Hillsborough - Justice

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/nov/18/hillsborough-untold-sir-norman-bettison-is-seeking-to-deny-the-truth

Criminal charges to be brought against six people including David Duckenfield and Norman Bettison

Duckenfield to be charged with manslaughter as a result of gross negligence

Denis Irwin wrote: Criminal charges to be brought against six people including David Duckenfield and Norman Bettison

Agree with Terry here

pre Madonna wrote: Good old English Common Law, the very reason people could only campaign for manslaughter! The law in this country is designed to protect those who need least protection. It will be the same at Grenfell, although I doubt anybody will be prosecuted for even manslaughter there in another example of state sponsored murder. The bottom line is that these people's lives weren't worth a damn and nearly thirty years on they are worth less.

So who do you feel set out on the morning of the game and decided: "Today's a good day to kill a few Liverpool fans"?

pre Madonna wrote: Territorial wrote: pre Madonna wrote: Good old English Common Law, the very reason people could only campaign for manslaughter! The law in this country is designed to protect those who need least protection. It will be the same at Grenfell, although I doubt anybody will be prosecuted for even manslaughter there in another example of state sponsored murder. The bottom line is that these people's lives weren't worth a damn and nearly thirty years on they are worth less. So who do you feel set out on the morning of the game and decided: "Today's a good day to kill a few Liverpool fans"? Where did I say they did? I disagreed with what English Common Law decides is murder, you read that bit? So if I disagree with what the law states then I feel that murder doesn't need to be planned in advance. The police new full well their actions were dangerous and didn't care because they didn't see these people as human, that, to me, is murder.

Common Law does not require pre-meditation to produce a "murder" verdict, mere intention (to kill) is sufficient.

So I'll ask you this question instead, whose actions on the day were intended to lead to the deaths of Liverpool fans?

Before the conversations go any further, people should be wary of posting on this topic.

That's gross negligence manslaughter, and it carries a sentence of up to life imprisonment, like any form of manslaughter. The difference is that the penalty isn't mandatory. Whatever you call it, the label isn't really that important. What counts is the penalty.  I'll ask this: should anyone so charged of such an offence necessarily receive life sentences, without any possibility of a lesser sentence, if they are convicted? Whatever you think of their actions and culpability, to say that seems a step too far.

In the US it might be called "fourth degree murder", which is arguably incorrect; in the UK it is called gross negligence manslaughter. Both are forms of unjustified homicide.

Murder, by common definition, is the intentional ending of another person's life, with distinctions occasionally made (again, in the US, and not so much here or the UK) between cases where it was premeditated ("first degree"), like an assassination, not premeditated ("second degree"), like an overreaction in a bar fight where you deliberately stab someone in the neck with a broken glass, and, lower still, not premeditated but provoked or a crime of passion ("third degree"), like where you find someone sleeping with your wife and you murder them in a rage. Those are all killings with intention to take a life, or at least cause serious injury; that's why they're called murder.

Anything without intention to kill or cause serious injury isn't murder; that doesn't mean it isn't homicide and it doesn't mean it shouldn't be punished. Manslaughter is the usual term in the UK and here; it is still a very, very serious crime, carrying a potential sentence of up to life imprisonment, with the exception that that sentence isn't mandatory. The actions of the police in this case may well have been intentional, i.e., letting the crowd into certain pens and opening certain gates (again, it's for a jury to decide); that doesn't mean that the outcome was intentional.

It can be called many things, if proven, but it can't be called murder. It'll be for a jury to decide if they are guilty of manslaughter, but it's not murder. You give out about people using "literally" incorrectly, then you figuratively murder the definition of murder. It's not murder without some manner of intention. To use it otherwise is to do violence to the English language.


Edited by SuperDave84 - 28 Jun 2017 at 3:55pm