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  1. #51
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    We should be free to debate on death penalty

    This week marked the 50th anniversary of the last time anyone in Britain was hanged. Surveys conducted ever since have shown that a majority of people in the UK are in favour of the death penalty for the most serious of crimes, although this number is decreasing each year.

    That in itself is no surprise. To anyone under 60, the concept of someone facing their own execution at the end of a trial is alien. Our experience of capital punishment comes either from horror stories abroad (a stoning to death for adultery, a botched process in a US prison) or from school history lessons.

    The most recent survey conducted for the anniversary by YouGov showed that 45 % of the public are in favour of capital punishment, with 39 % against. The numbers of those in favour are higher amongst the older voters. A similar poll 4 years ago found that 51 % of the public favoured the reintroduction of capital punishment.

    Ukip MEP Louise Bours used the anniversary to call for the reintroduction of the death penalty, saying there was no 'ethical reason' for child-killers or police-killers to be kept alive. 'The death penalty won't bring back a tortured and murdered child, but it seems natural justice that the family will know the killer has paid the ultimate price and isn't still breathing when their child is not' she said.

    Personally, I have my reservations about the state having the power to end someone's life. The case of Derek Bentley highlights how the wrong decision can be made, even with a series of safety measures put in place to prevent this. The judge presiding over his trial for murder in 1952, Lord Goddard, said in the 1970s that he thought Bentley, who had not fired the shot which killed the policeman he was charged with murdering, would have been reprieved. Bentley suffered from what we would now call learning difficulties and had a low IQ and probably suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder following the Blitz, when the house he was in collapsed around him.

    Add to that the disputed words, 'Let him have it, Chris' - which could be taken as an instruction for his weapon-possessing partner to hand over the gun, not shoot the policeman - and it looks, even to the untrained eye, like an unsafe conviction. With the death penalty, any pardons can only be posthumous. There can be no return to freedom and liberty of the kind that we have seen with overturned prison sentences.

    But for me the issue doesn't just end there. Ukip believes in direct democracy: that is, letting the people decide. Last year there was a petition led by the Guido Fawkes blog which got 26,350 signatures. The aim was to secure a debate in Parliament on restoring capital punishment. But the point it entirely missed was that this decision, as with so many of the important decisions over Justice and Home Affairs, has been taken away from Parliament and the British people.

    For some people that is a reason why they support the European Court of Human Rights and our membership of the EU. These pieces of legislation stop the death penalty returning to our statute books. But even as someone who would vote against the reintroduction of capital punishment - not because I think everyone is fundamentally good but because I don't want the state to decide life or death - it is a basic issue of sovereignty which I believe should be decided by the people and not bureaucrats.

    My phone was rather busy the other day when 1 of the members of Ukip's Thanet South branch decided to tell a newspaper that I was standing in that constituency in 2015. The situation is that there will be a hustings in the constituency the week after next at which the branch will decide who they wish to represent them.

    I have thrown my hat in the ring, but so have others, including a top-class barrister and friend of mine. It may seem silly to some that the leader of a party would have to go through the process of being approved and selected but, I assure you, rank means nothing in Ukip.

    Just as I applied to stand again as a Ukip MEP and went through the same assessment as other candidates and faced the vote of the membership with everyone else, I believe that the power to select the person they will be pounding the streets in all weathers for lies with the members of the branch themselves. Of course I think I stand a good chance of winning. I have fought the seat before and it is in my home county of Kent and an area I have represented in the European Parliament since 1999. But with Ukip members, nothing is ever for certain. And that's just fine by me.

    (source: Nigel Farage, The Independent)
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  2. #52
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    UKIP leadership election: Bill Etheridge MEP calls for cheap beer and death penalty vote

    West Midlands MEP Bill Etheridge is standing to replace Nigel Farage as UKIP leader - with proposals including cheaper beer, justice for fathers and a referendum on bringing back the death penalty.

    Mr Etheridge, who is also a Dudley councillor, launched his campaign at the Seven Stars pub in Sedgley, saying: “I want us to represent the view of the people against the establishment.”

