding aggravating factors to lengthen the sentence. His comments do show he does not think it was premeditated. There is an implication that she decided after the birth to kill the baby- as to why she decided that and her state of mind at the time, the fact she had a well known psychotic delusion before birth (pregnancy denial) and one of the court psychiatrists stated she has false memories of that night (both in her medical records) indicates (to me at least) there was a likelihood she wasn’t recovered and may still have been suffering psychosis.

Enough to say yes I think her mental state was disturbed.

Re:
Infanticide and Murder/Diminished responsibility.

Infanticide versus diminished responsibility

Some feel the law surrounding infanticide should be abolished with the defence of diminished responsibility applying to this situation also. This has however, been rejected by both the Law Commission and the government as it is felt that in certain situations a mother who has killed her baby after giving birth in a clandestine environment – often very young mothers – would be unable to successfully plead diminished responsibility where the burden of proof rests with the defendant.

Written by:Nicola Laver LLB Nicola is a dual qualified journalist and non-practising solicitor. She is a legal journalist, editor and author with more than 20 years' experience writing about the law.

She was offered a conviction for infanticide if she pled guilty. So not only would the sentence have been shorter, she would not have been convicted of murder.

Iwasafool · Today 12:06
It wasn't for the Bulger killers, or did that come out afterwards?

It wasn’t but it should have been by rights as they were children ( they were 10 when they committed the murder). I haven’t got the link at the moment but just read it the other day. They were put through a court system in a form they shouldn’t have been. They were so small they had to be put on tall stools.

Me too.

It wasn't for the Bulger killers, or did that come out afterwards?

I would like to see a transcript of the trial to see if the jury had been instructed in and understood the basis for a verdict of ‘infanticide’ and what mental conditions need to be present for that,

as opposed to looking for signs she fitted the criteria for ‘diminished responsibility’ in order to be let off the charge of ‘murder’.

Both Infanticide and Murder are crimes.
Both mean a deliberate killing.

^I find as a fact that almost as soon as Stanley was born, you had decided you could not allow him to live and you assaulted him about the head. Precisely how you did that is not clear. Given the symmetrical nature of the fractures to the parietal bones on each side of his skull, I suspect that you crushed his head, probably beneath your foot.
I am sure that you did that with such force that you thought it had killed him. It certainly caused him serious damage to his skull and to his brain.
But, as it happened, that assault did not kill Stanley. He remained alive and continued to breathe for at least an hour.
In my view, it is highly likely that Stanley was still alive when your brother returned home at 10.30pm that night and when you called out to him not to come into the sitting room.
You did not want him to find you with your badly injured newborn son.
Faced with a birth you had sought to hide and a child you did not want, and whom you had tried unsuccessfully to kill, you decided you had to finish Stanley off.
You did so by stuffing cotton wool balls down his throat. There were five balls in all and they were pushed down so far as to damage the oesophagus.
The uppermost one filled his mouth, pushing his tongue back to the roof of his mouth.
Stanley died from asphyxiation together with the consequences of the head injury^

The baby wasn’t just smothered. He was violently and systematically dispatched over a period of approximately two hours. Those are the judge’s comments above.

Sorry, I forgot the link:
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/26/teenager-murdered-newborn-son-herefordshire-jailed-paris-mayo

Whilst the Jury did not accept that the balance of your mind was disturbed so as to justify a verdict of infanticide, in my judgment you had suffered from a degree of pregnancy denial, a condition that is, at least, recognised in the medical literature

The judge made those comments about mitigating factors that allowed him to reduce her sentence (that she had had a degree of pregnancy denial at least early on). He did not imply the jury were wrong. He said that, along with other comments, to explain the length of sentence he was passing.

He [the judge] said the mitigating features included the lack of support for her, and he flagged up the reaction the case would attract in the press and social media and the reception she would get both in detention and when she was released. “This will be a life sentence to you in every sense,” he said.

Am I right in thinking that if she had been tried at 15 her anonymity would have been protected?

So in this case she'd have got less than 12 years if she pled guilty? I wonder how much they would have knocked off the sentence.

It does set a precedent, of the type that lower courts set in a common law system which is a persuasive precedent rather than a binding precedent you’d get from say the highest court in the justice system. According to the principle of stare decisis, similar facts/circumstances should result in similar convictions and sentences.

The next case won’t be decided on the facts alone, but also on the precedent set by the cases that have come before it- this one included.

The father got a longer sentence because the mother plead guilty and he pled not guilty. Pleading guilty automatically reduces the sentence.

BMustard · Today 08:18
Out of interest, what do you think the sentence shouldve been? Some people think it should be less, others think no custodial sentence.

I'll be honest, I'm not sure what I think. More or less time? I don't know. There's an argument for both.

As far as I'm concerned though, a baby was brutally murdered and there has to be a level of punishment involved. The thought of what actually happened in that room is pretty unthinkable

The jury could have decided on ‘Infanticide’ which does cover the brutal killing of a baby up to one year old.

In the crime ‘Infanticide’ the mother would not have to have the same mental state descriptions of someone with ‘diminished responsibility’.

As to ‘pre-meditation’ the judge puts this ‘at least 23 minutes’. For someone who has experienced labour, time is not real anyway.

At least he recognised the prosecutions version of pre-meditation did not make sense. The judge seems to see it as a sort of last minute pre-meditation.

Whilst the Jury did not accept that the balance of your mind was disturbed so as to justify a verdict of infanticide, in my judgment you had suffered from a degree of pregnancy denial, a condition that is, at least, recognised in the medical literature.
(My bold).

It was the jury then.

I wonder if the jury was given instructions in the difference between the criteria needed for for a decision that the defendant was suffering from ‘diminished responsibility’ as opposed to the completely different criteria for a decision that the defendant’s crime was ‘Infanticide’?

The jury needed to know and understand the difference. Did they? Did they get more than a few sentences about it?

You can get trial transcripts but I suppose it would be very long.

The father got a longer sentence than the mother didn't he? That has happened in a few cases recently where a child was murdered, the man got a heavier sentence than the mother so I don't think women (or mothers) are always judged more harshly.

I believe the sentences were appealed and increased to 10 and 8 years, still not enough in my view but I wasn't the judge.

They can also suffer other trauma. I used to live near to a 12 storey block of flats. A man was threatening to jump, the first police officer to get there was a 19 year old who had been a police officer for a matter of months. He was up there trying to talk this man down and then the man jumped. I wasn't that close and I will never forget the sound of him hitting the ground. The young police officer looked like he was going to collapse when he came down, older officer had gone up just as the man jumped and he nearly carried his colleague down and into an ambulance. I think that 19 year old suffered significant trauma.

I hope he recovered well but it wouldn't be amazing if he had significant depression or PTSD after that.

I don't know what should have happened, sentence wise. She wasn't an otherwise violent person.

I can't wrap my head around a child that young being solely responsible for a newborn, after that trauma.

Then again, the 13yr old that kept her younger sibs including a 1 yr old alive in the jungle after a plane crash and the death of her mother was amazing.

I just can't point at Paris and say 'burn the witch!', which is what the 12 yr sentence and all the name calling feels like to me.

If we monster this child, we feel safer from similar situations. If we have compassion for her, then it could happen to nice people we know or even us.

There can be teenage boys with psychosis, just caused by something else.

This case sets no precedent. Juries are not bound by the verdicts of other juries. The next case where a mother kills an infant under 12 months will be decided on its own facts, as will the case after that and the case after that.
this sort of I’ll informed hyperbole does no one any favours.