The Bulger killers: was justice done?

[WannaBeWonderWoman]

Following on from previous thread which was filled.

What would have been the correct way to deal with these little boys who subjected a tiny two year old to protracted agony and unimaginable suffering then?

Interested to know what all the bleeding hearts on here believe should have happened? Whether they attended an adult court and were convicted of murder which they confessed to anyway, was this crueller to them than what they put that child through? They were well treated and even when they were serving their 'sentence' they were protected and given all they wanted (more than they would have got if they'd been in their own homes probably) and had all the help and therapy it was possible to give them. Did they suffer? You could actually argue that they benefitted from killing. They have to live with what they've done, yes, but if they did I find it hard to comprehend that Thompson especially (who came across as the leader in the interviews) can.

The Norwegian case which is often compared to this is nowhere similar IMO. The perpetrators were a similar age to their victim. They were 6 which is almost half the age V&T were and they wouldn't have been tried here anyway. Most importantly that crime was not premeditated or drawn out for hours like the many horrors inflicted on James.

He was the only victim here.

Jedi - it isn't a ridiculous point to say why don't we let 10 year olds sit on juries if you're saying that a 10 year old has the same understanding of the complexities of behaviour and crime to be tried as an adult.

Either 10 year olds are mature enough to be treated as adults or not. To say you can treat them as adults when they've done something horrific but not treat them as adults in literally any other area of their lives is the basis of why the European court of human rights said they should not have been tried in adult court.

On MN there are people asking how to tell their 10 year old that Father Christmas isn't real before they go to secondary school. Social services would be called if you left a 10 year old alone overnight. Police and social services would be called if 10 year olds were having sex.

But a 10 year old doing something horrific that we hate, that horrifies us and that we don't understand? Well they're old enough to know right from wrong...take responsibility....blah blah blah

What a ridiculous point. Of course we cant have ten year olds in a jury.

That was the whole point of that argument. why can't we have 10 year olds on the jury?

If it's because you don't think 10 year olds in general are mature enough to be part of the adult justice system, why were these two particular 10 year olds deemed mature enough to be part of this process rather than being treated like other 10 year old offenders would be?

If 10 year olds are deemed old enough and competent enough to be tried as an adult, then 10 year olds should also be deemed old enough and competent enough to sit in judgement in an adult courtroom ... if you don't want 10 year old juries then you can't have 10 year old "adult" defendants tried in an adult court.

Curious... what would have happened differently in a child court?

Get both of these men, kill them.

Justice will then be done.

There is a petition you can sign online about the James Bulger case. Is has over 100,000 signatures already! Have a look here

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/206851

RT’s Mother wasn't even in court when he was guilty verdict was given

I’m not certain how much substance you can place on her attendance or none attendance at court.

It is highly likely that in the days following her child’s arrest and during the court hearing that she was quite possibly engaged with matters pertaining to her other children. It is my understanding based on normal work talk that the arrest triggered a lot of attention from social care towards her family. The family was well known but previously pretty much ignored

Get both of these men, kill them

Can't believe MN are letting this thread continue in this vein.

Curious... what would have happened differently in a child court

The public and press would highly likely not been in the court the hearing would have made a bit more sense to them they would likely have been able to engage more with the process. Outcome wise it would have been the same

Lindy....it’s an emotive topic. People will have an opinion and lots of people share this one. They don’t deserve to be alive after what they did to that innocent child. Pure evil.

bandwagon should we apply this form of justice to all killers, all killers of children or just to children who kill?
The rule of law works because it is the same for everyone.

So you’re saying they shouldn’t have gone to court? What would you like to have happened then? I actually said I think a juvenile court would have been better probably before a panel. Brutus law says they did know right from wrong, even Venables lawer thinks 10 is the right age for criminal responsibility. More importantly it hasn’t changed since 93. So the whole justice system is wrong then?

British law not Brutus law

Chip - they wouldn't have ever been tried in a youth court as that deals with more minor offences. Children accused of more serious crimes are always referred to Crown court and modifications made.

That isn't the argument here. The argument is that they were tried AS ADULTS at the age of 10. Which shouldn't have happened.

www.wsws.org/en/articles/1999/12/bulg-d17.ht

I was flamed, called stupid, thick, accused of gathering an audience, on another thread for suggesting that if children should be judged as adults at the age of ten for committing crimes then why is it that we consider that children are too young to have sex, vote, drive a car, get married, buy alcohol before between the ages of sixteen/eighteen, and yet there are people on this thread calling for the death penalty for ten year olds.