    It follows the resignation of UKIP leader Nigel Farage, who quit after the country voted to leave the European Union in last month’s referendum.

    And the MEP has set out a series of radical policies.

    They include holding a referendum on bringing back the death penalty for the most serious crimes.

    He said: “For my part I believe that the very worst crimes deserve the ultimate penalty and I propose that those who murder and rape children, those that commit sadistic acts of murder and torture and those that commit acts of murder through terrorism against our country or our people should be subject to the death penalty at the discretion of the presiding judge.”

    Other proposals include changing family law so that the default judgment when families break up is that both partners should be involved in parenting.

    In practice this would usually benefit fathers.

    Campaigners say two hundred children a day lose contact with their fathers due to judgments made in family courts, and Mr Etheridge says this helps explain why suicide is the biggest killer of men under fifty.

    He said: “If elected leader I shall be making this a key policy for UKIP, showing that we are so much more than a one issue party.”

    http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news...ridge-11641430
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  3. #53
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    45 years after Brit escort's hanging, many still support capital punishment return

    Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

    That was certainly the case for one Ruth Ellis, a British nightclub manager who shot her lover, racecar driver David Blakely, to death in 1955.

    Growing up in North Wales as one of six children, Ellis had to mature into adulthood early after becoming pregnant at age 17. One abusive marriage and two children later, Ellis made ends meet by becoming a prostitute, modelling and later dabbled in acting — achieving a bit part in the 1951 comedy Lady Godiva Rides Again.

    In 1953, Ellis became the manager of Little Club, a nightclub in Knightsbridge, a district in central London. According to The Guardian, it is there where she met and fell in love with the 25-year-old Blakely.

    Despite being engaged to another woman, Blakely moved in with Ellis within weeks of meeting. The relationship reportedly turned violent out of jealousy as both Ellis and Blakely dated other people while together.

    In one instance, Blakely punched a pregnant Ellis in the stomach during an argument, causing her to miscarry. Blakely wanted to end the relationship, but his lover wanted no part of that.

    So one day, Ellis sought the man out in Hampstead, where he had been laying low with some pals. On Easter Sunday in 1955, Ellis waited for Blakely to depart the Magdala pub where she would be waiting outside with a .38 calibre Smith & Wesson revolver.

    In cold blood, Ellis shot Blakely twice to take him down. The woman then stood over a wounded Ellis and shot him three more times, killing him.

    The Irish Times reported Ellis then calmly gave her gun to an off-duty cop.

    “Will you call the police?” Ellis asked the officer.

    “I am the police,” the cop replied.

    “Will you please arrest me?” Ellis questioned.

    During her two-day murder trial, Ellis lacked remorse when questioned by prosecutor Christmas Humphreys on the motive behind Blakely’s killing.

    “It is obvious when I shot him I intended to kill him,” Ellis told the court, as reported by the Guardian.

    It didn’t take long — 25 minutes — for a jury to render a guilty verdict. With the verdict came an automatic death sentence.

    There were attempts to stop Ellis’ execution, but they were unsuccessful.

    On July 13, 1955 at the age of 28, Ellis was hanged.

    Ellis’ execution spawned a movement to abolish the death penalty in Britain. The fatal practice was put to bed a decade later.

    Ellis is on record as the last woman to be executed in the U.K.

    Some 65 years after her death, the concept of capital punishment is still debated in countries such as Canada.

    Earlier this year, a survey conducted by Research Co. noted more than half of Canadians were in favour of bringing back the death penalty to our country.

    Capital punishment was extinguished in Canada in 1976.

    Research Co’s poll noted 51% of Canadians support the reinstatement of death penalty for murder, with the highest amount of supporters aged 55 and older. The company also queried Americans and their support for capital punishment, yielding 59% in favour of the death penalty.

    “A sizeable majority of Canadians who are in favour of the return of the death penalty (57%) believe it would save taxpayers money and the costs associated with having murderers in prison,” Mario Canseco, president of Research Co. said in a media release. “In the United States, only 43% of supporters of capital punishment feel the same way.”

