Teenager guilty of murder.

[placemats]

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

Apart from the fact that she was raped, if consent to sex is to be a legal term, I find the prosecutions allegations appalling.

'But the prosecution alleged Mayo must have known she was pregnant but chose to deliberately conceal it because she was always planning to kill the baby.'

Perhaps Mayo didn't get early abortion help she needed. I know of one woman, who had 3 previous children, who didn't realise she was pregnant, thought it was early menopause until 4 weeks before her due date. However to allege she was always planning to kill the baby is a step too far. It intimates that those in authority know this child's mind.

This is what I mean. A break from reality, I can understand. You don't have control over your actions. Granted, i don't personally think that's what happened here.

Anyone using parents being unhappy and stressed as a mitigation perplex me.

I thought the criticism was of a doctor? A doctor who formed an opinion of her when she was taken to hospital? There would have been more than one psychiatrist giving evidence anyway even it was a psychiatrist.

While she might have had pregnancy denial at the beginning, she realised that she was pregnant before the birth. I don’t know what other red flags you mean.

Because, as one the of examining psychiatrists noted, she had no memory of hurting the baby much less killing him. She had a completely different memory as to happened and what she did. This is called a “false memory” and is also evidence of psychosis

Is it though? When people lie, they construct a false narrative on purpose to explain things. Mayo’s was that the baby just fell out of her and banged his head, but wasn’t alive anyway because he had the cord round his neck. This is untrue. Why’s it a false memory rather than a false narrative (lie)?

Very early on in this thread somebody said Mayo had no memory of what happened because she used a phrase like ,”I don’t know. I must have [done x]….” when referring to the cotton wool in Stanley’s throat. They said those words showed she had no memory, but that’s simply not true. I’m a teacher. Children often say those words when denying things, eg a child causes harm to another child by pushing them off a wall. When questioned they denied pushing the child and said “I don’t know what happened, Miss. I must have….” thereby trying to disassociate themselves from what they’d done. IMO, Mayo did the same - claimed she didn’t remember, lied, tried to distance herself, etc. These were signs of denying guilt not psychosis.

If it were just that in isolation, I’d agree with you. But if someone does know what they’ve done, and decides they will brazenly lie they normally actually try and cover up the evidence. The way she just left the blood. Just left the body in a bin bag by the door and asked her brother to take it out to the bins. The judge highlighted her efforts as “half hearted” and “pathetic” while saying she was actually quite smart, intelligence wise.

You see this failure to conceal the baby’s body in cases that meet the disturbed mental state for infanticide. One women did the same to her baby in a park, and then left the body under a tree. Another threw her baby off a balcony and left the body in the garden. Mayo put the body in a bag and also left it to be found.

A person who is guilty and wants you to believe a fabricated version of events isn’t going to leave all the evidence to be easily found.

Liars also tend to change their story when you go back and question them over a period of months/years. He story did not change once. The psychiatrist said that her story is actually a false memory, as in not made up lies to conceal what she actually remembers. What she remembers and believes is not reality, but it is real to her.

And the pregnancy denial delusion- also in her medical records. And the method of killing, also consistent with the psychotic subtype of pregnancy denial.

I agree that the bin bag disposal was ill-thought out, but we don’t know if that was by necessity - ie she’d had a different plan, but the pain/blood loss/exhaustion of giving birth thwarted her - or she just panicked. Perhaps she didn’t realise the bin bag had blood on so assumed it would just be put out along with the rubbish with her brother none the wiser and would be taken away, like the baby never existed?

I don’t agree that liars change their story often. They usually choose a narrative, which they rehearse in their head and decide is feasible, and that then becomes their story. Because she ‘couldn’t remember’ a lot of things that would make any questioning easy to block, eg “Where exactly were you when…..?” can easily be parried by “I don’t remember”. That means she’d only need the outline of a false explanation. Everything difficult or more detailed could be ‘forgotten’. It sounds like they got very little information from her. What she said that was false, they disproved.

Personally I think partly she was ignorant of just how much a medical report could show, and so thought if she stuck to her story no-one could prove any different. Rather like the naïveté of the poster above who also suggested that perhaps the baby had fallen on its head onto the floor during birth and that accounted for the head injuries. In fact, the PM showed Stanley’s skull had been crushed by opposing forces - ie she stamped on his head or ground it into the floor. Perhaps Mayo thought that there wouldn’t even be a PM for a ‘stillborn’ (according to her) baby?

Oh my god the double standard.
I feel sorry for her. Having a baby is so all-encompassing, I can't imagine going through this at such a young age. Nothing will happen to whoever raped her.

Speaking generally, I would agree that saying 'I don't know/can't remember' is so much easier than trying to repeat a fake story several times over, to countless professionals.

It's the equivalent of 'no comment', but has a greater likelihood of being accepted.

Lying is exhausting and you will slip up especially in court where everything is scrutinised so deeply.

I just cannot see how anyone has sympathy with her. She stamped on her newborns head and when that didn't work she stuffed his mouth with cotton wool until he choked to death.

Ffs the only possible excuse is complete insanity.

For me it's about likelihood.

