Life Sentences
I agree with the thrust of Dominic Lawson's argument in The Sunday Times that a life sentence should mean exactly what it says - that a convicted person spends the rest of their life in prison.
Which doesn't mean to say that I reject any notion that 'lifers' can show genuine remorse and even be rehabilitated behind bars, but to my mind the seriousness of the crime means that the release of such prisoners into the community should be an exceptional rather than routine.
Whereas to me it far too often appears to be the other way round.
Tips for murderers: don’t kill police and learn to feign remorse
By Dominic Lawson - The Sunday Times
A lot of people have been upset to learn of the imminent release from prison on parole of Harry Roberts, who in 1966 shot dead two unarmed police officers (one point-blank in the eye, the other in the back as he ran away shouting, “No!”). But I can think of some people who must be absolutely terrified.
For example, there is the Cartwright family, at whose animal sanctuary Roberts worked on day release in 2001. This was preparation for his planned parole the following year. After some unnerving conversations with Roberts, including one in which he remarked that “kidnapping is underrated” as it was an easy way to make money, Joan Cartwright complained to the authorities about his behaviour, and his parole was blocked. She was assured that Roberts would never be told that she had given such statements, but he was able to work it out for himself.
Savage attacks on her animals began. In one incident a horse’s head was hacked at with an axe the night before she was scheduled to give evidence against him. This is straight out of The Godfather. Cartwright has revealed that other notorious former gangsters would visit her animal sanctuary to pay Roberts their respects; she says they would hand him substantial sums of cash.
Whether these friends independently determined to wreak revenge on the Cartwrights or did so on Roberts’s orders is not clear. A parole board hearing concluded he was “responsible through the agency of others”, something he denied. But Joan Cartwright has recalled that the day after one of their cats was found electrocuted, Roberts rang to ask after the animal. When told what had happened, he remarked that “it was very easy to electrocute a cat: all you had to do was tie it to a battery”.
Anyway, Roberts has now been approved for release by the parole board, even though in 2009 he was turned down once again, having been told that there still remained “serious concerns about the risks you pose”. It may well be that at the age of 78, having served 48 years of a life sentence, Roberts does not seem to be in the physical shape to present a lethal threat to others. But in the circumstances this is no reassurance: you don’t have to be physically strong to use a gun, and the infirm can get others to deal out fatal violence.
Perhaps what has changed is that Roberts had finally expressed remorse for the crimes for which he was convicted back in 1966 — only months after the suspension of the death penalty, to which he would certainly have been sentenced had it still been available.
It is an absolute requirement of parole boards that the prisoner seeking release should “show remorse for his crimes”. This, of course, is the catch-22 for prisoners who have been wrongly convicted. They are, in effect, asked to lie to the parole board in order to be considered for release. The flipside is that those guilty of the foulest crimes and untroubled by remorse are also given great incentives to simulate contrition. And parole boards have no way of knowing whether an applicant is truly a reformed character or merely acting as one.
So it comes down to risk assessment. As a former prison psychiatrist told me, “We know that a small proportion of prisoners we release on probation will go on to commit rape or even murder; the trouble is, we have no idea which ones they will be.” Indeed, parole boards have been known to tell an applicant, “We have decided to take a risk with you.” But the board are not the people who are most likely to be put at risk: I am not aware of anyone in the justice system who has lost even their job, let alone their life, as a result of a released killer striking again.
If I sound a little angry, put it down to the fact that my wife’s cousin was stabbed to death in his home 10 years ago by a man — Damien Hanson — who had been released months previously by a parole board halfway through a sentence of attempted murder (that one had involved a machete rather than a knife). The board had been impressed that Hanson attended an anger-management course in prison. Well, of course: Hanson understood that this would be what a parole board wanted to hear.
The only journalist to have interviewed Harry Roberts in prison was Nick Davies, in 1993. By then Roberts had served 27 years of the 30 years Mr Justice Glyn-Jones had decreed as a “minimum” (adding that he thought it likely “the enormity of your crime” would mean Roberts would never be released). Britain’s most notorious “cop-killer” gave the journalist a startlingly honest account of his true feelings: “They keep asking me, ‘Do you feel remorse, Harry?’ And I say no . . . The police aren’t like real people to us. They’re strangers . . . and you don’t feel remorse for killing a stranger.” Then, remarking on his already very lengthy stretch, he said: “How can you accept 27 years in jail? Mentally, I mean, it’s a terrible thing they do to people. You know? I want to say to them: ‘Why are you still punishing me?’ I don’t know the answer.”