    In a poll conducted by Sun Media in 2012, 63% of Canadians supported capital punishment for dangerous offenders. The 2012 poll reaffirmed decades-old debate whether the death penalty is a good idea.

    https://www.simcoereformer.ca/news/w..._autoplay=true
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  4. #54
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Bodies of hanged men to be exhumed

    The bodies of men hanged at Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow are set to be exhumed when the Victorian jail is demolished.

    Construction of a new prison called HMP Glasgow is due to being in the next few months on a site a mile away, and Barlinnie will be sold, but first the bodies must be removed.

    The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) said it would need to obtain permission from a sheriff for the bodies to be dug up. If this is granted, it will try to contact relatives of the executed men and give them the choice of whether they want the remains to be reburied or cremated. Where no relative can be traced, the body will be cremated. The demolition is scheduled for 2025.

    It is not known how many men have been hanged at Barlinnie since its construction in 1882, but during the final years of the death penalty in the UK, between 1946 and 1960, 10 men were hanged there.

    The last, in 1960, was 19-year-old Anthony Miller, convicted of murder during a robbery which went wrong. His final words, uttered to hangman Harry Allen, were reportedly “Please, Mister.”

    The previous execution, in 1958, was of Peter Manuel, known as the Beast of Birkenshaw, who was convicted of 9 murders but may have killed at least 9 more in the west of Scotland. The 31-year-old reportedly turned to Allen at the gallows and said: “Turn up the radio and I’ll go quietly.”

    A number of bodies were discovered in the grounds of Barlinnie during pipe-laying work in the 1970s, and they were reburied elsewhere on the site. The jail’s execution suite was finally demolished in the 1990s.

    SPS spokesman Tom Fox said: “I was given Peter Manuel’s file and discovered the Lord Provost paid for executions in Glasgow. The block and the rope used in the hangings were sent by train from the Home Office in London and returned there after the execution.

    “Hangings usually took place at 08:00 and within an hour the body was in its grave, covered in lime. Prison officers then posted a bulletin on the main prison gate.”

    During the 1950s, protests against the death penalty were often staged outside prisons when an execution was being carried out within its walls.

    The last man to be executed in Scotland was Henry John Burnett, who was hanged for murder at Craiginches jail in Aberdeen in 1963. In 2014, when the jail closed, prison chiefs gained permission to exhume his remains and they were taken to the city’s crematorium.

    (source: insidetime.org)
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  5. #55
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Ted's Avatar
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    Apparently Peter Manuel was American born too? That’s the weirdest story I’ve heard of someone pretending to be Scottish since JK Rowling.
    Violence and death seem to be the only answers that some people understand.

  6. #56
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    Marking the 479th anniversary of Catherine Howard’s execution

    On 13 February in 1542, Catherine Howard met her tragic end. The youngest of Henry VIII’s consorts, Howard and her short tenure, is often forgotten for Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. However, her execution was nothing like that of her cousin Boleyn.

    The daughter of Lord Edmund Howard and Joyce Culpeper, Howard was born sometime around 1523. After her mother died and her father remarried, she was raised in her step-grandmother’s household. The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk had a large household and many young women were sent to her to be educated.

    While she was living there, Howard caught the eye of her music tutor, Henry Mannox, and many historians believe that their relationship was inappropriate on many levels. She cut this relationship off but was then pursued by the Dowager Duchess’s secretary, Francis Dereham. They called each other “husband and wife”, and were reportedly lovers. Their relationship ended when Dereham had to go to Ireland, though they probably intended to reunite upon his return.

    Howard caught the King’s eye while serving as a Lady-in-Waiting to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, in 1540. His fourth marriage ended quickly in annulment after claiming that Anne looked nothing like her portrait and because Howard had piqued his attention. By this point in time, Henry was largely overweight and in considerable pain from older injuries; the young, beautiful woman provided excitement and youth for the King.

    They married on 28 July 1540 at Oatlands Palace, and Howard took to life as queen. She adored receiving new clothes and jewels almost daily and enjoyed court entertainments. However, her young age and past worked against her. She had little experience of court machinations, and several people from her past life in Norfolk asked for places in her household, including Dereham.

