Fifteen year old girl who killed her newborn baby

Barron was found by experts to have had a recognised psychiatric disorder. There was no such finding in the Mayo case.
www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/R-v-Barron-sentencing-140723.pdf
Whatever people on GN might imagine defendants’ mental conditions to be, I prefer to trust the opinions of highly qualified experts.
The law is not an ass Glorianny. It is highly sophisticated. Different situations produce different outcomes.

Germanshepherdsmum

Barron was found by experts to have had a recognised psychiatric disorder. There was no such finding in the Mayo case.
www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/R-v-Barron-sentencing-140723.pdf
Whatever people on GN might imagine defendants’ mental conditions to be, I prefer to trust the opinions of highly qualified experts.
The law is not an ass Glorianny. It is highly sophisticated. Different situations produce different outcomes.

Any legal system which takes 4 years to bring a 15 year old girl to court and which tries her as an adult is an ass.
Are you telling me that if the jury had seen a vulnerable 15 year old in the dock she would have been treated in the same way? Because I don't believe that.

Psychiatrist don't always get it right.

As is evidenced by the two differing opinions in the Paris Mayo case.

And 12 years for killing 39 people? - the sentence for a people-trafficker. How do these sentences add up?

I have worked with 15 year old pregnant girls - many of them, one of whom also killed her baby. She was entirely sane but luckily the judge saw fit to take her age and circumstances into account.

We knew the parents of a young girl of about 17 very many years ago. She and her boyfriend disposed of their newborn baby with the rubbish.
I know that she got probation, but can't remember what happened to him. I don't think he was sent to prison.

You know why the Mayo case took so long to come to trial Glory. Perhaps you should revisit the judgement as well as reading the judgement in the Barron case which I posted above. Barron has a very low IQ and a reading age of 10-12. She is a very different person to Mayo, who despite what you say was treated as a 15 year old in the case. Lawyers have to be able to approach cases such as this without emotion clouding the facts, and to contrast one case with another.
I wish you would stop using that hackneyed old phrase. It does you no credit and underlines your lack of understanding of the very basic differences between the two defendants.

Germanshepherdsmum

You know why the Mayo case took so long to come to trial Glory. Perhaps you should revisit the judgement as well as reading the judgement in the Barron case which I posted above. Barron has a very low IQ and a reading age of 10-12. She is a very different person to Mayo, who despite what you say was treated as a 15 year old in the case. Lawyers have to be able to approach cases such as this without emotion clouding the facts, and to contrast one case with another.
I wish you would stop using that hackneyed old phrase. It does you no credit and underlines your lack of understanding of the very basic differences between the two defendants.

Are you telling me that the jurors didn't look at Paris Mayo and see an adult? Because as you have said the judgement in this case rested with the jury, no matter what the legal reasons, the final decision is the jurors and they saw a 19 year old, not a 15 year old.
The condemnation and accusations made about that young girl are not balanced or reasonable. It is unreasonable to think that a 15 year old deliberately conceals a pregnancy from her family, with nefarious intentions, but the partner of a 34 year old doesn't notice and the woman of 34 who doesn't tell her GP was just upset.
The baby was also said to have injuries which were possibly not from the fall but inflicted previously.

As for the reading age. The average reading age for the UK population isn't much higher. 10-12 is the reading age necessary to read the Sun newspaper.

The CPS said:

Her actions were deliberate, she chose to hide her pregnancy, give birth alone and kill her baby, then hide his body despite accepting that she had a family who would have supported her

The police said:
“It’s important the investigation and resulting proceedings were dealt with sensitively and proportionately by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) taking into account all the evidence gathered, including the expert medical reports, to achieve the most appropriate outcome in these very sad circumstances.”

🤔

So which case is which?
These statements could apply to each case.

The jury would have been instructed very clearly to deal with Mayo as a 15 year old. They would have been left in no doubt that they were required to do that.

I won’t argue either case further with you because you have a fixed mindset which is unable or unwilling to distinguish between the two. You were not in court to hear the evidence but nevertheless believe you know better than the experts and the jury. You do not.

