Paris Mayo convicted of murder (TW)

[Whitakers]

NB v distressing content

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/23/teenager-guilty-baby-herefordshire-hide-pregnancy-paris-mayo

The jury was asked to consider an alternative verdict of infanticide but found her guilty of murder. I’m surprised by this- surprised she wasn’t just charged with infanticide in the first place, to be honest. It’s a terrible case.

They are not “excuses” if they are salient facts though are they?

Most reasonable people would agree that fourteen is far from an optimum age to get pregnant. And being pregnant at that age and not able to share that problem with anyone is more likely to induce panic and fear in a girl of that age than in an older woman with more experience of life.

Someone with more experience would not have put themselves in a position where they got pregnant at that age to start with.

And people are obsessed with the teenage brain on Mumsnet because it is a factual
deficit if your pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain that controls impulsivity, reasoning and decision making, is not fully developed. And that is likely to have affected the decision-making process in this situation.

It’s not about making excuses for her anyway, it’s about understanding intent. She didn’t go out on the streets looking for a baby to kill. She found herself pregnant and alone and couldn’t cope and for one reason or another was too scared to tell anyone close to her and then did something terrible and unforgivable as a result.

“Denial of pregnancy is an important condition that is more common than expected, with an incidence at 20 weeks gestation of approximately 1 in 475. The proportion of cases persisting until delivery is about 1 in 2500, a rate similar to that of eclampsia. Denial of pregnancy poses adverse consequences including psychological distress, unassisted delivery and neonaticide. It is difficult to predict which women will develop denial of pregnancy. There are a number of forms of denial of pregnancy, including psychotic and non-psychotic variants. Denial of pregnancy is a ‘red flag’ that should trigger referral for psychiatric assessment.”

”However, there is often a poor outcome, with postpartum emotional disturbance and increased risk of fetal abuse, child neglect or neonaticide.1,4 There is also an increased incidence of precipitous or unassisted delivery (one study of 74 neonatal deaths revealed 18 cases that involved giving birth into toilets.1 The majority of these involved denial of pregnancy). Poor outcome is also due to preterm births, small for gestational age babies, increased rates of neonatal admissions and increased infant mortality.2,11,16

In July 2010, some French cases of neonaticide drew media attention;17 denial of pregnancy was thought to have played a significant role in some of these tragic situations. In instances of neonaticide, non-psychotic denial of pregnancy is most likely to result in passive death; the woman may become acutely confused and disorientated at the time of delivery, or panic after the birth and the infant may die from maternal negligence, through exposure. Psychotic denial is more likely to be associated with active killing, by means such as suffocation or strangulation.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3128877/

I am not insisting she was delusional, it is in her medical notes and the judge even commented on it:
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.

That still doesn't mean she was psychotic though ,even her defence are not trying to claim she was so, why are you insisting she was ?

The judge said she was in denisl.even you link that you have posted says there are.different efforts of pregnancy denisl.some psychotic ,some not so why are you insisting she was psychotic ?
She will.have been assessed.
You can't just receive she was psychotic.

What you objected to was my saying this case sets a bad precedent. You stated that only higher courts can set precedents. Which is not true because despite your claim to 25yrs of experience as a lawyer, you didn’t seem aware that there are both precedents of binding authority and precedents of persuasive authority. All courts set precedents, it’s only the higher courts precedents that are binding on the courts below them.

I refer you back to your favourite professor Glanville Williams
To mention the court that decided a case is a mark of awareness of the doctrine of precedent, with its hierarchy of authority. The rule is that every court binds lower courts and that some courts bind.

The whole role of the jury is flinging a desperate red herring into the mix and I’m not interested in any of the rotten fish you’re flogging

it’s not about making excuses for her anyway, it’s about understanding intent. She didn’t go out on the streets looking for a baby to kill. She found herself pregnant and alone and couldn’t cope and for one reason or another was too scared to tell anyone close to her and then did something terrible and unforgivable as a result. @Pythacalling702
That is making excuses. I would still find it horrific had she abandoned him or suffocated him (and still that is horrific to write) but she purposely caused horrific damaged and violence to him, went back for more and left him to die slowly in pain.
Sentence was far too lenient.

Yeah I'm not sure how people are glossing over that. It's rare for women and girls to violently kill, even when they are traumatised.

TLDR: it has finally dawned on me that the insistence I have tediously maintained that the finding of this jury sets a precedent is completely nonsensical, but I am too graceless to admit it.

She was assessed YEARS after the fact. YEARS. So the window to assess if she was psychotic then during the birth was wasted. Gone.

As to why I think she had the psychotic type, the way in which she killed the baby:
Psychotic denial is more likely to be associated with active killing, by means such as suffocation or strangulation.

That plus the fact her medical notes also show that the memories she has of the birth and death of her baby do not match reality. She has no memory of what actually happened, but instead has what were diagnosed as “false memories” which is not saying she is lying (I wonder if jury thought that?)

A false memory is a memory that is not based on what an individual actually experienced, but rather on what the individual believes happened, or what is imagined to have happened, and this can sometimes be the result of unconscious processes or of trauma. When someone remembers something that never occurred, this is the result of the process of misremembering, which can be thought of as a kind of delusion. Patients with psychosis are known for being particularly susceptible to generating false memories due to deficits in recognition and memory recall.