    Howard may have been involved with one of the King’s courtiers, Thomas Culpeper. Jane Boleyn, one of her Ladies-In-Waiting purportedly arranged their secret meetings. Word quickly spread at court, and the many people who wanted to remove the Howard faction at court seized their opportunity.

    On 1 November 1541, the King received an anonymous letter detailing Howard’s conduct, and a week later, Archbishop Thomas Cramner questioned her. She was immediately inconsolable, and Cramner had everything removed that she could have used to harm herself. On the 23rd of that month, she was stripped of her title. Both Culpeper and Dereham were executed on 10 December for high treason, for their supposed relationships with her.

    Howard stayed in a state of limbo, until 7 February 1542 when Parliament passed an act of attainder against her. By 10 February, she had been taken to the Tower of London through Traitor’s Gate to await her execution. Although she was screaming and crying while being taken to the Tower, she understood the gravity of her situation. While her cousin Boleyn had hoped to the last moment to receive a reprieve, Howard knew that nothing would come. She requested an execution block to practice laying her head down.

    On the morning of 13 February, she went to the executioner’s block. Witnesses commented on her composure and calmness. There is a legend that says her last words were “I die a Queen but I would rather have died the wife of a Culpeper” but there are no contemporary accounts to confirm this.

    Howard was buried in an unmarked grave in the chapel of St. Peter Ad Vincula, where cousins were also buried. Many bodies were identified from the chapel during Queen Victoria’s reign, but unfortunately, Howard wasn’t one of them. She is now commemorated on the chapel’s west wall and on the memorial to those executed at the Tower outside of the chapel.

    https://royalcentral.co.uk/interests...cution-155734/
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  7. #57
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Isis fanatic handed whole-life jail sentence for murder of MP Sir David Amess

    The ‘bloodthirsty’ terrorist who stabbed Sir David Amess to death as he held a constituency surgery will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

    Jurors took just 18 minutes to find Ali Harbi Ali guilty of murdering the MP for Southend West at Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea.

    On October 15 last year, the ISIS fanatic told Sir David he was ‘sorry’ before stabbing him more than 20 times with a foot-long carving knife.

    He admitted to killing the Conservative backbencher after tricking his office into believing he was a healthcare worker moving to the area.

    The school drop-out, from Kentish Town, north London, also said he’d plotted to kill other MPs including Michael Gove.

    But he denied charges of murder and preparing acts of terrorism on the basis that he was ‘protecting’ other Muslims in Syria.

    Ali, 26, told the court Sir David’s ‘deserved to die’ because he voted in favour of airstrikes in the Middle Eastern country in 2014 and 2015, claiming he had no regrets.

    Ali’s barrister Tracy Ayling QC, said she had been ‘specifically instructed’ by her client not to address the judge in mitigation.

    Mr Justice Sweeney handed the killer a rare-whole life order at the Old Bailey today – meaning he will never be eligible for release and will die in jail.

    In his sentencing remarks, he said: ‘I express the court’s sincere admiration of the brave and dignified way the family have handled their loss and the ordeal of the trial, that was brought upon them by the defendant’s cowardly refusal to accept his guilt.’

    The judge added: ‘This was carried out in revenge for losses by IS in Syria. It was done with the intention of influencing the government and thereby advancing a religious or ideological cause, namely that of Islamic State.

    ‘The defendant has no remorse or shame for what he has done – quite the reverse.’

    He added: ‘Sir David had done nothing whatsoever to justify the attack on him. On the contrary, he had devoted 38 years of his life to the service of the public.

    ‘He engaged in doing it when he was murdered. The loss is one of national significance.’

    The judge said Sir David ‘fought bravely and hard against the attack’, but was ‘overwhelmed’ by the ‘younger and larger’ assailant.

    After the sentencing, the MP’s family said his murder was ‘beyond evil’ and that they felt ‘no elation’ following the hearing.

    They added: ‘It breaks our heart to know that our husband and father would have greeted the murderer with a smile of friendship.’

    The court previously heard how Ali, who grew up in Croydon, south London, became known to authorities around the same time his performance at school started dipping.

