The Yorkshire Ripper: A miscarriage of justice?

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Was Peter Sutcliffe wrongly convicted of the murder of 13 women in the 1970s?

One psychologist who's worked with him for over 8 years thinks Peter Sutcliffe was insane at the time, and should have been convicted of Manslaughter due to deminished responsibility.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle7045967.ece

Peter Sutcliffe was wrongly convicted of murder and may be safe for release less than 30 years after admitting killing 13 women, medical evidence presented to the High Court concluded yesterday. Details of the legal proceedings that the Yorkshire Ripper hopes will pave the way for his freedom can be reported for the first time after a judge lifted a secrecy order.

Sutcliffe, 63, will learn within months the minimum time that he must spend in custody before he can be considered for parole. A judge at his trial in 1981 recommended 30 years, which would have made him eligible to apply for release in January next year, but no formal tariff was set.

Mr Justice Mitting told the High Court yesterday that a psychiatrist’s report might also form the basis for Sutcliffe to appeal against his murder convictions. The Ripper has been accused of “hoodwinking” psychiatrists into believing that voices from God had ordered him to kill prostitutes.

Kevin Murray, a consultant psychiatrist at Broadmoor secure hospital, wrote that Sutcliffe had been wrongly convicted of murder.

The psychiatrist, who has treated Sutcliffe since 2001, said that it was the unanimous view of his colleagues that the Ripper was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time of his crimes. Dr Murray’s report from 2006 concluded that Sutcliffe may be safe for release within a “low single figures” of years, the court was told.

His treatment has had a “very considerable success” and if he continues with it he poses a low risk of offending, the report added.

Mr Justice Mitting said that the report could not influence the court’s decision on the minimum period that Sutcliffe must spend in custody, but in an unexpected move he said that it might form the basis of an appeal against the convictions for murder on the ground that Sutcliffe was suffering “diminished responsibility” at the time of the crimes, so should have been found guilty of manslaughter.

Mr Justice Mitting said that Sutcliffe could appear in the High Court this year to witness the decision on the minimum tariff that he must serve before he is eligible for parole. The judge said that Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, had provided details of about 20 previous relevant cases where a “whole life” sentence had been set.

The Prime Minister said in February last year it was “very unlikely” that Sutcliffe would be released. Sutcliffe, who is now known as Peter Coonan, has received tens of thousands of pounds of public money to fund his legal action. He is likely to seek lifetime anonymity if he is freed.

The prospect of Sutcliffe returning to the streets has divided the families of his victims and those who survived his attacks. Beryl Leach, 78, whose daughter was murdered in September 1979, said: “I just wanted him to be locked up and forgotten about. He should be kept away from society for ever.”

Barbara Leach, 20, was in her final year of a social psychology degree at Bradford University and walking home after a night out with friends when she was bludgeoned with a hammer and repeatedly stabbed with a screwdriver. “As a family our punishment goes on and on but I don’t see that his life in prison has been much of a punishment,” Mrs Leach said.

She was convinced that yesterday’s court hearing was an attempt by Sutcliffe towards release and a new life with anonymity guaranteed by the courts to protect him from revenge attacks. “I don’t believe any of that guff about him hearing voices, he just got his kicks out of killing people,” she said. “He will never be safe to be released.”

Marcella Claxton, 53, who survived being attacked with a hammer, said: “I have not forgotten what he has done to my mind. He has not been punished enough. He should stay inside. If he ever comes out he could do the same thing again.”

Olive Smelt who was struck twice on the head with a hammer in August 1975 did not oppose her attacker’s release. “It is 35 years ago and we don’t think about him any more,” said her husband, Harry. “But I don’t think they dare release him.”

Mr Justice Mitting has already received written “victim impact statements” from relatives and those who survived but indicated that he would not allow them to speak in court.

Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering 13 women and of attempting to murder a further seven during a reign of terror across the North of England. He has since admitted assaulting a further two women, including a 14-year-old girl.

Sir Michael Havers, Attorney-General at the Ripper’s trial, originally accepted the view of doctors who had diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia and sought to have Sutcliffe placed immediately in a special hospital. However, the judge, Sir Leslie Boreham, insisted that there should be a trial so that a jury could be the final arbiters of Sutcliffe’s sanity.