“Psychotic patients are impaired on recall and recognition of studied items (true memory) and typically make more false recall (intrusions) and false recognition than controls, reflecting greater susceptibility to false memory.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21229407/

It's actually really upsetting @AllOfThemWitches to extent that I should probably hide the thread, are posters thinking they are supporting 'the feminist cause' with all this ridiculous whataboutery re others sentences.
Not a fuck given from these posters about the murdered babies, just moans on how unfair it is for them to have been sentenced.

She intentionally murdered the baby. She assaulted them to a level you'd see in a car crash victim, and then suffocated them.

The baby survived for hours between the two assaults, and she lied about how the baby received the injuries to their head, saying they'd hit the floor during childbirth.

I felt sorry for her until I read about the cotton wool.

She's clearly a victim in many ways, but she's still a murderer.

The scary fact is that she'll be out of prison before she's 30 and plenty young enough to get pregnant again.

@Pythacalling702 Murder is murder but of course the age and maturity of the perpetrator makes a difference. The brain chemistry of a teen is different to that of an adult for a start.

Ah I see. Clearly I have totally misunderstood the MN mentality and the level of support for the following things:

• we are all in favour of the Scottish government's move to allow young male rapists to escape court because they are young and immature?
• we didn't all slam down on Verphy Kudi for leaving her baby to starve to death while she partied for six days for her 18th, because it was ok - she was young and immature?
• We are all very sorry that James Bulgers killers got convictions for murder, because they were young and immature?
• We should release Craig Mulligan, because he was young and immature when he participated in the murder of Logan Mwangi. Young and immature too?
• What about Sharon Carr - stabbed a complete stranger to death and wrote afterwards that her victims screams were a turn on. She was 12 years old, so young and immature?

And I could go on - the list is very long. MN is very, very good at picking who is guilty and deserves punishment and who doesn't. That is hypocrisy. If you do the crime, you should do the time; but apparently that only applies to the people we don't like.

I would suggest that:
(a) just because the brain is young and immature does not mean that someone does not know right from wrong, or that they should be excused for their crimes.
(b) if you are going to let off a 15 year old murderer because they are young and immature, you must also let off a 15 year old rapist for the same reason - and I know how well that particular argument will go down here, but if we want equality it must be in all quarters, so female crime is as bad a male crime.
(c) you are confusing the crime with the penalty. I think there are very good arguments for serious and radical overhauls of the prison system and the lack of real initiatives to reform, support and change peoples lives for the better. I would be totally in favour of that. But a killer is still a killer. The fact that she is young and female doesn't change that.

Agree ,this site is so hypocritical.

I note you have not backed up your claims of nonsense with any legal texts whatsoever. In fact the one link you posted to Williams’s book on Amazon, I went to the trouble to extensively quote the parts on precedent showing he says the same things I have posted. The concepts and facts you have variously called disinformation, hyperbole, insane, ridiculous and now nonsense.

Do you have anything at all, any legal expert who agrees with you? I’m open to differing legal opinions as stated in published works by recognised experts- not vague assertions like “every English lawyer says..” as you’ve tended to post.

I don’t think I have seen many people, if any, claim that she should be let off. The argument seems to be that her age and immaturity are relevant mitigation. FWIW, and unsurprisingly, the courts agree.

I’m still waiting for you to tell me where the ratio decidendi is in a jury verdict, my friend. Got an answer for me yet?

Yep. 12 years is actually a very short sentence for murder.

Oh, I have an answer. I’m just maintaining a boundary and not being distracted by your ‘look squirrel’! Tactics.

Excellent! What is the answer? What principle of law is being expressed when a jury pronounces a verdict on the facts, which is capable of binding other courts?

To be fair to @AP5Diva their stamina is quite impressive in that they're still continuing on with posting ridiculousness hours after starting.

She has all the answers though. But we wouldn’t know them. They go to a different school.

What is the airspeed velocity of a swallow laden with a coconut?

Your question is just as batshit and is not at all relevant to what I said- which unlike you- I have backed up with even the published works of the very legal expert you picked! As well as other legal reference texts.

I'm not sure that I understand your point. She actually has a life sentence with a recommended tariff of 12 years. That means she must serve 12 years before she will be considered for release, at which point, if she is no longer deemed a risk she will be able to be released. Given the release process involved, she would likely serve a further 2 years or so in prison, so, say, 14 years in prison. That is not a lenient sentence. Given her age, it is not far short of the average tariff for that age, which is around 15 years. And, of course, averages not entirely meaningful because some of those tariffs will be considerably longer for a few people (including whole life sentences) because of the fact that their crimes were even worse. So the court actually doesn't agree that her age and immaturity are relevant mitigation - at best her tariff a a matter of a year or two short of any murderer other than the most heinous of them.

And yes, on these threads I have read loads of comments that she shouldn't have been jailed, or that she shouldn't be convicted of the crime that she committed because there are real excuses for the crime. That is "letting someone off". If there are good reasons for anyone to commit a crime, there are good reasons for everyone. In this case I think the court got it right, and they did not exercise great leniency for a brutal crime.

That doesn't mean that I think she should be treated inhumanely. I would genuinely like to see a much better prison system for everyone, and I don't like the fact the prison does not really do what it should - reform, rehabilitate, and help people to reintegrate into society. Truth is, prisons generally turn out better criminals. But that is another debate. As things stand, she got exactly what she deserved.

No it isn't - as I have explained. She has a life sentence with a 12 year tariff, which in the big picture is pretty much average for a murderer.

This. Scary thing is she’ll be out in 12 years and could possibly have babies of her own.