    He became radicalised after watching ISIS propaganda videos and witnessing the brutality of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

    Ali was referred to the Government’s Prevent counter-terrorism programme, but he continued plotting an attack in secret.

    The aspiring doctor considered travelling to fight in Syria, but by 2019, he’d settled on carrying out an attack in the UK instead.

    Around the time of the murder, Ali sent a WhatsApp message to friends and family, justifying his attack as being in the ‘name of Allah’.

    Sir David, a 69-year-old father-of-five, screamed as a knife was plunged into him and died at the scene.

    Ali, the son of a former media adviser to a prime minister of Somalia, was later apprehended by two police officers who were only armed with batons and spray.

    Essex Police Chief Superintendent Simon Anslow said: ‘They’ve basically gone in armed with a stick – something that appears smaller than a deodorant can – to deal with a man that has just committed an absolutely heinous act, still armed with that knife. I think it’s an astounding act of bravery.’

    The pair, who bundled the attacker down to the floor at the church, were later given awards for their bravery.

    In a victim impact statement, Julie Cushion, one of Sir David’s members of staff, said she ‘can’t get the perpetrator’s face, as he was led away, out of my mind’, adding: ‘He looked so smug, and so self satisfied.’

    Ali told detectives he had spent years planning to kill an MP and had previously carried out reconnaissance at the Houses of Parliament, and of two other MPs, including cabinet minister Michael Gove.

    He said he had ‘bottled’ previous attacks and had settled on Amess because he was ‘the easiest’.

    Ali, who described himself as ‘moderate’, also mentioned the lawmaker’s membership of the Conservative Friends of Israel Group.

    The London-born terrorist told the court: ‘If I thought I did anything wrong, I wouldn’t have done it.’

    Sir David’s death sent shockwaves throughout Westminster and led to renewed concerns about the safety of politicians in the UK.

    It came just five years after the murder of Jo Cox, who was shot and stabbed multiple times by right-wing extremist Thomas Alexander Mair ahead of the EU referendum.

    A week after Sir David’s death, MPs were offered security guards at their constituency surgeries.

    Today the prosecution read a statement from MP for Finchley and Golders Green Mike Freer, who said Ali visited his constituency months before the murder.

    He said he and his staff are now wearing stab proof vests when meeting members of the public.

    ‘It’s put profound pressure on our lives. I’ve found the impact of losing David has been enormous,’ Michael Gove said in a statement.

    Ali refused to stand in the dock on ‘religious grounds’ as the jury delivered their verdict on Monday.

    Richard Hillgrove, a friend and colleague of Sir David who spoke to him on a Zoom call moments before his murder, said the trial was a ‘sad day’ for the legal system.

    He told Metro.co.uk: ‘It’s quite a chilling day. He exercised his legal right to a trial but I don’t know how he could say he was not guilty before standing in court admitting to everything and finding everything amusing.’

    https://metro.co.uk/2022/04/13/isis-...tence-16457266
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

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  8. #58
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    The brutal murder of a Welsh boxer and the execution of a 'killer' the victim himself exonerated

    Boxer Dai Lewis was murdered in Cardiff city centre almost a century ago and two men were hanged. But just hours before his death, and following the fatal attack, Lewis said one of the men executed for his murder 'had nothing to do with it'

    On a September night in 1927 boxer and bookmaker Dai Lewis lay dying in a pool of blood in a Cardiff street. His neck had been slashed. Stood over the dying man in St Mary Street were brothers and gang bosses Edward and John Rowlands plus Danny Driscoll, one of the bookmakers involved in the pair's racecourse extortion rackets. A few months later both Driscoll and Edward Rowlands would be hanged for murder.

    Dai Lewis' murder has remained in the public eye ever since. The notorious Forty Thieves gang terrorised local racecourses at the time and the Rowlands brothers ran a protection gang that Lewis had been seen standing up to at Chepstow Racecourse just days earlier, investigating detectives had found at the time. Driscoll, a former World War One gunner, had been brought in by the brothers for a revenge killing.

