Murderers convicted of horrific attack

A drug dealer was beaten up in his flat and robbed of money and drugs. He decided to take revenge on the girl he decided had set him up, so got together a group of 5 other lowlife to help him.

They stuffed her and her friend into the boot of their car, took them to a hotel room (lining the floor with towels first to soak up the blood), raped and tortured them for 3 hours with knives, boiling water etc.


full story of the murder from the beeb
story of the trial from the beeb
sentencing is on April 28th
what would you do with them?

What would I personally do? Head shot, over and done with. Easy peasy. Little effort- bit of a mess I suppose, but I could live with that.

I think the zoo is always looking for live prey for their lions and tigers.

Edit: what I feel and what I would rationally do are two different things.

They should suffer what they did to the Women!

Think we've seen a very similar thread before and the conclusion was whilst everyone personally had a blood lust, that to preserve society, sanity and judicial punishment had to prevail.

Yes, Dave, but I personally hope that some day we'll all come to our senses and realize that judicial punishment is a load of crap and that blood lust should prevail. Which is why I welcome rehashing the topic now and again.

I'm with dave on this one. The crime was horrific, but why follow one murder with several others. These murderers are now a captive resource from which we can choose to discover why, and therefore calculate a possible prevention of another such crime occurring again. We get too caught up in the punishment without analysing the reason and future prevention.

I think that what the drug dealer did was appropriate. His actions will serve as a deterent for other women who will try and set up their boyfriends and steal their drugs.

Spoken like a true BadBob. . .

Hard labour... profitable prisons ... only way.

Test new medication on them, at least society might benefit from it.

You know, I advocated that once and as a scientist I thought it was a great idea. Every aspect of their lives could be controlled and it would make for the perfect situation. The first reaction I got from people was that I wanted to be Josef Mengele. Hell, I figured that it would be the perfect alternative to the death penalty. Even a wrongly convicted person would have hope that their life meant something and those that deserved to be there would be forced to have a life that meant something. Win win I thought.

Spoken like a true Democrat.

You make that sound like an insult. Like the negative use of the adjective "liberal".

These men need to be punished for a horrific crime. Society also needs to be protected from them. I see no laternative to a very long custodial sentence. Prison is supposed to also have a third purpose that often gets neglected: the re-habilitation of offenders. maybe it is possible for these indicuduals to one day re-enter soicety. But I think there should be a LONG time for which they are not elgiable for parole.

@ Topsy, you might like to look at Ern's new hangout iykwim.

I would take it as an insult. To be forced to conform to a party. Liberal on the other hand is often grouped incorrectly with democrat. they are separate ideas and mutually exclusive. I am definitely liberal, but never would I want to called a democrat or republican (the true two headed monster)

He meant it as an insult. But it just shows his ignorance of what Democrat means. Sort of like when my brother calls me a "feminist". But I don't find that insulting either. I honestly do believe in womens sufferage, right to earn a fair living, etc. And yes, liberal is also a complement in my book as well.

Well I am Progressive, but the only way to have any real influence is to work within the two party structure. That is why there is a PDA and a ProgDA. Until progressives get big enough and enough power to form a third party alone, there is no other way.

Well of course BadBob meant it as an insult. I mean, he is a Bush lover. Quite a fanatical one at that, which he proved a while back when he outed himself as one of the most obsessed homophobes around. Just don't mention homosexuality around him as he gets quite upset by the word

Or ignore him.

@Eurovol

I respect your actions as you actively engage in the political framework to try and effect change. That is commendable. I, on the otherhand, just like to complain and hope for the day that independents will rule the house and senate.

I am fairly liberal. But when I talk about "a liberal" or "the liberals" I mean people to the right of me!

Guardian reading yoghurt weaving vegan social workers who wibble and wobble all over the place rather than going for it Lenin style and wanting to shoot the "royals" and their dogs.

You mean he's NOT gay??? Damn! I read him totally wrong then, because he comes across as a total dick lover.

If only dreams could come true.

As for BadBob and being a homophobe, I suggest everyone watch "A Patriot Act".

OMG - I can't decide if I should post this under "jokes" or not. But the 'Republicans' have rewritten the dictionary

"Democrat: 1. A politician, frequently a Liberal, who seeks to further his or her political career by complaining about such harmless issues as poverty, environmental destruction, job loss, education, and healthcare, while failing to address the primary concerns of Americans everywhere that they could be killed any second by a terrorist, or even worse, that two men somewhere may want to get married ."



Though I can't believe this would be party sponsored - most active members of the republican party I know (meaning not the sheep) are still smarter than that.

Well, anyroad...

So I have a real problem with this rabble. I'm against the death penalty in principle for a bunch of reasons. But then every so often people like this come along and I just wonder what to do with them.
I wonder whether a long custodial sentence will really benefit them? or the people around them?

I guess you could subject them to a high volume repeating loop of Grinner's DIY store jokes

Agree (not difficult to really) that it was incredibly gruesome. Amazing that the bullet (thankfully) didn't do its job

Leave Cheney out of this!
Well, don't use the guys as human guinea pigs then, but make them do service to the people, as in feeding helpless elderly or washing bodies in the mortuary or doing gymnastics with mentally handicapped. They disregarded life, show them what life can be. Much better than hanging out in the jail gym and carving perfect six-packs.
P.S. I am acquainted with BadBob's mails, but thx anyway.

Thing is Topsy, however horrific this one individual crime and the need for punishment for that. Violent crimes against the person are declining in the UK and we shouldn#'t necessarily base the criminal justice system on one extraordinary unrepresentative case.