There was a phrase that used to be applied to such people: moral insanity. Nowadays we call them psychopaths. Either way, it is not a condition that can be treated, and therefore the risks to the public from the release of such criminals are exceptionally high. Though Roberts’s most recent parole board believes it knows better.
It is understandable that the police have been outraged by this decision. And the home secretary, Theresa May — not noticeably a friend of the boys in blue — is pushing a law through parliament that would make the deliberate killing of a police officer punishable by a “whole life” sentence: one in which there is no possibility of parole. This is a faint echo of the Homicide Act 1957, which restricted the use of the death penalty for murder but retained it for “murder of a police officer acting in the execution of his duty”.
I can see the sense in treating the killing of police officers as worthy of uniquely severe punishment: these are men and women who, usually unarmed, put their lives at risk to protect the rest of us. Killing them is an attack on something without which society could scarcely function — law enforcement itself.
On the other hand, the most appalling crimes do not attract the very rare “full life sentence”. For example, a few years ago a Sheffield man was found guilty of raping his daughters over a quarter of a century, almost on a daily basis, and he wouldn’t let them use contraceptives as he wanted to use the offspring of these incestuous rapes (there were nine live births) to generate child benefits, which he used to pay for his drink and other pleasures. This 56-year-old man was given 25 concurrent “life sentences” — with eligibility for parole after 19 years.
Then there is the case of Ian McLoughlin, jailed for 10 years in 1984 — reduced to eight on appeal — after he killed a man with a hammer; jailed for “life” in 1992 for stabbing another man to death, for which he served 21 years; after which he murdered yet another man, on his first day outside the prison. Even in the sentencing for this third homicide the judge gave McLoughlin a parole review date (albeit after 40 years).
Yes, life should mean life — but not only for those who kill police officers.
dominic.lawson@sunday-times.co.uk
Here's another example of sentencing policy in the UK where the punishment meted out to a calculating murderer seems not to meet the seriousness of his crime.
Now I know that 20 years is a long time in jail, but what I fail to understand is how anyone could even consider that it would be appropriate to release this cowardly killer back into the community in his early fifties.
Because his murder was aggravated on a number of fronts - his wife was abused for years, she was murdered in cold blood, there was an organised cover up and attempt to escape justice (which would have left his in charge of three children), and the victim's body has never been recovered.
A crime of such depravity surely deserves a life sentence where 'life' really does mean life, yet the justice system will consider this man's release in 20 years time which is madness if you ask me.
Jealous husband jailed for 20 years for honour killing of his wife
By JONATHAN BROWN - The Independent
A man who murdered his wife and mother of his three children in an honour killing because he believed she was becoming too Westernised was sentenced to serve a minimum of 20 years in jail today.
Ahmed Al-Khatib, 34, became jealous of his 25-year-old Syrian-born wife Rania Alayed when she enrolled at a local college and began studying English.
She gave up wearing traditional dress and made friends with fellow male students. Her husband had subjected her to years of physical and mental abuse eventually forcing her to flee the family home in January last year and seek sanctuary at a homeless refuge in a bid to start a new life.
Fearing revenge for walking away from the marriage she sought court orders barring him from seeing her of her children now aged nine, seven and two.
But five months later Al-Khatib lured her to a flat in Salford, Greater Manchester, where he murdered her, stripped her of her clothes and concealed her body in a suitcase. It is believed the children were in the next room when the attack happened.
With the help of his two brothers he attempted to transport her remains to a remote forest close to her former home in the North East of England.
But as he sought to cover up his crimes his camper van developed mechanical trouble and he was forced to make a “split-second decision” and bury her by the side of the busy A19 near Thirsk, North Yorkshire. Despite extensive searches of the area by police her body has never been found.
Al-Khatib, who met his wife when she was aged 15, reported her as missing a month after she was killed. His older brother Muhaned Al-Khatib, 39, confessed his part in the plot after watching a televised appeal for her safe return.
He was found not guilty of murder but jailed for three years at Manchester Crown Court after admitting perverting the course of justice. A third brother Hussain Al-Khateeb, 35, was convicted of the same crime and sentenced to four years in jail.
Ahmed Al-Khatib claimed that his wife was transformed into a Jinn – a Muslim spirit or demon – and that he pushed her to the ground resulting in her suffering a fatal head injury.
For example, there is the Cartwright family, at whose animal sanctuary Roberts worked on day release in 2001. This was preparation for his planned parole the following year. After some unnerving conversations with Roberts, including one in which he remarked that “kidnapping is underrated” as it was an easy way to make money, Joan Cartwright complained to the authorities about his behaviour, and his parole was blocked. She was assured that Roberts would never be told that she had given such statements, but he was able to work it out for himself.
