Psychopath who killed boy with hammer to be released.

Samuel T. Cogley

TallGlass wrote: »

What a joke, honestly and we are paying for these shenanigans via the courts. The system is just not fit for purpose.

Court system is perfectly fit for purpose. We just have a broken prison system that badly needs huge investment, especially in regard to youth offenders convicted of serious crimes. They're pretty rare and given the tiny population it's very difficult to have the right facilities on hand.

TallGlass

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

Court system is perfectly fit for purpose. We just have a broken prison system that badly needs huge investment, especially in regard to youth offenders convicted of serious crimes. They're pretty rare and given the tiny population it's very difficult to have the right facilities on hand.

Well the perspective I get from looking at this on a daily bases is that it is not fit for purpose at all.

You sound like you work in this area and think it's the prison system, then lets fix the prison system, this needs to stop before it seriously starts to undermine society.

Nermal

infogiver wrote: »

It looks as if this guy was in a psychosis when he killed the poor kid, and 14 years later medical professionals have testified that he's no longer suffering from that psychosis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

It is impossible to tell reliably if someone is suffering from or cured of 'psychosis'. The term doesn't have any scientific meaning. We never should have given it a legal one.

Samuel T. Cogley

TallGlass wrote: »

Well the perspective I get from looking at this on a daily bases is that it is not fit for purpose at all.

I'm not really sure what gives you that impression. Sentencing tends to be most people's rub. That's inexorably linked to the prison system.

TallGlass wrote: »

You sound like you work in this area and think it's the prison system, then lets fix the prison system, this needs to stop before it seriously starts to undermine society.

'Study' it rather than work in it but although the CJS should constantly be improving, including the courts, the Prison system is the biggest issue at the moment and in dire need for huge investment. The problem is no one is willing to pony up the dough.

Don't misunderstand though that regardless of anything else violent offenders belong behind bars until such time as the re-offending risk is very low indeed.

I'd love to see a country ran by After Hours

Yourself isit

infogiver wrote: »

My point is that the judges can do nothing about changing the law.
Laws are only changed when the citizens force the government to change them

What law forced the judges hands here? It's possible in the country to give a life meaning life sentence. There's no reason to change the law.

Ulysses Gaze

dar100 wrote: »

Where does it say he's a psychopath? Tbf he was 16 at the time it occurred

Should have just given him a slap on the wrist, a social worker and told him "Now...killing a boy with a hammer is wrong."

:rolleyes:

darkdubh

Nermal wrote: »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

It is impossible to tell reliably if someone is suffering from or cured of 'psychosis'. The term doesn't have any scientific meaning. We never should have given it a legal one.

He wasn't suffering from psychosis, he's a psychopath/sociopath which is different. He was fully aware of what he was doing.

Samaris

Psychopath and sociopath have specific meanings. Dragging them into a conversation without any sort of back-up or without a clinical assessment is makes them a meaningless collection of syllables.

I don't agree with the concept of letting someone out of jail without any rehab (?) for a murder like this. But it'd be good to get the actual facts straight.

infogiver

Yourself isit wrote: »

What law forced the judges hands here? It's possible in the country to give a life meaning life sentence. There's no reason to change the law.

...and then the law says the convicted person has the right to appeal the severity of the sentence.
And that appeal is almost always upheld.

Samuel T. Cogley

Deleted User wrote: »

I'd love to see a country ran by After Hours

Aer Lingus have €100 off flights to the states at the moment. :pac:

BUBBLES1978

I remember this i live near where this happened. i know the poor victims mother.

That little baste*d should not be allowed out. He will re-offend again.

The poor victim cause no one will care about him is the absolute words of a sociopath.

Laws on sentencing really need to change in this country its disgusting :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

Yourself isit

infogiver wrote: »

...and then the law says the convicted person has the right to appeal the severity of the sentence.
And that appeal is almost always upheld.

That's also a decision of the judiciary. No laws need to change.

Yourself isit

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

Aer Lingus have €100 off flights to the states at the moment. :pac:

Who said they wanted US laws here. There is surely a happy median between the two.

Samuel T. Cogley

Yourself isit wrote: »

Who said they wanted US laws here. There is surely a happy median between the two.

There absolutely, positively IS NOT.

