LYDIA REID wrote:
Clare wrote:
I'm wondering why it would be any worse hanging a woman than a man personally. I would find both equally horrific.

So would I Claire, I just think it may be more difficult for the person to do if it were a female. Then again, maybe not, the Person who would execute a person, as their job, must have hardness inside to do this as a job.

I wonder if prison officers used to do this as part of their job or did they bring in someone to do this?

They brought the executioner in.

Albert Pierrepoint was the most famous.

TLJ wrote:
They brought the executioner in.

Albert Pierrepoint was the most famous.

And he proclaimed against the death penalty.

Brenna1508 wrote:
Lydia wrote: When I think of the death penalty it is that young lad who had mental health issues I think of. I can't remember his name.
His name was Derek Bentley.

Wiki has a list of Miscarriages of justice, including wrongful hangings at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage_of_justice
Scroll down to the section entitled "United Kingdom".

Thanks for that Brenna.

It made interesting reading, the law has changed and for the better when you read cases like that one.

I note rather than mental health issues it states Derek Bentley had a low intelligence. At no time did the law actually state he was innocent though.

TLJ wrote:
LYDIA REID wrote:
Clare wrote:
I'm wondering why it would be any worse hanging a woman than a man personally. I would find both equally horrific.

So would I Claire, I just think it may be more difficult for the person to do if it were a female. Then again, maybe not, the Person who would execute a person, as their job, must have hardness inside to do this as a job.

I wonder if prison officers used to do this as part of their job or did they bring in someone to do this?

They brought the executioner in.

Albert Pierrepoint was the most famous.

Thanks for that TLJ now I feel sure it must be a "different" type of person to be an executioner.

I just cannot imagine a person, well it was probably a man, getting up in the morning eating his porridge, taking the dog for a walk, kissing his wife goodbye saying well "I am off to my work" "what are you up to today then" "Oh it is the Derek Bentley execution today"

The Derek Bentley story was that he was innocent but he was old enough to hang whereas his accomplice wasn't.

This is from the article that Brenna posted



Following the execution there was a public sense of unease about the decision, resulting in a long campaign, mostly led by Bentley's sister Iris, to secure a posthumous pardon for him. In March 1966 his remains were removed from Wandsworth Prison and reburied in a family grave. Then on 29 July 1993 Bentley was granted a Royal Pardon in respect of the sentence of death passed upon him and carried out but it still maintained he was guilty of having carried out the murder.

Eventually, on 30 July 1998, the Court of Appeal set aside Bentley's conviction for murder 45 years earlier.

Though Bentley had not been accused of attacking any of the police officers being shot at by Craig, for him to be convicted of murder as an accessory in a joint enterprise it was necessary for the prosecution to prove that he knew that Craig had a deadly weapon when they began the break-in.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Bingham of Cornhill ruled that Lord Goddard had not made it clear to the jury that the prosecution was required to have proved Bentley had known that Craig was armed. He further ruled that Lord Goddard had failed to raise the question of Bentley's withdrawal from their joint enterprise. This would require the prosecution to prove the absence of any attempt by Bentley to signal to Craig that he wanted Craig to surrender his weapons to the police. Lord Bingham ruled that Bentley's trial had been unfair, in that the judge had misdirected the jury and, in his summing-up, had put unfair pressure on the jury to convict. It is possible that Lord Goddard may have been under pressure while summing up since much of the evidence was not directly relevant to Bentley's defence. It is important to note that Lord Bingham did not rule that Bentley was innocent, merely that there had been defects in the trial process. Had Bentley been alive in July 1998 or had been convicted of the offence in more recent years, it would have been likely that he would have faced a retrial.

Reading this I would feel he was innocent he did not pull the trigger but he was never pronounced innocent in law which I presume is what his family would have preferred.

dws wrote:
His IQ was below 100.

The average IQ of the population is reckoned to be 100 so there are millions of people with double digit IQs.

There was much debate about the significance of the words shouted by Bentley "Let him have it." at the time. The meaning of the call was debatable. Did he mean "Give him the gun?" or "Shoot him." Either way he did not pull the trigger and his accomplice was too young to hang while Bentley was not.

Levenax wrote:
[quote]Bananaman wrote:
Barry George sounds like a real weirdo who poses a danger to women. He's probably the type who should be locked up anyway but it looks as if it maybe wasn't him who killed Ms Dando.

The world has many weirdos and it depends on your view of what is 'normal' as to what you class as weird. Which is why I'm against depicting someone as a 'weirdo' and then raising public outcry against them.

However the point you raise, and that hasn't been raised here before, is that SOMEONE killed Ms Dando and due to the horlicks that has been made of the case by the investigating officers that person is STILL out there. This is the real tragedy of this case. She's dead and her killer is still FREE.

Bananaman wrote:
[quote]Levenax wrote:
[quote]Bananaman wrote:
Barry George sounds like a real weirdo who poses a danger to women. He's probably the type who should be locked up anyway but it looks as if it maybe wasn't him who killed Ms Dando.

The world has many weirdos and it depends on your view of what is 'normal' as to what you class as weird. Which is why I'm against depicting someone as a 'weirdo' and then raising public outcry against them.

However the point you raise, and that hasn't been raised here before, is that SOMEONE killed Ms Dando and due to the horlicks that has been made of the case by the investigating officers that person is STILL out there. This is the real tragedy of this case. She's dead and her killer is still FREE.[/qute]

B'man, the point you ignore is that George was a seriel stalker of women. I'm alarmed at the number of men in this forum who are happy to overlook that. That isn't to say he killed Jill Dando incidentally, but nevertheless it is worrying the number of men who appear to see stalking as "harmless".

dws wrote:
I don't think it's a question of the guy being 'fitted up', contrary to popular opinion the police don't find someone they don't like and then pin a crime to them, not on my watch in any rate.

You mean like Colin Stagg?

Yet another case of fitting-up the local weirdo.

Some of the same people involved & from the outset they admitted a proactive targetting of Stagg, aimed at creating evidence.

eg Paul Britton:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2377235.stm


We need to be exceptionally hard on this as it would be a very bad idea to let these people scrounge off the state for years by getting themselves fitted up!

Bananaman wrote:
SOMEONE killed Ms Dando and due to the horlicks that has been made of the case by the investigating officers that person is STILL out there. This is the real tragedy of this case. She's dead and her killer is still FREE.

Remember that this happened shortly after NATO forces took-out the TV station in Belgrade, killing several prominent Serbian journalists & personalities.

Which resulted in Serbs making promises of reprisals against media here & IIRC, Dando had expressed support for the Bosnian side by fronting appeals for aid etc.

pogofish wrote:
[quote]Bananaman wrote:
Remember that this happened shortly after NATO forces took-out the TV station in Belgrade, killing several prominent Serbian journalists & personalities.

Which resulted in Serbs making promises of reprisals against media here & IIRC, Dando had expressed support for the Bosnian side by fronting appeals for aid etc.

You just can't beat a good conspiracy theory.

Especially since they're often more believable than the tripe that 'official sources' come out with.

dws wrote:
TLJ wrote:
They brought the executioner in.

Albert Pierrepoint was the most famous.

And he proclaimed against the death penalty.

For info, there's a film on about him tonight. It's at 9.00 on S T V

TLJ wrote:
dws wrote:
TLJ wrote:
They brought the executioner in.

Albert Pierrepoint was the most famous.

And he proclaimed against the death penalty.

For info, there's a film on about him tonight. It's at 9.00 on S T V

Thanks for that TLJ it sounds interesting.