The discussion about Nottingham continues on social media – this is a post about the law when someone is convicted of murder, compared to when someone is convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility (DR). Before I launch in to that, however, I just want to note this morning’s announcement that Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust will be subject to a special review by the Care Quality Commission – something which is due to be complete by the end of March 2024. The families have called for a public enquiry and are due to meet senior politicians.
But this post is also about accuracy in our discussions about these awful events and their practical implications for how sentencing is undertaken by courts in the two types of situation.
- Where someone is convicted by a criminal court of murder, they must be sentenced to life – this sentence is ‘fixed by law’ and the judge has no discretion but to impose a life sentence. It doesn’t necessarily mean a life spent in prison, specifically – although it can mean that for some especially dangerous and notorious offenders. It does mean the person will be in prison for a minimum period (known as the ‘tarrif’) which is determined by the judge and if they are ever released, they are subject to life licence outside prison.
- The judge cannot give a restricted hospital order as an alternative to prison.
- Where someone is convicted of manslaughter (DR), they can be sentenced to life – that is the maximum prison sentence which can be given and it is available to the judge if they think it appropriate. Mr Justice Taylor said in Nottingham Crown Court this week that if he had selected a prison sentence for Valdo Calocane, it would have been a life sentence.
- He then went on to explain why he did give a restricted hospital order.
Why am I emphasising this? – it’s because of the attempts online to debate how the utter awfulness in Nottingham contrasts to or compares to other cases. In particular, I’ve read at least ten times how Peter Sutcliffe (the so-called Yorkshire Ripper) was also sent to hospital by the court because of his mental illness. I keep hearing other examples, like the nurse Beverly Allitt who was convicted of murdering babies in her care and the London gangster Ronnie Kray who executed a gang rival in a pub.
The problem here is: none of that is true! None of those people were sentenced by a judge to hospital, because they were all convicted of murder — it’s not even true to say they went more-or-less immediately to hospital having bounced off the prison system because Sutcliffe remained in prison for years before he was moved to Broadmoor.
PRISON TRANSFERS
Now, any person detained in the prison estate can be transferred from prison to a mental health hospital at any time whilst they are on remand (s48 MHA) or serving a sentence (s47 MHA) – indeed, they can also be ‘remitted’ or transferred back (s50 MHA). But in the case of Sutcliffe, he was imprisoned for murder after a murder trial where he did argue the killings committed were examples of manslaughter by diminished responsibility. It’s even true to point out, all the psychiatric evidence said that DR was available to him, as well. The jury heard his argument and the prosecution argument to the contrary, and they rejected his submission and he was convicted of murders and attempted murders.
So what was different in his case, compared to that in Nottingham?- well mainly, the psychiatric evidence which was much more problematic. Firstly, it wasn’t unanimous across the experts, unlike in Nottingham – secondly, the prosecution managed to demonstrate one of the experts had assessed for diminished responsibility but had missed key issues in his psychiatric report. If you’re interested in the detail, read my post on it.
But suffice to say, the judge in Mr Calocane’s case was satisfied the prosecution had taken all reasonable to steps to establish the diminished responsibility defence was properly grounded in medicine and law, the judge in Mr Sutcliffe’s case was not at all satisfied – and that’s why it was put to a jury in a murder trial. This doesn’t mean there aren’t some questions about Nottingham, like why the defendant doesn’t appear to have been assessed in police custody for his mental health or until around five months later, once in prison. But when he was eventually assessed, the evidence appears to have been consistent across those who assessed him and consistent with what else was known.
SENTENCING
Peter Sutcliffe remained in prison for four years after his convictions. In some cases where seriously mentally ill defendants are convicted, they are imprisoned but then almost immediately transferred from prison to hospital under s47 MHA. Nicola Edgington is an example of this – convicted of murder in 2012, she was almost immediately moved to Rampton Hospital in Nottinghamshire and remains there many years later. If you remember the transferred detention of Ian Brady, one of the so-called Moors Murderers — he also had been convicted of murders and then transferred to Ashworth Hospital where he died many decades later, never returning to prison.
Mr Sutcliffe, however, was remitted – section 50 MHA was used to transfer him back from Broadmoor to the prison system in 2016. He died in prison almost four years later – the kind of place to which he’d been sentenced back in 1981. This case and none of the others mentioned above offer useful comparisons to the latest awfulness in Nottingham – they are not sufficiently similar cases at all. In most cases where someone who is seriously mentally ill is convicted of or pleads guilty to manslaughter (DR), they are detained under a restricted hospital order in hospital OR subject to an order which the Nottingham judge mentioned in passing, a s45A Mental Health Act order, known as a ‘hybrid’ order.
There is a lot of myth and folklore bouncing around the internet following this terrible case — if there is to be better public understanding of what the legal system has done here and why; if there is to be a proper debate about what might be done better and differently in future (because it seems obvious certain things could be done better and differently!), or if we want to debate whether, how or why the law might be reformed … all of that must start with us actually understanding what did occur here and why, both in this case and in those now being highlighted to offer comparison and contrast.
There is far too much making things up for my liking – because all of the information summarised in this post is online for everyone to read. Not least that’s the case across this website, which has covered many of the cases and legal issues to which I’ve just referred for over twelve years now. The resources you might want to explore all of this further can be accessed via this page.
Winner of the President’s Medal, the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Winner of the Mind Digital Media Award
All opinions expressed are my own – they do not represent the views of any organisation. (c) Michael Brown, 2024
I try to keep this blog up to date, but inevitably over time, amendments to the law as well as court rulings and other findings from inquests and complaints processes mean it is difficult to ensure all the articles and pages remain current. Please ensure you check all legal issues in particular and take appropriate professional advice where necessary.
Government legislation website – www.legislation.gov.uk
Mental Health Cop 