Teenage boy acquitted of murder and manslaughter after killing girl

[StarlightRobot]

Is anyone else baffled by the acquittal of a teenage boy who stabbed and killed nine year old Aria Thorpe. I can vaguely understand the acquittal for murder but how on earth has he been acquitted for manslaughter? He got a knife from the kitchen and stabbed her in the cheat while she was eating her dinner for goodness’ sake! Then he left her bleeding to death and hid on a train. It’s another example of the lives of girls just not mattering.

And then the absolute nonsense excuses for anyone under 25 barely being able to tie their own shoe laces because 'brain not fully developed' when what they're actually talkinga bout is a helpful evolutionary stage of brain elasticity when younger people can learn faster and take more risks to aid society

Interesting perspective, it's not a flaw at all, risk taking has advantages.

That’s not what I’m saying at all.

Is my gut feeling that he’s guilty? Yes, always has been. Why? Because i think he’s lying about the playing aspect of it all.

im saying if the jury found him guilty they must have believed him and that the story about playing is a legally allowed defence and therefore they didn’t believe he threatened her. If the jury believe his story then I can see from a legal pov why he was found not guilty.

As I say, I don't think the jury thought that at all. I think they knew damn well he was guilty and their "not gullty" verdict was arrived at by a completely different path.

Fair enough, I’ll have to go on Twitter again to see if I can find anything about what people think the jury were thinking.

In cases like this, what tends to happen is that the newspapers report in detail on the prosecution opening statement on the first day and then lose interest till a verdict comes in. That can be highly misleading, because the opening statement is essentially the prosecution saying : This is what we intend to demonstrate. It almost inevitably happens that, as the case develops, a different view emerges - the witnesses may not say what the prosecutor hopes they would say, or may get taken apart in cross-examination, and of course once the defence case is heard that may well put a very different complexion on the whole thing.

So I fear that a lot of people are basing their views on this verdict purely on that reporting of the opening statement. It is inevitable, of course, that the jury will base their verdict on what they actually heard and saw as the trial progressed, and people who aren't aware of the differences will assume that it is the jury who got something wrong rather than the prosecutor.

Putting aside the verdict, absolutely shocking behaviour to just leave her and walk to see mates. Like he didn't give a damn.

I agree, a 15 year old stepping over a 9 year old’s body and leaving her to bleed out is just atrocious. And then when his friend called the police he boarded a train and ran further away.
Its disgusting.

So I fear that a lot of people are basing their views on this verdict purely on that reporting of the opening statement.

Nope. The stabber's words have been reported and the facts aren't in dispute. He was expelled, he did have his mobile phone taken, he did run away, he did Google.

I am sick of soft sentencing.
Actions don’t seem to have consequences any more.
When did this “the victims get forgotten about” start.
Who decided that should happen in courts ?
It’s not just in the UK. It’s the same in Ireland. 🥲

What the fucking fuck? You don’t pick up knives for play fighting and you don’t ‘accidentally’ impale someone in the chest.

Have any - ANYONE - in the court rooms actually studied or practiced any form of military activity? It’s actually hard to stab someone, you’ve got to push a knife in to a body ffs.

This is another male getting away with murder of a girl child.

Is there not even any charge of gbh or something? Literally just walking out of court with no consequence?

Where was that form to ask for a review of sentencing again!

I’m so glad someone is fighting on behalf of this girl. What happens with the next girl he kills who doesn’t have someone to fight for her? Britain is a corrupt misogynistic cess pit now, they might as well put it in law that girls are second class compared to boys and being male gives you a free pass.

But he also gave explanations in court which the jury heard. Plus he was subject to cross examination, it's not as if whatever he said was accepted unquestioningly.

Oh it’ll probably be her fault again.. poor boy imagine his upset at someone doing this to him again

There needs to be some sort of check system for these pathology reports then. It’s not that easy to stab someone directly in the heart. We have rib cages with bones for precisely that reason. This lad knew where to stab. I’m not sure precisely what level of force is required from a 15 yr old against a 9yr old, as obviously I haven’t checked exactly what it takes to kill someone I merely have general martial arts knowledge from training with weapons.

If this is what he’s been acquitted on then there are so many wrongs anyway. He gets his hands on a phone afterwards and immediately googles how to get away with it? Runs away when he sees police? There certainly are ‘failure to report’ laws in car accidents, there have been recent pushes from the middle classes to get that extended for killing pet cats ffs!

He knew what he’d done and he knew what he wanted to do.

They pretty much did. In 2021 "The Law Commission recommended that misogyny should not be made a hate crime. This was based on a lack of stakeholder consensus on how the proposal would work, and what the benefits might be."

Yeah, what could the benefits of recording misogyny as a hate crime possibly be?

If he was acquittted though, there is no sentence to review.

There are at least two check systems, namely the police and the criminal trial process. If the police or CPS think a pathology report is dodgy they can always ask for another, and likewise lawyers on either side in the trial process can get independent reports as well as cross-examining the original pathologist.

Of course it doesn't. A jury verdict does not constitute any sort of binding precedent.

I realised that there is no process to protest this after a quick google. So what do women and girls do? There is no law in this country that protects us, not if we’re from poor backgrounds and have no family protection. Thats the truth. As I said, thank goodness this girl has family. The gang rape victims did not.

Something is going very wrong in courts. Some expert says something and it just is not challenged fully.

None of us know what happened in the court, and why there was a verdict of not guilty. It does seem incomprehensible to us on the outside.

There are laws that are supposed to protect us, but I'm not disagreeing with your general point; VAWG is frequently unpunished, or given paltry sentences, or not even recorded at all.

Aria Thorpe's father reveals her siblings now fear boy cleared of murder could turn up at their door mol.im/a/15934453 via https://dailym.ai/android

The dad and his family are getting a criminal appeals barrister to go through the transcripts to "ensure that every aspect of the case was conducted fairly and correctly".

I don’t think anyone thinks he is innocent. Just because someone is not found guilty doesn’t make them innocent. It just means that there was reasonable doubt

Was it a closed court? If not then how would the jury be privy to special secret information?

It's a secret from the public. The people who need to know, including the jury, know.

Was there not a public gallery in this case?