Today's discussion about the news
Comments
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Sorry I don't know who is saying what about who. That tweet is not balanced though. I would guess it is taking comments such as "the test is not as reliable in neonates" and presenting them as "the test is unreliable in neonates".
There are other comments that the condition in that particular child could not have produced insulin levels anywhere near those measured, and there was a second test that was a cross check. So the question from a scientific perspective would be, for example, is the test so inaccurate that the upper end of the medical condition and the lower range of insulin level that the test could reflect could possibly overlap. And, in that case, could the second test be disregarded for any reason?
I have absolutely no idea, and I'm pretty damn sure I have more idea than whoever wrote that tweet.
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Absolutely agree it's not balanced, but the argument is that the Panorama programme wasn't either, having been done by someone who's got a book to sell based on the guilt of Letby. The stuff about insulin levels doesn't appear to be agreed amongst experts, and this is the sort of thing that (I think) Hammond is saying isn't best served by an adversarial process in court, where jurors are expected, as non-specialists, to make decisions based on partisan presentation of complex science.
I've got no particular interest in Letby herself, but I am now interested in the questions it raises, as I generally find Hammond insightful, and he tends to focus on intriguing areas of concern, and doesn't give up easily.
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Perhaps you previously had rose coloured spectacles when it came to expert witnesses, because they've always been biased. In theory, I believe that each side is supposed to disclose anything benefit ial to the other side of detrimental to theirs. However whilst they can't cherry pick opinions, they can carefully avoid obtaining unfavourable ones.
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Hadn't really paid that much attention to it, so no spectacles of any hue involved. But my guess would be that if a non-expert jury is presented with 'partisan experts' offering contradictory conclusions from (in theory) exactly the same initial evidence, it's nigh on impossible to be able to make in properly informed decision. In this case, the two points of deepest contention appear to be statistics and insulin level testing in severely ill neonatal babies, and I certainly think I'd feel completely inadequate in assessing the competing arguments, were I a juror.
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Mmm. The problem is that if you don't have a jury you leave it up to judges, and I am not convinced that they are any better at forming a view on this sort of thing.
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Indeed. Hammond's suggestion (I think) is that a range of experts should convene outside of/before the adversarial court proceedings where complex medical/scientific evidence needs to be assessed, so that they can present a more balanced assessment of the evidence. As it stands, it's a bit like both-sidesism on the news, where as long as a crank sounds credible about their scientific credentials and evidence presented, it's more likely that a layperson will be persuaded that the earth is flat. (Not suggesting Dewi Evans is a crank, obvs.)
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Where would these experts come from and who would pay for them? The parties to proceedings equally? Would both sides have to agree? What if only one side can afford an expert? Do they get to chose still, or does it become one sided?
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Neither do I. But more to the point neither does the person suggesting it as a solution.
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FWIW, Hammond's LL articles are now up to six, all here. I'd not quite realised what a central role Dewi Evans took in the prosecution case. To put it mildly, I think that Hammond is unconvinced that Evans is quite the expert he professes to be (see the sixth report). In that sense, Hammond is not unbiased at all.
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When the shooting of Mark Duggan sparked off the Tottenham riots there was someone posting on here that knew him from growing up in the same area. Said it was known for a long time that he was involved in all sorts of criminal activity and there was no doubt in the area he would come to a violent end somehow, be it at the hands of the police or other criminals. But still the riots happened.
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I'd be intrigued to know how often police hesitation in shooting someone has been fatal.
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Yes, there's no doubt there have been innocent people shot as a result of not hesitating. The Brazilian chap shot in the tube station, Jean Charles de Menendes I think, springs to mind. The thing that confuses me is that if I was told to stop by armed police, I certainly wouldn't try to run away. Although as I wrote that some vague memory that he may not have actually been running away came to mind. I have no doubt its a very difficult decision in the heat of the moment and I'm grateful we don't have a fully armed, trigger happy police force in this country.
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There is a separate issue of police misconduct to assess here. The charge or murder seems not to have been a sensible one, given all the circumstances.
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Well you're unlikely to ever find out without a sliding doors moment. If one of his colleagues had got crushed by him trying to batter his way out of the box I'm sure people would be asking why one of the armed officers hadn't prevented it. Ultimately, if an armed police officer is pointing a weapon at you and you ignore their orders the chances are it will end badly for you.
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I haven't read much about the case, but I don't think many villains plan to go into gun battle with a small army with guns already aimed at their heads. It feels like they could often wait a bit longer to work out whether or not this unlikely event is going to happen rather than kill someone just in case.