The prosecution claimed that Sutcliffe hoodwinked his psychiatrists into believing that he had heard “divine voices”. The jury agreed and ruled that Sutcliffe was not suffering a mental abnormality at the time of the crimes and was therefore guilty of murder.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Personally I've never heard such rubbish. To have managed to kill so many women, Sutcliffe has proved himself capable of a certain level of deception and manipulation.

There's been a case in NZ which has been profiled in by one of our psychologists about a man (Graeme Burton) who was convicted of murder, was violent in prison, until a year before he was up for parole ... when he suddenly became a model prisoner. Psychologists were convinced of a breakthrough, wrote lots of nice things, and he was released to kill again within days.

It has to raise alarm bells when someone with such a violent past seems to have suddenly reformed. Is it genuine? Can you even take the risk?

And even if they have reformed, and there is no risk, does their crime still demand continued punishment?

[Si Hunt]

Sorry, but if you kill 13 people you shouldn't expect to ever get out. The trouble is, you can argue "diminished responsibility" but then so could every other murderer - and I'd argue that, by the same logic, how can ANYONE be so sure he won't do it again? Is it like "It wasn't my fault, I had no control, but clearly we can all be assured that it won't happen again". How do the two things follow? If you are capable once. Besides, as I said, it's all very difficult to prove and, indeed, believe. It's not like the knife slipped 13 times. On some level, if not every level, he is a raging, dangerous psychopath and will be forever. 13 murders and mutilations. The clincher is that if he didn't have the arrogance of the devil, he wouldn't TRY and get out after doing that.

Si.

[Captain Tancredi]

Sir Michael Havers, Attorney-General at the Ripper’s trial, originally accepted the view of doctors who had diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia and sought to have Sutcliffe placed immediately in a special hospital. However, the judge, Sir Leslie Boreham, insisted that there should be a trial so that a jury could be the final arbiters of Sutcliffe’s sanity.

And there lies the problem- if he'd been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic and detained as criminally insane, he could probably be kept locked up forever without too much difficulty. But somebody decided that twelve people off the street were better qualified to decide whether somebody is sane or not, and in the light of the various rules about sentencing which have come in during the time that Sutcliffe's been in prison, I have a feeling this could run and run.

[Larry]

Kevin Murray, a consultant psychiatrist at Broadmoor secure hospital, wrote that Sutcliffe had been wrongly convicted of murder.

The psychiatrist, who has treated Sutcliffe since 2001, said that it was the unanimous view of his colleagues that the Ripper was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time of his crimes. Dr Murray’s report from 2006 concluded that Sutcliffe may be safe for release within a “low single figures” of years, the court was told.

His treatment has had a “very considerable success” and if he continues with it he poses a low risk of offending, the report added.

and how many times have we heard that only for the "cured" person to kill some body with in days of their release - you have to wonder who is the biggest danger to society the criminals or the psychiatrists.


but this is a far more interestiing article from today's Daily Mail

Utterly insane... no, not the sly and calculating Ripper Peter Sutcliffe but the arrogant doctors backing his bid to be freed

By Michael Bilton

Freedom bid: Peter Sutcliffe is serving life for the murders of 13 women
For anyone with a normal understanding of the meaning of right and wrong, the very idea that Britain's most notorious serial killer could successfully make a determined bid for freedom through the courts seems utterly incredible, writes the author of Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt For The Yorkshire Ripper.

But the Yorkshire Ripper and his team of doctors and legally-aided lawyers truly believe Peter Sutcliffe should be freed from Broadmoor high-security hospital next year after serving 30 years. Sutcliffe's case to be free is terrifyingly simple: 'Doctors tell me I'm no longer a danger to society,' he says. 'I've done my time for the crime - now let me go.'
Sutcliffe's attempt for release has rightly caused outrage.

Yet we now know, as a result of a High Court hearing this week, that Broadmoor's clinical director Dr Kevin Murray is supporting the Ripper's case.

He claims Sutcliffe's treatment for paranoid schizophrenia has been a 'very considerable success', and he also disputes whether the serial killer should ever have been convicted of murder in the first place.

