I am reposting this very important section by @ArabellaScott
from page 3 of the original thread which I had not read carefully enough the first time. Original thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4833778-teenager-guilty-of-murder posted by @placemats
This is because Arabella copied and pasted some of this article that otherwise has to be signed into to read.
https://www.britishjournalofmidwifery.com/content/legal/dealing-with-incidents-of-feticide-and-infanticide-in-england-and-wales
It is very interesting to see that the CPS are never in practice charging someone with Infanticide, only Murder.
Even though Infanticide is a crime in its own right.
So no wonder Paris Mayo never got the chance to have Infanticide explained to her and plead guilty to that.
Then she would have been tried on the basis of the Murder/ or diminished responsibility dyad
with the prosecution expert emphasising, on the basis of webcam footage of her, that she did not have diminished responsibility from a mental illness and so was guilty of murder,
and the judge only at the last minute - before they retired- being able to tell the jury they could alternatively find her guilty of Infanticide.
So no, how could the jury have had any instruction in Infanticide, other than the bare legal definition.
Talk about skewing the odds. Trial by CPS. Shocking.
The CPS is just slipping Infanticide out of its proper place in criminal law, even though The Court of Appeal recognised its importance by overturning a murder verdict, in favour of Infanticide, as recently as 2018.
This is all quoted from page 3 thread 1:
ArabeIIaScott · 23/06/2023 23:40
From that same article:
'The 1938 Act, section 1 (1) provides that:
‘Where a woman by any wilful act or omission causes the death of her child being a child under the age of 12 months, but at the time of the act or omission the balance of her mind was disturbed by reason of her not having fully recovered from the effect of giving birth to the child or by reason of the effect of lactation consequent upon the birth of the child, then, notwithstanding that the circumstances were such that but for this Act the offence would have amounted to murder, she shall be guilty of felony, to wit of infanticide, and may for such offence be dealt with and punished as if she had been guilty of the offence of manslaughter of the child.’
Infanticide may also be used as a fall back offence where a woman, initially charged with murder, is found not guilty by the jury who then return a verdict of infanticide instead.
In response to a recent freedom of information request, the Crown Prosecution Service do not use infanticide as an alternative offence. In all six cases where women were found guilty of infanticide or attempted infanticide they were initially charged with murder and left to the jury to decide if infanticide occurred (Crown Prosecution Service, 2014).
A verdict of infanticide allows the court to deal with the case as if the woman had been guilty of manslaughter. This gives the courts a wider range of sentencing options than the mandatory life sentence imposed for murder. In practice, a custodial sentence is rare. In R v Sainsbury (1990), a 17-year-old woman pleaded guilty to infanticide. She had become pregnant at 14 and had not told anyone. She had given birth unaided in a bathroom and taken the baby, wrapped it in a blanket and placed it in a river. The judge sentencing her said that he accepted that she was very immature and greatly disturbed by the effect of giving birth, but said that her responsibility was not removed altogether so sentenced her to 12 months' detention in a young offenders' institution.'