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Interesting development in Israel. The UK has sanctioned a bunch of settlers which apparently makes access to banking tricky for them due to an Israeli supreme court decision. (Another Brexit upside).
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I think it is probably one of those cases where no amount of hindsight can make up for the amount of variables at play and the need for a literal spilt second decision in a chaotic series of events. I get what you are saying about delaying that moment longer but it appears that wasn't really an option in this instance. Kaba was clearly trying to get away and had already accelerated, the PO had to make an instant decision. On balance, he argues he felt that the car was now a deadly weapon and he had to use deadly force to stop the situation and a jury agreed with that.
You are probably right, was Chris Kaba intending to kill someone? My instinct would be no he was just trying to escape and in that moment his decision making was obviously compromised. Sadly though, and regardless of Kaba's criminal history, once he took that decision to drive I think he gave the PO no real option, he had been warned repeatedly by armed officers and instead he ignored the warnings. At that point there was probably only one way it was going to end for him. The fact he was also in a car was crucial I think, and makes this case different to something like the de Menezes case where there was clearly opportunity for the police to delay any possible use of weapons.
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Do think the references to him being unarmed when he was attempting to ram vehicles out of the way with his car are leaving quite a lot out.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition1 -
That was my thought, using a 2t plus vehicle to ram things with no apparent concern for anyone in the desperation to escape. Did he have to be waving a gun around to be considered dangerous? When it originally occurred some of the reporting made it sound like a routine traffic stop where the officer decided to just shoot him.
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Based on my interactions with a few other jurors when I did jury service, I'm not so sure about that. My attempt to explain to one fellow juror about the meaning of 'guilty beyond reasonable doubt' was a bit like that 'These are small...but those are far away' scene from Father Ted.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
I listened to an interesting discussion on this with a KC earlier, admittedly one who had not read the CPS papers. He said that the CPS would not have brought the case unless they felt it was a better than 50% chance of a prosecution based on the evidence, and that the decision was in the public interest.
The definition of murder in this instance was whether or not the officer, having discharged his weapon, did so fearing an imminent threat to life. If he did not then that is murder. As that is incredibly subjective to any juror and no-one can know how the PO was feeling other than the man himself (and given that this seemed to be the singular basis for a murder charge) the idea that the CPS felt they could get a guilty verdict seems rather a stretch to me. In a case like this, you will get some who say that yes he was facing imminent threat, some who will say maybe, and some who will say no. All of which has merit and none of which can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
I guess that is a long winded way of saying, agreed, deciding to prosecute was not sensible so it seems.
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Indeed. The officer seems to have been told the guy had recently shot someone, and said suspect was in the process of using a car as a battering ram. The flip side is that no one else shot him and the end of the police chase seemed to have occurred about 13 seconds earlier.
Being a murderer or a suspected murderer does not mean it's okay to be shot dead. But nor does being a firearms officer mean that you are a murderer because you happen to not be good enough at that very particular role.
As hard as it will be for the victims family, the end result of this will be a police officer who is no longer on the firearms squad, I suspect.
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It seems there was no one in the cars he was battering, so I'm going back to my view that hesitation was a better option.
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Surely the potential risk to safety was to the officers standing around the car?
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Actually just watched the video. No reason to shoot as demonstrated by all the other people who didn't shoot.
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That's because they had got out and were standing in the road, no?
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Yes, so he was largely stuck and doing a bit of back and forth. If everyone else felt their lives were at risk, they would have moved away sharpish and fired their guns. It feels a bit of a stretch to say that the only option to prevent loss of life was to shoot him, but I guess that's what the jury concluded. It also seems a bit hazardous to me to shoot with that many people around the car.
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What’s to say that a second or two later one of them wouldn’t have reached the same conclusion and fired or that they felt they shouldn’t but weren’t in as good a position to do so without injuring a colleague? Without being there and doing an assessment in the heat of the moment it’s impossible to know and everyone views risk differently. I think it’s fair to say that had Kaba done as instructed he would still be alive today (or at least wouldn’t have been killed by police on that day).
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Actually, there was a driver in one car who moved it closed to block him in more (following protocol), so there was no risk at the time of the shooting. Blake says he didn't see this car move, so assumed the risk was still present, but was unable to point out who he thought was at risk and should have known that the protocol was to move the cars closer. I think he got lucky and received a pass because it was a stressful situation. Nonetheless, I go back to my previous view that hesitation does not seem to result in deaths.
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