As an author who spent years researching the hunt for the Ripper, I know the truth of Sutcliffe's terrible crimes and cannot accept he will ever be freed.


But the fact that his lawyers, with his doctors' support, are in court making the argument for his release at all shows how far down we have finally fallen into a dark hole - morally, legally, spiritually and politically. That any medical professional should cooperate with Sutcliffe's bid for clemency is proof that we have already entered an Alice In Wonderland, topsy-turvy world in which logic and common sense have been completely inverted.

So much so, that Dr Murray actually predicted in a medical report in 2006 that Sutcliffe would be ready for release in only a few years because he posed a low risk of offending.


We are talking of the man who terrorised the entire North of England in the 1970s, murdered 13 women and tried to kill another seven.
Yet, in the world of men in white coats, the very idea that a killer such as Sutcliffe could simply be bad - or, worse still, some kind of dreadful monster - is an absolute no-no.

For psychiatrists, and presumably the social workers who would monitor Sutcliffe's freedom, there appear to be no such thing as evil-doers anywhere, especially not in 'hospitals' such as Broadmoor. No matter what dreadful crimes they have inflicted on society, no matter how many victims they have racked up, no matter how many graves they have filled.

No, to the so-called experts there are only medically-ill people, frail people, people who should have all their civil and legal rights protected (including the social security payments that Sutcliffe has been claiming all the years he has been held in Broadmoor). Truly, one is left gasping at the moral vacuity.
At what point would a serial killer be deemed to be so evil that he could never be let out? Only if he was a danger to himself and others, presumably.
So let us look a little closer at the Ripper's crimes and conviction.

Sutcliffe killed 13 women. If his other attempted murders had succeeded, then his dead victims would have numbered 20.

Yet later this year, a judge will decide whether Sutcliffe should be given a 'tariff' - a date for his release - or told he will spend the rest of his life either in prison or in Broadmoor.

Sutcliffe's lawyer, Nicholas Bowen QC, told the High Court that the Broadmoor psychiatrists believe Sutcliffe should never have been convicted of murder because he was too ill to know what he was doing and suffering from diminished responsibility.

'From a clinical point of view, the verdict was wrong,' wrote Dr Murray. It seems incredible that the man who conducted a six-year killing spree could possibly be portrayed as a victim, but this is the stage we have now reached.

But here lies more flawed logic. For if Sutcliffe's doctors have successfully treated his claimed mental sickness, as they seem to suggest, I can't work out why Sutcliffe has not been sent back to serve his sentence in a maximum-security prison.

If he is no longer mentally ill and is taking whatever medication he has been prescribed, why has he not been returned to jail? On what legal grounds is he being held in Broadmoor?

We have been here before. Memories of the years Sutcliffe stalked the north of England are etched in the minds of millions of people, who are rightly angry.

They remember that while on remand before his trial in 1981, Sutcliffe said if he could convince people he was mad he would be sent to a 'loony bin' instead of a long-term prison.
He was utterly confident that a long-term bed was awaiting him in a secure hospital.

'He was quite cocky about it,' prison officer Anthony Fitzpatrick told the Old Bailey jury.
While on remand, Sutcliffe gave a series of interviews to an eminent psychiatrist, Dr Hugo Milne.

Amazingly, it was only during the eighth interview - 73 days after he was arrested - that Sutcliffe first mentioned that he was hearing the voice of God in his head and that he was on a divine mission to kill prostitutes.
He had never mentioned this to police when he made his 34-page confession, in which he remembered minute and terrible details of his crimes.


He even admitted returning to one of his victims a week after he killed her and attempting to cut her head off, so as to disguise his crime.

Hardly the act of a man who spontaneously answered the call from God and was, thus, insane.

But from the moment Sutcliffe spoke of the divine mission, the psychiatrists were determined to deem that he was ill and not a criminal.
In their eyes, he was mad not bad, and so wasn't responsible for his actions when he attacked all those women.

They wanted him not in prison but in a secure hospital to keep an eye on him - a prize specimen for them to work on.