That was to Glory.

There is something very wrong here.

Two dead babies, two scared mothers, one a 15 year old child with a troubled family life, one 34 with a partner, both killed their babies and apparently wanted them out of sight, out of mind, denying the pregnancy and the reality of the birth.

Each treated completely differently.

For good reasons,

Poor children, by which I mean both mother and child.

I hope her school teachers are feeling as guilty as hell - one or other of them should have realised what kind of family liFe this poor girl had and done something to help her long before she became pregnant, I know I would have felt guilty if this had escaped my notice!

And a teacher or some other grown up should have realised that her figure had changed, however hard the poor girl tried to conceal her pregnancy. We have been hearing of teenage mothers since I was 12 (many years ago now)

Desperate women all through history have killed new born babies and suffered for it.

Horrible to think that this girl's solicitor hadn't the sense to build up a defence along the lines that the girl concealed her pregnancy so as not to worry her parents, intending to put the baby up for adoption, then killed the infant while the balance of her mind was disturbed due to giving birth alone.

Or if that was the defence a judge (and jury, as well, I presume) discounted it.

Germanshepherdsmum

For good reasons,

I can't agree, Germanshepherdsmum.

She was represented by King’s Counsel. And expert reports were obtained as regards her mental state at the time. Lawyers don’t fabricate defences as you are suggesting should have been done. I posted the judgment at the time, why not read it?

Or if that was the defence a judge (and jury, as well, I presume) discounted it.

The jury which was not unanimous.

I wonder if those jurors are still happy with their decision and can live with it.

If you read the two judgments and contrast them I hope you will understand Callistemon. The essential difference between infanticide (Barron) and murder (Mayo) is the defendant’s mental state at the time the crime was committed. The two cases were very different in this vital respect.

Germanshepherdsmum

She was represented by King’s Counsel. And expert reports were obtained as regards her mental state at the time. Lawyers don’t fabricate defences as you are suggesting should have been done. I posted the judgment at the time, why not read it?

I didnt say it was fabricated.

I said that the two forensic psychiatrists disagreed in their opinion as to her state of mind.

Grandtante said that Mayo’s solicitor should ‘have had the sense’ to make up a defence.

I think the post mortem results on the babies were significant as well.
The 15 year old was accused of deliberately injuring her baby.
The 34 year old was given the benefit of the doubt, her baby had injuries from the fall but also some which may have happened before he was thrown.
GSM your assertions that the law always gets it right flies in the face of the many cases where people have been found not guilty much later. But I can understand that you fear that the thing you have always believed in is neither as just nor as reasonable as you thought.

No way does the law always get it right.

Glorianny

I think the post mortem results on the babies were significant as well.
The 15 year old was accused of deliberately injuring her baby.
The 34 year old was given the benefit of the doubt, her baby had injuries from the fall but also some which may have happened before he was thrown.
GSM your assertions that the law always gets it right flies in the face of the many cases where people have been found not guilty much later. But I can understand that you fear that the thing you have always believed in is neither as just nor as reasonable as you thought.

No-one is doubting what happened as the pathologists' reports will have made clear.

However, it is the consequent decisions of the CPS, the psychiatric assessments and the subsequent different charges in such similar cases which I find questionable.

Different courts
Different juries, of course.

Anniebach

No way does the law always get it right.

You can say that again.

Anytime who thinks otherwise is seriously deluded

I have never said ‘the law always gets it right’. That’s pure fabrication. Of course there are successful appeals, Believe me, I have never had the fear you ascribe to me - another fabrication, trying to find justification for my views. The problem is that women especially have difficulty in putting their emotions to one side and cannot believe that another woman (of any age) could whilst of sound mind kill their baby and put it in a rubbish bag. They can and they do. Women tend to imagine all sorts of reasons why this cannot be so, the experts were wrong, the juries were wrong. They cannot face the fact that some members of their sex are pretty evil. However the majority of the Mayo jury were women and they had heard all the evidence, unlike anyone here. My passion for the law remains unchanged.

And different circumstances Callistemon.