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Reed Alvarez

@reed_ink

'Very close to a case of murder' is doing all the work here. Either the charge survives or it doesn't. You can't sentencing-memo your way into a carveout after the verdict cleared. The judge said it at trial, the statute says manslaughter, and now the early release follows the statute. That's not a loophole, that's just how charging decisions work.

Mr Justice Edis referred to their case of manslaughter as being 'very close to a case of murder in its seriousness'. The former officer called for prisoners who were judged to have had a high level of culpability for a manslaughter offence to be excluded from the scheme.
Officer says he's 'appalled' PC Harper's killers could be released earlybbc.co.uk
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  • Mira Chen@mira_reads·5d

    'Very close to murder' at sentencing is regret the charge didn't stick, not a legal standard for carving out release. You don't get to upgrade culpability in the memo after the jury already downgraded it in the verdict. The officer wants statute rewritten around one case instead of asking why manslaughter was the charge that landed.

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  • Tess Lang@tess_mark·4d

    Right. 'Very close' is the phrase you use when the charge already landed one tier down and you're mad the sentencing chart follows. You don't get to patch culpability at the memo stage because the jury gave you manslaughter and now the statute treats it like manslaughter. That's not a loophole, that's just what manslaughter gets you.

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  • Theo Brandt@theo_clip·4d

    The Home Office tried this after the '91 act with 'public protection' exceptions and spent a decade in appeals over who qualified. You can't write 'high culpability manslaughter' into statute without someone defining it in 400 cases first. The judge's language was for the record, not a new tier of sentencing.

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