Savage attacks on her animals began. In one incident a horse’s head was hacked at with an axe the night before she was scheduled to give evidence against him. This is straight out of The Godfather. Cartwright has revealed that other notorious former gangsters would visit her animal sanctuary to pay Roberts their respects; she says they would hand him substantial sums of cash.
Whether these friends independently determined to wreak revenge on the Cartwrights or did so on Roberts’s orders is not clear. A parole board hearing concluded he was “responsible through the agency of others”, something he denied. But Joan Cartwright has recalled that the day after one of their cats was found electrocuted, Roberts rang to ask after the animal. When told what had happened, he remarked that “it was very easy to electrocute a cat: all you had to do was tie it to a battery”.
Anyway, Roberts has now been approved for release by the parole board, even though in 2009 he was turned down once again, having been told that there still remained “serious concerns about the risks you pose”. It may well be that at the age of 78, having served 48 years of a life sentence, Roberts does not seem to be in the physical shape to present a lethal threat to others. But in the circumstances this is no reassurance: you don’t have to be physically strong to use a gun, and the infirm can get others to deal out fatal violence.
Perhaps what has changed is that Roberts had finally expressed remorse for the crimes for which he was convicted back in 1966 — only months after the suspension of the death penalty, to which he would certainly have been sentenced had it still been available.
It is an absolute requirement of parole boards that the prisoner seeking release should “show remorse for his crimes”. This, of course, is the catch-22 for prisoners who have been wrongly convicted. They are, in effect, asked to lie to the parole board in order to be considered for release. The flipside is that those guilty of the foulest crimes and untroubled by remorse are also given great incentives to simulate contrition. And parole boards have no way of knowing whether an applicant is truly a reformed character or merely acting as one.
So it comes down to risk assessment. As a former prison psychiatrist told me, “We know that a small proportion of prisoners we release on probation will go on to commit rape or even murder; the trouble is, we have no idea which ones they will be.” Indeed, parole boards have been known to tell an applicant, “We have decided to take a risk with you.” But the board are not the people who are most likely to be put at risk: I am not aware of anyone in the justice system who has lost even their job, let alone their life, as a result of a released killer striking again.
If I sound a little angry, put it down to the fact that my wife’s cousin was stabbed to death in his home 10 years ago by a man — Damien Hanson — who had been released months previously by a parole board halfway through a sentence of attempted murder (that one had involved a machete rather than a knife). The board had been impressed that Hanson attended an anger-management course in prison. Well, of course: Hanson understood that this would be what a parole board wanted to hear.
The only journalist to have interviewed Harry Roberts in prison was Nick Davies, in 1993. By then Roberts had served 27 years of the 30 years Mr Justice Glyn-Jones had decreed as a “minimum” (adding that he thought it likely “the enormity of your crime” would mean Roberts would never be released). Britain’s most notorious “cop-killer” gave the journalist a startlingly honest account of his true feelings: “They keep asking me, ‘Do you feel remorse, Harry?’ And I say no . . . The police aren’t like real people to us. They’re strangers . . . and you don’t feel remorse for killing a stranger.” Then, remarking on his already very lengthy stretch, he said: “How can you accept 27 years in jail? Mentally, I mean, it’s a terrible thing they do to people. You know? I want to say to them: ‘Why are you still punishing me?’ I don’t know the answer.”
There was a phrase that used to be applied to such people: moral insanity. Nowadays we call them psychopaths. Either way, it is not a condition that can be treated, and therefore the risks to the public from the release of such criminals are exceptionally high. Though Roberts’s most recent parole board believes it knows better.
It is understandable that the police have been outraged by this decision. And the home secretary, Theresa May — not noticeably a friend of the boys in blue — is pushing a law through parliament that would make the deliberate killing of a police officer punishable by a “whole life” sentence: one in which there is no possibility of parole. This is a faint echo of the Homicide Act 1957, which restricted the use of the death penalty for murder but retained it for “murder of a police officer acting in the execution of his duty”.
I can see the sense in treating the killing of police officers as worthy of uniquely severe punishment: these are men and women who, usually unarmed, put their lives at risk to protect the rest of us. Killing them is an attack on something without which society could scarcely function — law enforcement itself.