You either have direct democratic involvement in electing prosecutors and Judges or you don't. It's absolute balls to the wall madness to do the latter. There was a fantastic three parter on the BBC recently called 'American Justice'. Extremely well done and worth a watch.

The happy median between the US and somewhere like Norway is actually Ireland and we have crime rate one would expect from a 'US lite' type CJS.

Anyway the quoted post is in relation to someone asking what would it be like if AH controlled the CJS - the answer is the US. There is no middle ground between Ireland and the US's policies, all you get is the 'tough on crime' non-rehabilitative spiral, increasing crime rates and costs. Yes there are certain very small demographics that should be addressed we're talking less than 50 people at a guess.

Irish Guitarist

dar100 wrote: »

Where does it say he's a psychopath? Tbf he was 16 at the time it occurred

Kill one person with a hammer and you're labelled a psychopath nowadays. Shocking state of affairs. And sure we all made mistakes when we were teenagers. I robbed a Bon Jovi magazine from a shop once.

Yourself isit

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

There absolutely, positively IS NOT.

You either have direct democratic involvement in electing prosecutors and Judges or you don't. It's absolute balls to the wall madness to do the latter. There was a fantastic three parter on the BBC recently called 'American Justice'. Extremely well done and worth a watch.

The happy median between the US and somewhere like Norway is actually Ireland and we have crime rate one would expect from a 'US lite' type CJS.

Anyway the quoted post is in relation to someone asking what would it be like if AH controlled the CJS - the answer is the US. There is no middle ground between Ireland and the US's policies, all you get is the 'tough on crime' non-rehabilitative spiral, increasing crime rates and costs. Yes there are certain very small demographics that should be addressed we're talking less than 50 people at a guess.

Quite the rant. However without becoming like the US we could encourage judges to make more use of the sentencing powers available to them for violent crimes, and less use of concurrent sentences.

Samuel T. Cogley

Yourself isit wrote: »

Quite the rant. However without becoming like the US we could encourage judges to make more use of the sentencing powers available to them for violent crimes, and less use of concurrent sentences.

Consecutive sentences do not decrease crime in fact they increase it for a number of reasons. If there was an alternative to short sentences available Judges would be using them. There isn't, we don't have the prison space. You're seeing this from a tabloid level of depth and suggesting policies that simply don't work. Consecutive sentencing is a corner stone of the US system - concurrent a corner stone of ours.

The only way to reduce crime is to have a rehabilitative system in place it's absolute madness to spend the same money as a rehabilitative system and put in place the farce that the US have. Incidentally concurrent/consecutive sentences would do very little in regard to the most serious violent offenders as they tend to be convicted of single offences.

Outlaw Pete

One of my best friends from school was murdered many years ago now. He was tortured, beaten for many hours and then shot in the head and his body dumped in a field.... but yet the animal that did it was released after just 12 years. No outcry in the media or anywhere really (not that I expected one).

The sentences for violent crime, both here and in the UK (from what I read at least) are a joke. We have sex offender registers (which is fair enough) but yet nobody ever seems bothered about living next to scum that have a history of violent crimes. In fact in prison they are looked up to. Maybe out of prison too in many circles.

It's sickening.

Messengers

He's on Facebook. All his friends delighted to see him out.

Yourself isit

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

Consecutive sentences do not decrease crime in fact they increase it for a number of reasons. If there was an alternative to short sentences available Judges would be using them. There isn't, we don't have the prison space. You're seeing this from a tabloid level of depth and suggesting policies that simply don't work. Consecutive sentencing is a corner stone of the US system - concurrent a corner stone of ours.

Please don't use the term tabloid to dismiss arguments you don't agree with. Firstly where is the evidence that consecutive sentences don't work? Concurrent sentences are an incentive to criminality in fact. There's no incentive to not kill the witness who saw you kill your wife. As for prison overcrowding that's an issue for the government not the courts.

Consecutive sentences don't have to include minor crimes like the US. Two murders should be consecutive sentences, the breaking and entering at the same time should be concurrent.

The only way to reduce crime is to have a rehabilitative system in place it's absolute madness to spend the same money as a rehabilitative system and put in place the farce that the US have. Incidentally concurrent/consecutive sentences would do very little in regard to the most serious violent offenders as they tend to be convicted of single offences.

Rehabilitation is a nice to have. But it's not the main point of the justice system.

