84,181
edits
Lucy Letby: Difference between revisions
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
no edit summary
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit Advanced mobile edit |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit Advanced mobile edit |
||
| Line 19: | Line 19: | ||
For the scenario is one that unusually uncertain, about which the prospect of consensus is unusually low. It is not even clear that there was a wrongful killing here, let alone by whom. | For the scenario is one that unusually uncertain, about which the prospect of consensus is unusually low. It is not even clear that there was a wrongful killing here, let alone by whom. | ||
====Careful of that narrative, Eugene==== | |||
And there is a more visceral narrative frame at play, too, for the way the system has behaved Lucy Letby is either a monster or a scapegoat — there is no middle ground, where she is an ordinary kid, with her pluses and minuses, virtues and failings, just like the rest of us, available to her. She is either angel or devil. Given the probabilities at play — 99% of the population are neither — this seems an injustice in itself. | |||
The hard-edged peripheral evidence we do have can and has been coloured through that lens. Her apparently vivacious personality and active social life marks her out as a psychopath — ''corroborates'' her wickedness — or illustrates the single-mindedness with which a vicious system will crush an innocent, unsuspecting spirit. That she searched online for the parents of the deceased is consistent with either breathtaking malevolence — if she is guilty — or affecting compassion if she is not. Unless evidence can be shown that no innocent carer ever sought out her patients relatives on line, it is evidence of neither. We all Google individuals we meet in real life. This is perfectly normal behaviour. | |||
====Substance, form and process==== | ====Substance, form and process==== | ||
{{Drop|T|he first thing}} to bear in mind is the difference between the ''substantive'' — the wilful morally unjustified ending of a life (this is an ''ethical'' frame of reference), the ''formal'' — the commission of the act of murder as defined in law (in some ways an ethicist’s [[map]] of the [[territory]]: a systematic way of economically delivering that ethical framework), and the procedural — the process one must gone through to determine whether a murder was committed. This includes the the presumption of innocence, the adversarial tradition, the laws of evidence, the rules of court procedure, and tactics and strategies that defence and prosecution teams adopt within that milieu to best present their case, whose outcome is ultimately determined not by judges, lawyers, ethicists statisticians, physicians or metaphysicians but by 12 ordinary people, who may have none of these skills, drawn at random from the electoral roll. | {{Drop|T|he first thing}} to bear in mind is the difference between the ''substantive'' — the wilful morally unjustified ending of a life (this is an ''ethical'' frame of reference), the ''formal'' — the commission of the act of murder as defined in law (in some ways an ethicist’s [[map]] of the [[territory]]: a systematic way of economically delivering that ethical framework), and the procedural — the process one must gone through to determine whether a murder was committed. This includes the the presumption of innocence, the adversarial tradition, the laws of evidence, the rules of court procedure, and tactics and strategies that defence and prosecution teams adopt within that milieu to best present their case, whose outcome is ultimately determined not by judges, lawyers, ethicists statisticians, physicians or metaphysicians but by 12 ordinary people, who may have none of these skills, drawn at random from the electoral roll. | ||
These are different questions, with different considerations, and it is important they are not confused. A person who murders unobserved in cold blood, | These are different questions, with different considerations, and it is important they are not confused. A person who murders unobserved in cold blood, leaves no evidence, and has no motive cannot be convicted beyond reasonable doubt of murder ''unless no other explanation is possible''. The procedural element fails: there is not enough evidence. A person who kills in cold blood, before witnesses but in demonstrable, reasonable self-defence, cannot be convicted of murder because the formal elements are not met. She has a defence. | ||
Our justice system is meant to benefit the accused in marginal cases: we regard acquitting the occasional perpetrator as a lesser evil than convicting a single innocent. But even then we get it wrong sometimes. Cases involving medical misadventure and statistics are a recurring case of injustice. | |||
Where there is no | Where, as in these cases, there is no “direct” evidence, the form and procedure becomes all the more important. | ||
In Lucy Letby’s case there is no direct evidence. | In Lucy Letby’s case there is no direct evidence definitively linking her to a single murder. There is no direct evidence unequivocally suggesting there was a ''murder'' — as opposed to misadventure, negligence or even inadvertent accident — at all. But by the same token nor is there unequivocal evidence that any of these were not murders, nor that, if they were, Letby did not commit them. | ||
The internet is polarised around two highly unlikely contingencies. | |||
It is logically possible she ''did commit the murders, logically possible she did not, and logically possible she played a role in some or all of the deaths that did not amount to murder. | |||
The question of whether she should be convicted comes down, at some point, to an estimation of ''probabilities''. These inform how “sure” one can be about the proposition “defendant murdered victim”. | |||
These murder cases have an unusually wide range of unknowns. It is unclear whether there was any murder at all. The deaths could have been innocent, and they could have been culpable to some legal standard short of murder (negligence, for example) | |||
If you conclude that “foul play” (including negligence) is at work there is then the question of who did it. Did other personnel have an opportunity? | If you conclude that “foul play” (including negligence) is at work there is then the question of who did it. Did other personnel have an opportunity? | ||
====Emergence==== | |||
{{Drop|T|here is a}} kind of meta-statistics at play here too. For even if there is reasonable doubt for every individual case the unusual repetition of cases creates its own meta narrative. Roll once and get a six, and there is no surprise. Roll three sixes | |||
Each of these enquiries requires an answer “beyond reasonable doubt”. If a victim dies in the presence of a single person with a means and motive, such that if the death was intentional there is no other possible suspect, if there is a reasonable doubt as to the death being natural — even if it probably was not — there can be no conviction. | Each of these enquiries requires an answer “beyond reasonable doubt”. If a victim dies in the presence of a single person with a means and motive, such that if the death was intentional there is no other possible suspect, if there is a reasonable doubt as to the death being natural — even if it probably was not — there can be no conviction. | ||
{{Quote| | {{Quote| | ||