[lit-ideas] Re: Assault Crimes
- From: "Judith Evans" <judithevans1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 22:09:27 +0100
>Someone, maybe Judy, said it was the other way around
Here, Murder One and Murder Two do not exist, only murder. Here, also,
someone can be convicted of murder even if there was no intent to
kill. (I see that that can be true in the US also, but the proposed changes
to our laws are supposed to make them more like yours, perhaps
to add a Murder Two.)
>The FBI asks police to list every homicide as murder, even if the case
> isn't subsequently prosecuted or proceeds on a lesser charge,
I'd not heard that -- but presumably statistics exist for convictions for
Murder One and Murder Two (=murder here?) and manslaughter?
>By contrast, the English police "massage down" the homicide statistics,
>tracking each case through the courts and removing it if it is reduced
>to a lesser charge or determined to be an accident or self-defense,
I wouldn't call this a massaging down.
this is from the reason.com piece:
>. In 1999 Tony Martin, a 55-year-old Norfolk farmer living alone
>in a shabby farmhouse, awakened to the sound of breaking glass
> as two burglars, both with long criminal records, burst into his
>home. He had been robbed six times before, and his village,
>like 70 percent of rural English communities, had no police presence.
>He sneaked downstairs with a shotgun and shot at the intruders.
>Martin received life in prison for killing one burglar, 10 years for
>wounding the second, and a year for having an unregistered shotgun.
Tony Martin lay in wait for burglars, his gun ready. The two young burglars,
who
were unarmed, were running away -- trying to get through a window --
after being attacked by Martin's Rottweilers. The young man who died
was pleading for his life.
I quote the judge
"The law is that every citizen is entitled to use reasonable force to
prevent crime."
that doesn't include shooting an unarmed burglar in the back while he's running
away.
Martin was sentenced to life but later found guilty not of murder but of
manslaughter
(after a court accepted evidence that he was suffering from a paranoid
personality disorder).
He was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment. He was released after
serving two-thirds of that sentence.
The wounded burglar decided not to apply for the money to sue Martin.
What bits of this could the Reason.com writer not have known?
Probably only the exact date of Martin's release and the burglar's decision not
to sue; Martin's conviction and sentence had been amended well
before the date of the Reason article.
Judy Evans, Cardiff
----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence Helm
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 8:45 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Assault Crimes
I was referring to this: "The murder rates of the U.S. and U.K. are also
affected by differences in the way each counts homicides. The FBI asks police
to list every homicide as murder, even if the case isn't subsequently
prosecuted or proceeds on a lesser charge, making the U.S. numbers as high as
possible. By contrast, the English police "massage down" the homicide
statistics, tracking each case through the courts and removing it if it is
reduced to a lesser charge or determined to be an accident or self-defense,
making the English numbers as low as possible."
From this: http://www.reason.com/0211/fe.jm.gun.shtml
Someone, maybe Judy, said it was the other way around and I don't have any
additional info at this point.
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Robert Paul
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 12:00 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Assault Crimes
> To Paul Stone: In one of the articles I posted there was indication
> that the U.S. looks worse in the murder category because it counts
> every homicide as a murder whereas, apparently, other nations count
> them as other things.
I don't understand this. Who in the US counts every homicide as murder?
Some government agency? The criminal justice system doesn't count every
homicide as murder. I mean, to what does 'it' refer?
Robert Paul
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