    On September 29, 1927, Dai Lewis was drinking in the Blue Anchor pub in St Mary Street. The Rowlands brothers and Danny Driscoll were also there while another gang member, William Joseph Price, was in a café across the road. When Lewis had left the pub, he was wrestled to the ground by Driscoll and had his throat slit by John Rowlands.

    At the time the South Wales Echo reported the claims of a prostitute who vouched for Driscoll's innocence saying he had not touched Lewis. The injured man was rushed to Cardiff Royal Infirmary but, throughout the night, there were mysterious calls from the same number inquiring about Lewis' condition.

    The calls were traced to the Colonial Club in Custom House Street and there, in the early hours of the following morning, the Rowlands brothers, along with John Hughes, Danny Driscoll, and William Joseph Price, were arrested. From his bedside, where the arrested men had been taken, Lewis made a final declaration and signalled that Driscoll and Edward Rowlands were innocent.

    To Danny Driscoll he said: “You had nothing to do with it. We were laughing together... my dear old pal.” Within hours of making that declaration Lewis was dead. While Hughes was released without charge the remaining four men went to trial within eight weeks.

    A 5,000-strong crowd congregated outside the court on the first day. They men appeared together at Glamorgan Assizes on November 29, 1927, charged with Lewis' murder. All pleaded not guilty.

    While Price was deemed to have been too drunk to take part in the murder and acquitted of the crime the Rowlands brothers and Driscoll were convicted and sentenced to death. However around 250,000 people reportedly signed a petition demanding a reprieve, convinced by an alternative explanation that the murder was accidental and that the brothers had meant to just hurt Lewis rather than kill him.

    Following the verdict author Brian Lee says that £600 was collected to pay the costs of Driscoll's appeal. As he awaited his fate Driscoll wrote letters to his friends. One sent to old Neath boxer Shonon Thomas read: "Well, old son, as you say, I am in a tight corner... But something may turn up... and if nothing turns up, well, I will have to make the best of it and that's all about it."

    Another letter read: "The appeal is being heard next week. But I am afraid it is only a 100-1 chance. Still, 100-1 chances have won the Derby and we will have to do what Asquith said once and wait and see. Well, goodnight old pal. All the best, your old pal, Danny Driscoll."

    Shortly after the trial John Rowlands was committed to Broadmoor having been found unfit to be hanged. Edward Rowlands and Driscoll, however, would not escape the same fate. On January 27, 1928, the two men were hanged for murder.

    But, decades later, there were still calls for a posthumous appeal for Driscoll. The late Bernard de Maid was a top Cardiff solicitor who helped free the Cardiff Three as well as overturning the wrongful conviction and execution of Mahmood Mattan. He took up Driscoll's case in the late 1990s, saying that the existence of John Rowlands' mental health records could prove that his accomplices were unaware he would carry out the murder.

    "The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has told me it has John Rowlands' mental health records from Broadmoor," he told the BBC back in 2003. "Their existence is interesting because if they show that John Rowlands was mad at the time of the murder then the two men executed – Edward Rowlands and Danny Driscoll – could not have aided and abetted him as they could not have known what he was about to do. This is a fresh argument for Danny Driscoll's innocence."

    Chris Driscoll, Danny's nephew, had employed Mr de Maid in an attempt to get his uncle's conviction overturned. Mr de Maid had previously submitted evidence from the investigation in the 1920s to the CCRC in 1999 and the case was eventually considered in 2002. But the CCRC told him that the case to clear Driscoll's name could not continue without actual court transcripts. Almost a century on the names of two men who paid the ultimate price remain the names of convicted killers.

    https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/w...ution-25541597
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

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  9. #59
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    Lucy Letby motive: Why did serial killer nurse murder seven babies?

    Prosecutors put forward several possible motives as to why Letby murdered babies

    Nurse Lucy Letby has been found guilty of murdering seven babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital in a rare case that has shocked the nation.

    An independent inquiry has been set up to understand how Letby was able to carry out the killings and attempt six others before being reported to the police.

    The reasons why Letby, a neonatal nurse, committed the murders may never be fully understood, although prosecutors and other experts told jurors during her trial of several possible motivations.