There's still a happy median between Ireland and the US. Despite your "argument to extremes" logical fallacy.

robbiezero

Messengers wrote: »

He's on Facebook. All his friends delighted to see him out.

Is it the guy with the "Hated by many, confronted by none" image in his timeline?

kupus

And yet again the justice industry gives back to its community.
Notice how i always say industry.

The word system beings to mind something that works.
A plan is in place for efficient outcomes.

That is not the case here. The justice system has been broken for a long time. Now we are seeing the fruits of it in bloom.
And the worst thing.....

Its going to get a lot worse.

Samuel T. Cogley

Yourself isit wrote: »

Please don't use the term tabloid to dismiss arguments you don't agree with. Firstly where is the evidence that consecutive sentences don't work?

I use the term tabloid because that's exactly the level of engagement you have in this. As for the evidence of longer sentences, read the material, avoiding newspapers.

Yourself isit wrote: »

Concurrent sentences are an incentive to criminality in fact. There's no incentive to not kill the witness who saw you kill your wife. As for prison overcrowding that's an issue for the government not the courts.

That's simply not how it works to both points.

Yourself isit wrote: »

Consecutive sentences don't have to include minor crimes like the US. Two murders should be consecutive sentences, the breaking and entering at the same time should be concurrent.

Again with the tabloid sensationalism. Actually consecutive sentencing might have some small deterrent effect in very minor crimes, on non-drug addicts, where you end up doing a month for a string of shop lifting incidents - but I doubt it. For murders - the term is life, you can't do consecutive life sentences.

Yourself isit wrote: »

Rehabilitation is a nice to have. But it's not the main point of the justice system.

I know you're generally quite quite contrary - but this is simply laughable. If you want reduced crime from the CJS rehabilitation is everything. If you want retribution and relatively high crime rates at huge cost you do the things you suggest. You bring in the US system that got us started on this in the first place.

Yourself isit wrote: »

There's still a happy median between Ireland and the US. Despite your "argument to extremes" logical fallacy.

Perhaps, but it's certainly none of the polices you've managed to suggest so far. To me you simply want the courts to get 'tough on crime' that needs to be lead from the Dept. of Justice and the Minister. There are a myriad of reasons it's not, the primary one being it doesn't work.

Samuel T. Cogley

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

One of my best friends from school was murdered many years ago now. He was tortured, beaten for many hours and then shot in the head and his body dumped in a field.... but yet the animal that did it was released after just 12 years. No outcry in the media or anywhere really (not that I expected one).

The sentences for violent crime, both here and in the UK (from what I read at least) are a joke. We have sex offender registers (which is fair enough) but yet nobody ever seems bothered about living next to scum that have a history of violent crimes. In fact in prison they are looked up to. Maybe out of prison too in many circles.

It's sickening.

Was this a few years back? Thankfully there was a look at life sentences being as short as 12 years (adults - not like the OP) and it was rightly changed.

Samuel T. Cogley

kupus wrote: »

And yet again the justice industry gives back to its community.
Notice how i always say industry.

The word system beings to mind something that works.
A plan is in place for efficient outcomes.

That is not the case here. The justice system has been broken for a long time. Now we are seeing the fruits of it in bloom.
And the worst thing.....

Its going to get a lot worse.

Since 2010 (the stats that are easily found by searching) we have had a general decrease in crime. How do you account for that in a broken system that's getting worse?

Now to give that some balance there has been a recent increase in homicides and sexual offences. 8 more murders and 201 more sexual offences YoY. These short term number do no indicate a broken system but one that could do with tweaking around certain offences. Serious violent offenders definitely being one of them. That was accompanied by a drop of almost 30% in burglaries.

SnakePlissken

robbiezero wrote: »

Messengers wrote: »

He's on Facebook. All his friends delighted to see him out.

Is it the guy with the "Hated by many, confronted by none" image in his timeline?

That's the guy alright, small consolation but the pin headed little mongrel looks closer to 40 than he does to 26 so I can only hope he had a tough time in prison.

Messengers

robbiezero wrote: »

Is it the guy with the "Hated by many, confronted by none" image in his timeline?

Yeah to which his friend replied "hes tellin da truth i know him since he was first locked up an was in a few jails with him he backd dwn from know one."

Lovely fellows.

Samuel T. Cogley

The thing that strikes me about people like this is they have no shame. You'd expect them to move somewhere as far away as possible and keep their head down. No instead it's all guns blazing on social media.