On the other hand, the most appalling crimes do not attract the very rare “full life sentence”. For example, a few years ago a Sheffield man was found guilty of raping his daughters over a quarter of a century, almost on a daily basis, and he wouldn’t let them use contraceptives as he wanted to use the offspring of these incestuous rapes (there were nine live births) to generate child benefits, which he used to pay for his drink and other pleasures. This 56-year-old man was given 25 concurrent “life sentences” — with eligibility for parole after 19 years.
Then there is the case of Ian McLoughlin, jailed for 10 years in 1984 — reduced to eight on appeal — after he killed a man with a hammer; jailed for “life” in 1992 for stabbing another man to death, for which he served 21 years; after which he murdered yet another man, on his first day outside the prison. Even in the sentencing for this third homicide the judge gave McLoughlin a parole review date (albeit after 40 years).
Yes, life should mean life — but not only for those who kill police officers.
dominic.lawson@sunday-times.co.uk
Spotlight on Sentencing (31 July 2014)
Here's another example of sentencing policy in the UK where the punishment meted out to a calculating murderer seems not to meet the seriousness of his crime.
Now I know that 20 years is a long time in jail, but what I fail to understand is how anyone could even consider that it would be appropriate to release this cowardly killer back into the community in his early fifties.
Because his murder was aggravated on a number of fronts - his wife was abused for years, she was murdered in cold blood, there was an organised cover up and attempt to escape justice (which would have left his in charge of three children), and the victim's body has never been recovered.
A crime of such depravity surely deserves a life sentence where 'life' really does mean life, yet the justice system will consider this man's release in 20 years time which is madness if you ask me.
Jealous husband jailed for 20 years for honour killing of his wife
By JONATHAN BROWN - The Independent
A man who murdered his wife and mother of his three children in an honour killing because he believed she was becoming too Westernised was sentenced to serve a minimum of 20 years in jail today.
Ahmed Al-Khatib, 34, became jealous of his 25-year-old Syrian-born wife Rania Alayed when she enrolled at a local college and began studying English.
She gave up wearing traditional dress and made friends with fellow male students. Her husband had subjected her to years of physical and mental abuse eventually forcing her to flee the family home in January last year and seek sanctuary at a homeless refuge in a bid to start a new life.
Fearing revenge for walking away from the marriage she sought court orders barring him from seeing her of her children now aged nine, seven and two.
But five months later Al-Khatib lured her to a flat in Salford, Greater Manchester, where he murdered her, stripped her of her clothes and concealed her body in a suitcase. It is believed the children were in the next room when the attack happened.
With the help of his two brothers he attempted to transport her remains to a remote forest close to her former home in the North East of England.
CCTV image of Ahmed Al-Khatib in the clothing of his wife Rania Alayed, which he wore to convince her family and friends she was alive (PA)
But as he sought to cover up his crimes his camper van developed mechanical trouble and he was forced to make a “split-second decision” and bury her by the side of the busy A19 near Thirsk, North Yorkshire. Despite extensive searches of the area by police her body has never been found.
Al-Khatib, who met his wife when she was aged 15, reported her as missing a month after she was killed. His older brother Muhaned Al-Khatib, 39, confessed his part in the plot after watching a televised appeal for her safe return.
He was found not guilty of murder but jailed for three years at Manchester Crown Court after admitting perverting the course of justice. A third brother Hussain Al-Khateeb, 35, was convicted of the same crime and sentenced to four years in jail.
Ahmed Al-Khatib claimed that his wife was transformed into a Jinn – a Muslim spirit or demon – and that he pushed her to the ground resulting in her suffering a fatal head injury.
The suitcase used by Ahmed Al-Khatib to carry his wife Rania Alayed in after he lured her to her to death (PA)
Detective Chief Inspector Phil Reade, of Greater Manchester Police’s major incident team, said Rania was beginning to build a future for herself
“Al-Khatib’s murderous actions were motivated by his outrage and jealousy that Rania would attempt to take control of her own life and live a more westernised life, after suffering years of abuse at his hands.
“His male ‘pride’ clearly couldn’t take a strong woman trying to determine her own fate, so he carried out one final act that would ensure she could never defy him again. The irony is that this horrific act of self-pity has brought nothing but shame on him and his family,” he said.
“Al-Khatib’s murderous actions were motivated by his outrage and jealousy that Rania would attempt to take control of her own life and live a more westernised life, after suffering years of abuse at his hands.
“His male ‘pride’ clearly couldn’t take a strong woman trying to determine her own fate, so he carried out one final act that would ensure she could never defy him again. The irony is that this horrific act of self-pity has brought nothing but shame on him and his family,” he said.