Surely by that definition ten year olds should be living independently since they know what they’re doing and are fully responsible as adults for those decisions at the age of ten.

Let me tell you. I know someone who grew up in the care system. Who was seriously abused as a baby to the point he has permanent disabilities. he came through the care system and has grown up to be a normal (if you can use that term) adult. However throughout his life he has been told that it would be better if he didn’t have children of his own as he would be likely to abuse them as he was an abuse victims. has been told he probably shouldn’t hold people’s babies as he might abuse them. The list goes on.

Society has an expectation that the abused will become the abuser. And yet when that happens society washes its hands of them and would rather have them sentenced to death than question how it is that such abuse goes un-challenged in the first place.

Chaos. You're right and it's the basis of how ridiculous the attitudes are around this case. Can you imagine what would happen if someone came on here and said 'my 10 year old wants to have sex with their 10 year old friend, they know all about sex and I think it's an informed decision that they fully understand at that age'.

This site would meltdown. Yet do something utterly abhorrent at 10 and some people say 'they know right from young, knew exactly what they were doing, they were manipulative, committed an adult crime so should be treated as adults'

There's a more recent case , the so called Devil Brothers from Eglington, dreadful history of abuse and like V&T , premeditated , even to the point that they should have been at the Police Station for a previous assault on the day that they attacked two young boys.

Again the howls from The Public to hang them , flog them arrest the parents.

I took my own DS (who was 10 at the time) out , he had an unravelled bandage on his arm that was blowing about, DS was laughing about having an invisibe dog .....while in another county , two boys his age had lured their victims to their near deaths (you can read the news reports they are vile and very much along the James Bulger line but I think the only reason their victims survived was they were older and someone intervened)

They were not identified. Probably the right choice . But their family was very well known.

I watched the programmes last week, the case is horrific and hasn't lost any of its horror over time.

From what I can make out the only difference in outcome from T&V being tried in as adults as opposed to children us that they were convicted, named and will be of life licence for the rest if their lives.

Are those on here arguing that it was wrong that they were tried as adults seriously suggesting that they should have remained anonymous, had some therapy then been released back into society without monitoring and with no one knowing what they had done and what they were capable of?

The tenet of our legal system is that 'Justice should be done and also be SEEN to be done' but by whom, if not the family of their victim who have had their lives devastated in the knowledge of what was inflicted on James. James' family does not feel that justice was done and that's not for anyone else to judge.

Yes I am arguing that. They were children who were cynically used by media and a government when numerous other children have not been. I don't think any 10 year old should be written off at that age and given a life sentence. They should have been granted anonymity from day 1. The trial shouldn't have been publicised so a baying mob was screaming at children they wanted them dead as they went into court.

I completely empathise with the family of James. But no family should ever decide what 'justice' is as this thread has shown. With people calling for the execution of children and claiming to be willing to kill them personally.

The tenet of our legal system is that 'Justice should be done and also be SEEN to be done' but by whom, if not the family of their victim who have had their lives devastated in the knowledge of what was inflicted on James. James' family does not feel that justice was done and that's not for anyone else to judge.

Crimes are dealt with in accordance with what is in the public interest. Not just to satisfy the victim’s family. Of course there are debates in this case as to whether the case was dealt with in accordance with the public interest given in particular Venables’ offending since but it’s so wide of the mark to say it’s only the victim’s family who need to be considered

Sadly for James's family no amount of punishment will bring James back. I suspect that whenever RT and JV were released it would always be too soon for them. At some point they were going to be freed and able to live their lives, something that James will never get to do. They were horribly damaged, the broken children who did something unspeakably dreadful but they were children. It appears that one of them could not be repaired but that doesn't mean we should as a society wash our hands of "wrongu uns" and stop trying to fix them. In JVs case because of his crimes now as an adult I think he should be seen as a danger and he should be held for the foreseeable future under the terms of his life license.

Thing is society, has it really changed since 1993? I mean we still have deprived towns, shit parents and kids in shitty homes. I don’t know Bootle/ Walton or the area at all, have they changed since?
Personally, we may have the internet and iPhones nowadays but I don’t think an awful lot has changed over two decades. John Major famously said we needed to go back to basics as a society, following on from the Bulger case.

I've not read the full thread but with regard to them being tried in adult court, was video link available then?

Not sure that would have made a difference to the outcome, as sadly the evidence was very clear and it would have been difficult for a jury not to convict?

I'm no legal expert but presumably once the prosecution qc had successfully shown they knew right from wrong the only option was to convict for murder as manslaughter due to diminished responsibility wouldn't have been on the table?