With the 'lock 'em up' crowd as usual - shotting them, subjecting them to Nazi-style medical experiments (a suggestion I hope was a joke) is all a complete waste of time and/or barbaric. The system we have now would possibly benefit from some minor tweaking, but a complete re-write of the justice system will cause way more problems than it solves, even when it comes to nasty bastard crimes like this one.

You'd be much better at tackling the causes of the problem - in this case the drugs trade (of Class A drugs before some liberal complains that weed is good for you).

don't get me wrong, I'd be the last one to argue for bringing back the death penalty
I just think there are some people who you'd never really want to be released back into society - not just these but others as well, such as Peter Sutcliffe, Fred West (although he topped himself anyway) - and does the prison system as it stands really do any good, in cases like these? Or is there some other way?

@Jimbo - agree with you totally, I would decriminalise all drugs

Though I am against capital punishment, I fail to see why we should even begin to attempt to reform or understand these individuals?

Give them (true) life without parole and something humiliating to make time pass like breaking up rocks in the prison courtyard for the next 40 to 50 years.

Certainly one way of killing the trade in illegal drugs, but I'm yet to be convinced that more crackheads on our streets is actually an improvement. Personally I'd de-criminalise weed and then concentrate on cleaning drugs off our streets so we can all live in a utopian world.

That is crap. There are people who do these actions without drugs and there are people who use drugs that don't do these actions. They are separate. This is usually the problem with the criminal system they want something to blame rather than the person. It was his upbringing, it was his lack of education, it was the drugs, it was the unfair labor laws...all of that is crap. It comes down to one point. It was the actions of this person. Drugs didn't make him the person he is, he would have been just as sadistic without drugs.

Good post.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2011705,00.html

? Not according to the report and the home secretary

how about the health care costs and social consequences of drug use? Aren't they going to cause problems?

Not a joke and not Nazi like experimentation. TGN1412 could have been given to them first before released onto an unsuspecting public where 6 good guys end up in ICU. I am talking approved drug trials.

i'd say a long custodial sentence would be the only measure, but the state of the prison system in the UK at the moment is shocking and the sentences are joke. This case is proof enough: "At the time the gang bundled Mary-Ann and a friend into the boot of a car, before killing one and leaving the other for dead, four were convicts out on licence and, apparently, under the supervision of probation officers."

Bollocks. Separating drugs and crime is impossible - or are you seriously suggesting that if the drugs trade didn't exist young men would still go around machine-gunning each other on London's streets every weekend? Or that these men would all have turned out to be killers otherwise? They do it because they're protecting their business interests, not because they're sadists.

Granted in the case at hand these young men displayed a dis-quietening level of sadism, but the essence of the issue here is the problems and the crime that is caused by drugs - either it's users stealing to get enough money together for another fix or it's dealers protecting their interests by killing/wounding competitors or those who otherwise get in their way.

I absolutely agree that one does not automatically lead to the other, but to divorce the two completely is totally impossible.

Is this true? It seems to me that not a day goes by without another (or more than one) horrific crime taking place, not to mention the fact that the offenders are younger and younger (boy of 14 killing an 11-year old, for example) and that many of them show total disregard for human life even in cases of burglary or theft.

see my link in earlier post on this thread. Violent crime is on the up in the Uk according to the report and the current home secretary

Yes, that's more like it, unfortunately...

I disagree. The drug trade involves money. It is money and possesions that causes this violence. Without drugs there would still be violence. People would still steal, kill, rape and want vengenance. These are linked to the human nature, and a separation from what we consider as normal behaviour is considered abnormal. These people would still be abnormal. Rather than making their quick and easy money from selling drugs, they would be breaking into peoples homes and stealing. They would kidnap wealthy people and negotiate prices for their release. There are evil people in the world whether or not there are drugs. Look at most of the serial killers, rarely if ever are they associated with drugs. As long as we have differences in money, beauty or power between inidividuals we will have envy and justification for taking what the others have and they do not.

Hmmm...OK, well from that point of view I take your point, though I would still contend that drugs present one of the easiest ways for this kind of behaviour to come to the surface - the money involved is big, and the actual execution of the crime (i.e. pushing drugs) is relatively simple. I simply can't see theft, kidnap and so on becoming quite as prevalent as drugs. Hard to say I suppose, and I admit that humanity has a disquieting way of always showing the worst of itself.

I agree with that aspect you mentioned as well. It is the easy aspect to this money and the inherent criminality associated with it. therefore people who are already showing an inclination to break rules are able to reap huge amounts of money. Taken from a naive perspective a society can either ban drugs to protect society or allow them and try and control their uses. How knows which results in more problems? However, or societies are no longer so naive (for the time being). In the US we saw what occured/occurs with making alcohol/drugs illegal. It doesn't stop the consumption, just a redistribution of the money involved.

Mugging is up: phones, MP3, cameras etc but serious violent crime against the person is down:

From Murdoch's scab rag:
------------------
more serious cases including homicide, threats to murder and serious woundings fell by 10 per cent.
------------------

So I don't think we need to be panicked into "bringing back the rope".

Exactly. I didn't say sadistic experiments either, I said medication.

Forcing people to be subjected to medical experiments of any kind is barbaric and the fact that it finds open support is a little troubling in my opinion. Just lock 'em up and make 'em do some menial tasks - injecting their eyeballs with acid isn't on IMHO

Ok, back to washing dead bodies then. They didn't seem to mind killing people so they shouldn't object.