    To gain attention of doctor colleague she was ‘infatuated’ with

    One motivation put forward by the prosecution was that Letby attacked and killed babies in her care to gain the sympathy of a doctor who she had become “infatuated” with.

    It was alleged she wanted to make herself the centre of his attention and focus.

    Throughout the trial, Letby showed no flicker of emotion until 16 February when the medic, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, confirmed his name after he swore on oath.

    Letby and people in the public gallery could not see the married registrar because he had asked to give his evidence from behind a screen.

    His voice prompted her to break down in tears as she abruptly left her seat and walked towards the exit door of the dock.

    When the time came for her to enter the witness box, she said she loved the doctor as a “trusted friend” but was not in love with him romantically.

    She denied claims by the prosecution that she was “infatuated” with the doctor.

    She enjoyed ‘playing God’

    Child P, one of the triplets Letby murdered, collapsed on 24 June 2016 and preparations were to move him to another hospital.

    Shortly before the planned transfer, Letby is said to have told a colleague - the one she was accused of being infatuated with - "he’s not leaving here alive, is he?".

    During Letby’s trial, prosecutor Nick Johnson KC said she made the comment because she "knew what was going to happen".

    He said: "She was controlling things. She was enjoying what was going on and happily predicting something she knew was going to happen.

    "She, in effect, was playing God."

    Letby had earlier pumped air into Child P’s stomach as she fed him milk – just 13 minutes after murdering Child, one of his brothers.

    Letby got a ‘thrill’ from the ‘grief and despair’ of parents

    Letby acted unusually when the babies she killed or tried to murder suddenly declined, parents and other nurses on the ward where she worked said.

    The parents of Child I, who died after repeated attacks by Letby, told police they remembered her “smiling and going on about how she was present at [Child I’s] first bath and how much she had loved it”.

    Mr Johnson KC suggested to Letby that she was “getting a thrill out of what you were watching, the grief and despair, in that room”.

    Letby denied the accusation.

    The serial killer also searched Facebook for the families of her victims on the anniversaries of their deaths and would often look for a number of them within minutes of each other.

    In one instance she carried out a search on Christmas Day. Letby, giving evidence, said she would search for all sorts of people – not just the parents of babies on the unit.

    She found caring for less sick infants ‘boring’

    Letby is said to have argued with a senior colleague when asked to work in an “outside nursery” where babies were treated in preparation for going home.

    The unit was split into four rooms – intensive care in nursery one, high dependency care in nursery two and the “outside nurseries” of rooms three and four, the court was told.

    Senior nurse Kathryn Percival-Calderbank told jurors that Letby was “unhappy” if she was allocated shifts in either room three or four.

    She said: “She expressed that she was unhappy at being put in the outside nurseries.

    “She said it was boring and she didn’t want to feed babies. She wanted to be in the intensive care”.

    Mrs Percival-Calderbank, who qualified as a nurse in 1988, added: “If anything was going on within nursery one you would find she would migrate there, as we would all do to go and help. She would definitely end up in nursery one to assist.

    “It was more that we were worried for Lucy’s mental heath because it can be upsetting, emotional and sometimes exhausting as well at the end of a shift, if you’re constantly put in that stressed situation all the time.

    “Sometimes you’ve got to come out of that environment and be in an outside nursery.”

    Letby was ‘not good enough to care for them’

    Letby wrote “I AM EVIL I DID THIS” on a post-it note found by police at her home, in what was the closest the prosecution got to a confession.

    She also wrote: “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them. I will never marry or have children. I will never know what it’s like to have a family.”

    Letby told the court the notes, written after she was suspended from work pending an investigation, showed the ramblings of her mental anguish following the deaths of the babies in her care.

    The nurse said the notes also contained protestation of innocence and they were never held up in court as concrete proof of her motive.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-b2395882.html
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

  10. #60
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    As of Saturday August 19, ahead of formal sentencing at Manchester Crown Court Monday August 21, Letby is refusing to appear in Court. Mr. Justice James Goss is expected to hand down a rare sentence of Life without Parole for the murder of seven babies and attempted murder of six others.
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

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