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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to be bemused that an unreptentant woman killer can be rleased.

56 replies

paulinespeaksmanylanguages · 09/01/2020 00:11

Ian Simms who murdered Helen McCourt is about to be released.

There was an appeal to keep him in prison because he refuses to reveal where her body is but it failed.

Am I being unreasonable to think that a lot of publicity should be given to whoever signed off on this? Front page, not tucked away somewhere.

OP posts:
ACautionaryTale · 10/01/2020 10:17

I find it strange that we can convict for murder if we have never found a body......

Many other countries do not.

If there is no body, you don't actually have 100% proof they are actually dead - which to me is reasonable doubt.

JamieVardysHavingAParty · 10/01/2020 10:21

ACautionaryTale

Read this and then see how much reasonable doubt you have that Helen is dead. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Helen_McCourt

ACautionaryTale · 10/01/2020 10:33

There is evidence he did something to her but without a body you can’t be 100% certain ......

stilldoesntknowwhatshappening · 10/01/2020 11:00

Of course you can bloody know someone is dead without a body. It's not difficult at times.

JamieVardysHavingAParty · 10/01/2020 11:03

No, but I think that if I'd sat through the murder trial, being presented with all that evidence in person, I would have also said, "yeah, I'm sure beyond reasonable doubt that she is dead".

Reasonable doubt didn't equal 100% certainty. It was a doubt that was reasonable to have. You can almost always come up with bizarre theories involving identical twins, alien abduction and time travel to exonerate a defendant, but they're not plausible.

To define reasonable doubt further, I think it's best to consider unreasonable doubt first. Imagine that you are going on holiday, and you're in the car to go. You have just checked that you turned the gas off three times, but you still feel an intrusive thought that maybe it is actually still on and you didn't check properly. That's unreasonable doubt. It's never going away, because it has nothing to do with evidence. You will never feel 100% certain that you've really turned the gas off, but you know you have so you grit your teeth and drive for the airport.

Now imagine you are upstairs in bed, and you can't remember if you locked the front door. You lock the front door every night before bed, but you can't remember doing it tonight. You almost certainly did lock it, but there is "reasonable doubt".

In this case, if I had been a juror, the defence's explanation wouldn't have been enough to make me reasonably doubt he did it. I'd consider it was to be an irrational fear. I worry a lot, about everything, especially at 3am, but I don't think I'd ever lie awake, thinking, "but suppose he really was framed by someone and I got it wrong".

Inappropriatefemale · 10/01/2020 18:10

We’re not talking about someone that’s innocent though, we’re talking about someone that is guilty, surely nobody truly believes that this Simms is innocent?Confused

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