Nottingham attacks - verdict

[DrunkenElephant]

I live in Nottingham and feel terribly sad reading the news today.

Could these deaths have been avoided if the police and mental health agencies had done more? But then how can more be done when services are on their knees?

I don’t know the answer to either question, but my hearts go out to the families of Barnaby, Grace and Ian.

What I don't understand is those who say he only attacked them as he was scared and felt under threat. Then why the level of violence? Why not just run from them? He approached them attacked them, or if he felt that he had to physically attack them to get away, again why not just incapacitate them, why the absolute violence?

What I read was that he heard voices that told him he had to kill or his family would be harmed

regardless you are trying to make sense of what he heard/was being told. Often the voices will not make sense, the feeling that what needs to be done will not make sense to us but the feeling is rigid what they are doing is believed to be the right thing so do

but it won’t make sense to others

Often it does make sense - provided you know what the premises are.

Richard Dadd - believed the person who looked like his father was a demon
Premise: there are demons.
Premise: demons can disguise themselves so they look exactly like a human
Demons need to be killed.
Therefore that demon that looked like his father must be killed (possibly with an accompanying belief that this would save his real father)
So Richard Dadd kills his father. But that isn't what he believes he is doing.
He thinks it is a matter of life and death for his real father.
I don't suppose he wanted to kill even a demon. But felt he had no choice, so screwed up his courage and did it.

Obviously, I can't know that is exactly what he thought, although it is on record that he thought he was killing a demon.

@MysteriousInspector

then why describe them as hospitals. By definition hospitals are places of healing and recuperation. I have no doubt liberty is restricted but the restriction of liberty is a by product of public and patient protection and there is a lack of emphasis on any punitive intnent. It may be semantic but the wording has wounded the families and agitated a lot of the public.

Because they ARE hospitals. They can’t be described as prisons, because they’re not.

They are a place where an extremely unwell person goes for treatment, but they are high security. Locked in, no freedom.

High security hospital.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13030315/humphrey-burke-schizophrenic-freed-hospital-order.html

similar case here but with the eventual outcome. It would not surprise me at all if this is what ends up happening but only time will tell.

@Grandmasswag

Misleading article by a rag designed to stir up hate.

He has had visits out in the community. He is not “been freed”

Indeed. It's a long slow careful process re-habilitating the handful of suitable patients from hospital orders

Usually involving moving to locked Medium Secure facilities and a Section 3 re-newable every 6 months before moving to an open ward then a specialist hostel in the community [still under section so that any sign of relapse means urgent return to hospital]

The whole process takes years and is highly risk-averse and strictly monitored

Misleading or not, this man should not be walking the streets. He is unstable and a danger to those around him.

He was unstable and a danger at the time of his offences.

Assuming he has been under treatment for the last two years and deemed by professionals to be stable enough to have time out in the community (which would have been risk assessed to fuck, and he is likely to have had workers with him). Do you believe that those with severe mental illness can never be treated? I would agree with you if he was actually freed and released under community care because he could choose not to take his medication, but that’s not what has happened here.

But this is exactly the point! The judge in the VC was plain wrong to imply he’d be locked away for life. You might think it’s acceptable that someone who kicked a grandmother to death is out and about shopping and gyming after 2 years ‘sentence’ but I don’t and I doubt the vast majority of people do not. Whether he is ‘freed’ or not that is a pretty good level of freedom. This is why some men like the above and VC should be on a hybrid order and returned to the prison estate. The public have no idea of what goes on because most cases aren’t high profile enough to hit the news. I’ve known some absolutely awful things happen to social workers who are working with patients (alone I might add) that have been ‘risk assessed to fuck’. And as for the ‘secure hospitals are worse than prisons’. Absolute baloney. For a start as a patient you’re entitled to benefit as opposed to the meagre prison allowances.

So is the article misleading when it says he's out and about unsupervised?

@Grandmasswag so have I. I’ve worked in social care for many years.

You are talking like these people were of sound mind when these crimes were committed - they were not.

You obviously think that people suffering from severe mental illness should be put in prison, a place where their needs cannot be managed, they cannot be forced to take medication, and where the safety of staff, and prisoners are put at significant risk due to this. I, and the law, disagree with you.

I don’t think that at all. I think the circumstances leading up to this case suggest that this particular offender should be on a hybrid order. I think in this case there’s a strong likelihood that the system has been abused. I think the judge is plain wrong to imply to the families that VC will be incarcerated for life. But as I said, time will tell. We can discuss it all we like but no one actually knows what the outcome will be. I don’t think that’s good enough.

The article title of him being freed is misleading.

For all those frothing at the mouth about him not being in prison - you do realise a manslaughter charge would be around 8-10 years, out in half and also result in day release from a prison?