What is more likely- that a previously unproblematic child suddenly turned murderous, or that a child in a terrible situation was temporarily irrational because she was unable to process what was happening to her, panicked, and did a terrible thing?

Every murderer 'suddenly' turns murderous when they kill for the first time? I mean, presumably she'd never been alone with a newborn baby before. The brutal method suggests absolute rage tbh.

Panicked?!? Over a few hours? The coroner said in his opinion the baby lived a couple of hours at least. In which she kept him quiet. I don't want to think how.

Allegedly cleaned up all the mess of childbirth so much so that her family were unaware in happened.

That's not the work of a panicked child

And nobody knows why teens murdering their unwanted babies isn't a far more common occurrence? I wonder if perhaps it's because most women and girls don't have a tendency to batter their newborns?

I find this mad. The whole course of conduct was completely chaotic and irrational. The reverse of calculating.
the jury found her guilty of murder and the judge was clear in his sentencing remarks. The determination of people here who have not heard any of the evidence to go behind these findings and construct a narrative which suits their preconceptions is just utterly bonkers.

She had 9 months to thinks about what she would do.

Even if she only had 23 minutes, that would be enough for most teens to decide that battering their baby was not an option. What made this girl different

Like I said before, her only excuse is complete insanity. Otherwise she's a murderer. Plain and simple.

That's what I'm saying. The vast majority of traumatised, distressed and neglected pregnant teens do NOT murder their kids. SHE did because that's what she is.

I mean where the hell do you draw the line, some of you? Newsflash, loads of murderers aren't 'OK in themselves.'

You can make every excuse there is to make, but anyone who stamps a newborn child to death.. their own child.. and stuffs their mouths until they choke is beyond the norm.

@AllOfThemWitches · Today 22:27

What is Infanticide? Can you answer?

Did you know that other baby killers have been charged with Infanticide?

What to your mind distinguishes this girl and the killing she is guilty of, from the older, woman, who was found guilty of Infanticide, which AP5Diva posted earlier? In that case the older woman used similar way of killing the baby.

A lesser crime than murder although still involves the killing of one's child. Why are you asking? I don't know exactly why she was found guilty of murder , I was not privy to the details thankfully.

AllOfThemWitches · Yesterday 23:32
A lesser crime than murder although still involves the killing of one's child. Why are you asking? I don't know exactly why she was found guilty of murder , I was not privy to the details thankfully.

The details of how the baby was most likely killed were in the judge’s summary posted here.

But I was asking you for your opinion as to why this brutal killing of a newborn baby by his 15 year old mother could be seen as different from a similarly brutal killing of a newborn baby by it’s more mature mother? (Links were posted recently by AP5Diva.)

The reason I asked you for your opinion on this was because you kept saying murder is murder, when Infanticide, is the unjustified brutal killing of a baby by its mother too.

So I wondered whether or not you could see a differential here between two similar killings ? Why might the older woman have been convicted for Infanticide rather than Murder in your opinion - if murder is murder?

I haven't read about 'the older woman' and don't particularly want to if it's as upsetting as this one. Maybe the jury believed there was a lesser degree of pre-planning? Maybe her actions afterwards made them feel she was remorseful? Maybe they believed her mind was more disturbed?

Yes - having sat on a few jury trials (have been called for jury service twice!) it just sounds like the kind of alternative explanation of the facts I've heard from defendants. It doesn't follow that they're suffering from false memory syndrome.

I keep coming back to the fact that if there was evidence that she was suffering from psychosis or false memory syndrome that would have been the basis of her defense. You simply can't jump to the conclusion that a defendant's statements in court are the result of psychosis etc if that's not been presented as an explanation.

I really don't know why they didn't opt to plead guilty to infanticide and present their evidence around her state of mind. Because the defense they opted for (essentially that the baby was potentially stillborn or fatally injured during the birth process, as oppose to due to intentionally actions to kill him) was quite clearly contradicted by the evidence.

I tend to agree that really this was infanticide. However (from what I've heard) I think I would have somewhat reluctantly found her guilty of murder as there was clear evidence of her killing the child, and not enough to demonstrate it was infanticide given she denied having killed him at all - you can only reach that conclusion through speculation about her state of mind.

I don't know enough about how appeals work - can they present an alternative defense at an appeal? Could she plead guilty to infanticide in an appeal.

I keep coming back to the fact that if there was evidence that she was suffering from psychosis or false memory syndrome that would have been the basis of her defense. You simply can't jump to the conclusion that a defendant's statements in court are the result of psychosis etc if that's not been presented as an explanation

Exactly that. If there was a sliver of a chance she’d be saved by having had psychosis, the defence would be all over that like a rash. They weren’t because it was proven that she wasn’t suffering from psychosis. She acted deliberately to snuff out her child’s life.

I doubt anyone was champing at the bit to find a young woman guilty of the murder of her own child. It appears the evidence showed that it was not infanticide but murder. Comparison with other women who have been found guilty of infanticide is unhelpful. Presumably those other women did show evidence of psychosis whereas Mayo did not. The judge hinted as to her thoughts/feelings in the sentencing statement. I think she was motivated by anger and/or hate.