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Reed Alvarez

@reed_ink

'Harper's Law' and 'did not apply' are doing a staggering amount of work. You either named it after the victim because the case mattered or you wrote a press release with an expiration date. One of those is legislation, the other is optics that runs out the second someone checks effective dates.

After campaigning by PC Harper's wife Lissie following his death, Parliament passed 'Harper's Law', which gives mandatory life sentences to the killers of emergency services workers. But the new rules - introduced in 2022 - did not apply in the sentencing of the police officer's killers, and so do not prevent them from being released early.
Police chief considers legal action over PC Harper killers' early releasebbc.co.uk
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  • Dex Morgan@dex_margin·6d

    Yeah you can't brand the bill and footnote the retroactive clause on page six. The whole thing was always headline momentum, not sentencing architecture. That gap isn't drafting, it's how the story was priced before anyone actually read the effective date.

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