In order to be charged with murder you have to be of sound mind. You cannot be convicted of murder otherwise. A jury would have had great difficulty in finding him guilty of murder due to the psychiatric reports presented, or if he had been convicted of murder he would have won an appeal and been freed. Conviction overturned, no charges, back out in the community. Where would the justice be in that?!

An absolute disgrace to have murderers and other dangerous criminals out and about amongst ordinary people. He and all these criminals should be kept away from the public forever. Anyone saying that they should be released should offer to have them living in their home.

@ButterCrackers who said they should be released?

Please provide a source?

it’s a tired trope fiercely contest an indefensible post that no one made. Change the tone

except no one had said the perpetrator should be released @ButterCrackers

Check your post below - you use the word ‘release’.
Freed implies release ie not locked up.

@DrunkenElephant

I agree he has been detained in a hospital but surely that is part of the point. A hospital is a place of treatment and if there was a point where the paranoid schizophrenia is brought under control what then? In a sense a patient has been 'cured ' and it may be appropriate to observe said 'patient' in the community. Of course this will (hopefully) never happen as the judge surely had in mind some sort of punitive intent on the sentence as well protection of the public and welfare of the individual. the family though weren't entirely guaranteed this in the sentence and I think there is some gap in the law which maybe needs reviewing. In a sense whether intent was there or not the objective fact is that two promising youngsters were brutally stabbed to death probably in à state of absolute fear, the hopes of two families dashed being left with agonising holes in their lives. You can understand that from some there may not be a huge amount of sympathy towards an ill perpetrator, some any not even be overly concerned about his needs in a hospital environement.

@mids2019 I do see what you’re saying, but it’s unlikely schizophrenia will ever be “cured”. Managed with medication, absolutely - but it goes back to the same point that he can only be forced to take medication in hospital, not in prison. So he goes to prison, doesn’t take meds, back to square one. Prison staff are not trained to manage that level of risk, nor should they be expected to.

Medical professionals are. He should be in a place where he is taking medication daily, and where he has limited freedoms. I have been in two mental health hospitals in my work, one was actually Highbury. I think that is where Valdo Calocane had been detained previously. They are not the nice places people seem to think they are. Staff in offices behind shutters, nothing to do except sit in your “room”. Patients in a zombie like state because of meds. Nothing in the “communal” area except high backed hospital chairs and a few donated books, and that wasn’t even a high security hospital.

Morally, I agree with you in some respects but in law, “intent” is very important. The law is set on murder - it has to meet certain criteria, and this case didn’t. I can’t understand how the families feel, I imagine I would feel much the same in their shoes but the law is impartial - feelings and emotions of the families and public cannot be taken into consideration, and rightly so.

Again, if the charge had been murder he would very likely be free already because a jury would not be able to make the charge stick based on the evidence given in court. If somehow they had found him guilty of murder, an appeal would likely have gone in his favour, again based on the evidence presented by 5 different psychiatrists.

I think the verdict and sentencing was correct, and I say all of this based on my belief that he will never be freed. If I am wrong, then no justice absolutely hasn’t been done.

Also, there are different types of mental illness. In the case of the Nottingham attacks the killer was demonstrably suffering from very severe paranoid schizophrenia before and during the attack, which undermined his responsibility for his actions

The families of his victims dispute this.

@CapercaillieP but qualified psychiatrists and medical professions did not.

@DrunkenElephant

I think ultimately you are absolutely correct but the problem here is of perception. I think if somehow in the description of the hospital environment imprisonment could be mentioned then that at least would signal there was punishment here. I completely understand this individual probably had very limited self awareness but it may help the family in some respect to understand that as well as managing the schizophrenia there is a punitive element. Maybe it's important to the family that they feel justice has been done and a punishment administered if nothing else to aid their on going grief. Again legally I can see the problem with proving murder given difficulty in proving intent but the word murder best described the gravity of the crime despite being legally correct. The public aren't psychiatrists as a whole and they see the crimes committed and find it difficult from the outside to connect the stabbings and collisions to a non intentional crime i.e. manslaughter.

I think it overall is a horrible case but I can see the perspective of those that at least dramatically want a harder judgment.

@mids2019 I actually completely agree with that, maybe if the public could see exactly what a high security hospital is like it would help with the anger and sense of injustice that they feel. I’m not saying it would help the loved ones of those who died, they are absolutely entitled to feel as they do, but the general public definitely.

I agree again; it’s human nature to want someone to blame when something awful happens. It makes it easier for people to believe it was a one-off, something far away from their lives. An evil man is to blame, he’s in prison, we’re safe again now, rather than an invisible illness that not many understand. We don’t like feeling unsafe - if it is “invisible” how do we know who is a danger and who isn’t? I completely understand it.