Forcing Letby to Face Justice
Sadly every few months or so there is a crime so horrific that it captures the eye of the nation. The most recent example is Lucy Letby who was recently found guilty of murdering seven babies and seven counts of attempted murder. She is the most prolific killer of children in British history.
At her sentencing today it was decided that Letby will die in prison. That is the right outcome but much will be made of the former nurse’s decision not to appear in court herself and ‘face’ justice.
In recent times this has become a regular political football with both Labour and the Conservatives promising that something will be done to ensure that those convicted of such crimes have to be in court when the judge reads their sentence and, perhaps more importantly, when Victim Personal Statements are read out by those directly affected by the defendant’s actions.
Last year the Labour party suggested that those being sentenced should be forced to attend but what the shadow Secretary of State for Justice actually meant by this was that those who refused should be given a harsher sentence.
That is political speak for: ‘I’ve ran out of ideas.’
After all, what is a harsher sentence to someone like Lucy Letby who already knows that she will never see the outside of a prison ever again.
Despite its obvious flaw, at least that proposed solution has more intellectual honesty than what the Conservatives have suggested.
Earlier this year Jordan McSweeney was convicted of the murder of Zara Aleena but refused to attend his sentencing. This prompted the Justice Secretary at the time, Dominic Raab, to suggest that defendants might be forced to attend court and prison officers should be prepared to “manhandle somebody out of the cell”.
Of course the idea that someone who is manoeuvred in this way is then just going to sit quietly in court and listen patiently and thoughtfully is ridiculous. They are more likely to cause a disturbance or, worse, sit smugly in front of despairing families.
Now the former Justice Secretary, Sir Robert Buckland, has suggested that the Victims and Prisoners Bill that is making its way through Parliament gives the government an “opportunity for the government to act”. The problem, as ever, is that there is no sense of what a solution might actually look like.
That is because there probably isn’t a solution.
Piping the sentencing remarks into a cell might be something of a middle ground but you are just never going to have a defendant who does not want to be in court sit quietly and simply take their medicine.
The chances are that politicians know this very well but instead of confronting that truth they would rather engage in vacuous point-scoring.
This week on the podcast a case about competition law develops into proceedings that could decide the future of how litigation is funded in the UK.
Episode link: http://uklawweekly.com/2023-uksc-28/
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