Outlaw Pete

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

Was this a few years back? Thankfully there was a look at life sentences being as short as 12 years (adults - not like the OP) and it was rightly changed.

It was in the late 90's and he received 15 years.

My friend was no angel mind, had gone down a road of crime himself (selling Es) but it's hard to wrap your head around the fact that someone you sat beside in school everyday, from the age of 13 to 18, would die like that just a handful of years later, and that the personal responsible for it (who didn't even plead guilty) would only get such a short sentence. To compound it all Paul Williams then wrote a heap of lies about him in one of his books with great detail and yet then at then at then at end of the chapter he said that another version of events that he heard was that he wasn't even there. You couldn't make it up. Well, that's not true, as people clearly do, and Williams prints it.

Anyway, the guy was released after 11/12 years. Nobody is really sure exactly when as there was so many death threats against him that it was felt that altering the media to his release date would endanger his life and so they didn't. It's just crazy to me how can anyone torture someone, then blow their brains out and walk out of prison after serving such a short period of time. I understand such sentences for people perhaps that have murdered someone in a fit of rage maybe, but for someone to be capable of that level of prolonged evilness, surely it warrants a sentence that would keep them away from the public for 30-40 years. If it was the states he'd have been executed himself. Though I think that would have been too good for him but that's assuming of course the alternative to that would be keeping him imprisoned.

Samuel T. Cogley

It sounds like it was a manslaughter charge rather than murder. They probably felt that was all they could prove. I'm making quite a few assumptions here of course, so apologies if I'm wrong and it's not my intention to cause any further distress. No matter what someone has done they don't deserve torture and if that element was proven in court a 15 year sentence is certainly not suitable. I actually think that it would be longer today thankfully given that the number of years spend inside on life has increased somewhat, and rightly so.

I'm all for the rehabilitation, I'm also convinced that long sentences do nothing to decrease crime on a macro level but there are certain things even I believe that retribution needs to play a part and something like this would certainly be one such case.

Ralf and Florian

Some beauts on that guys FB friends list. About 90% are guys he knows from jail I'd say.

Yourself isit

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

I use the term tabloid because that's exactly the level of engagement you have in this. As for the evidence of longer sentences, read the material, avoiding newspapers.

That's effectively an ad homimen. I didn't say "string them up". Or suggest the death penalty. My posts merely suggested that the judges use the sentencing powers available to them. Nothing tabloid about it.

That's simply not how it works to both points.

Please link to your material

Again with the tabloid sensationalism. Actually consecutive sentencing might have some small deterrent effect in very minor crimes, on non-drug addicts, where you end up doing a month for a string of shop lifting incidents - but I doubt it. For murders - the term is life, you can't do consecutive life sentences.

Again with the insults. Life terms not actually being life is the problem and therefore 3 life sentences should be consecutive. Or at least increase the original sentence.

I know you're generally quite quite contrary - but this is simply laughable. If you want reduced crime from the CJS rehabilitation is everything. If you want retribution and relatively high crime rates at huge cost you do the things you suggest. You bring in the US system that got us started on this in the first place.

I'm not exactly contrary, you are. The contrarian holds an opinion contrary to most people. You also find it hard to read or are deliberately engaging in a strawman. I didn't say no habilitation, I said it wasn't the primary aim of a justice system. If it was we would release sorry and reformed murders after a few days.

I also didn't mention the US. You did. Not only do you use the US as an argument to extremes, you then pretend that I mentioned it.

Perhaps, but it's certainly none of the polices you've managed to suggest so far. To me you simply want the courts to get 'tough on crime' that needs to be lead from the Dept. of Justice and the Minister. There are a myriad of reasons it's not, the primary one being it doesn't work.

Life sentences can be 30 years. No need to change the laws.

Samuel T. Cogley

Yourself isit wrote: »

That's effectively an ad homimen.

Sorry I was pretty much out with the rehabilitation comment, now the Latin has started I'm all the way out. The point remains, you and most of AH want the US system. Aer lingus are doing €100 off (or where). Mosey on over if you want to see what a CJS run by AH would look like.

My material is easily accessible just have a read of a few of the academic articles on the subject as I had to when looking at this stuff in some (granted not huge) detail. It's fairly easy to spot the trend almost straight away.

Yourself isit wrote: »

I'm not exactly contrary, you are.