Sutcliffe even joked they would pickle his brain and examine it when he died.
Defence and prosecution conveniently agreed Sutcliffe should plead guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

But they failed to convince the Old Bailey judge, Mr Justice Boreham, who ordered Sutcliffe should be tried by a jury for murder.
Over the next three weeks it was Sutcliffe in the dock, but the profession of psychiatry was really on trial - and it suffered a humiliating defeat when the jury convicted Sutcliffe.

The very fact that the psychiatrists at Broadmoor have returned to the same arguments that lamentably failed to convince a jury almost 30 years ago suggests psychiatry has really never recovered from its comprehensive drubbing during the trial.

No one - then or now - disputes that psychiatrists have a valuable role in modern society and that they have made huge inroads into the treatment of mental disorders.

But when it comes to the perpetrators of some of the most terrible crimes, they seem to have a blind spot.
We must not let them hoodwink justice. In the name of sanity, Peter Sutcliffe must die behind bars.

[Philipnet]

He may have suffered from paranoid schizophrenia when he committed those murders.

Who's to say he won't suffer from that again and kill some more?

[WhiteCrowNZ]

I'm sure there's an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights on the cards too.

[Larry]

I'm sure there's an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights on the cards too.

and that's exactly why I am so against the "Human Rights" treaty .

[MinaHarker]

Ugh, there's no way he should get out. Less than 4 years per life he took? No.

This helps the crusade against the mentally ill too - people are being convinced that paranoid scitzophrenia = dangerous and violent.

[Jason Thompson]

Indeed. Violent psychopaths are mentally ill, but not all mentally ill are violent psychopaths. Unfortunately, as with everything in the media, you don't hear much about the mentally ill who don't go out and do weird or terrible things.

[Alex]

Quite. I haven't the statistics to hand, but someone who is diagnosed as being a paranoid schizophrenic and is medicated correctly is very unlikely to committ a crime - or at least a violent one.

The macabre thing is, if Sutcliffe was released, I couldn't see him surviving for long. There's an awful lot of people out there who'd want to take revenge, or make a name for themselves by killing him.

Edit: Some facts(?) from Wikipedia:

The relationship between violent acts and schizophrenia is a contentious topic. Current research indicates that the percentage of people with schizophrenia who commit violent acts is higher than the percentage of people with schizophrenia who commit violent acts is higher than the percentage of people without any disorder, but lower than is found for disorders such as alcoholism, and the difference is reduced or not found in same-neighbourhood comparisons when related factors are taken into account, notably sociodemographic variables and substance misuse. Studies have indicated that 5% to 10% of those charged with murder in Western countries have a schizophrenia spectrum disorder.

The occurrence of psychosis in schizophrenia has sometimes been linked to a higher risk of violent acts. Findings on the specific role of delusions or hallucinations have been inconsistent, but have focused on delusional jealousy, perception of threat and command hallucinations. It has been proposed that a certain type of individual with schizophrenia may be most likely to offend, characterized by a history of educational difficulties, low IQ, conduct disorder, early-onset substance misuse and offending prior to diagnosis.

Individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia are often the victims of violent crime—at least 14 times more often than they are perpetrators. Another consistent finding is a link to substance misuse, particularly alcohol, among the minority who commit violent acts. Violence by or against individuals with schizophrenia typically occurs in the context of complex social interactions within a family setting, and is also an issue in clinical services and in the wider community.

[MacNimon]

People tend to forget how things felt as time goes by though, don't they? I remember, growing up in the 70's, the news reports on tv and the newspapers whenever another victim was found. As the number of victims increased and no-one was being arrested for any of the crimes, so did the terror for thousands of women around the country. And 'terror' isn't putting it too strongly...the longer Sutcliffe remained at large, the more terrified that many of these women were that they could potentially be his next victim. It really was a sort of mental cruelty against thousands of people who would really never even have a remote chance of ever coming into contact with him...but how were they ever to know that, at a time when nobody even knew who the Ripper was? It may sound melodramatic using the word 'terror' but as I remember it, that certainly was the feeling at the time.

And moving a little off-topic here, but regarding another high-profile murder...I see that Jon Venables, one of the two child thugs who murdered little toddler Jamie Bulger, has been returned to prison after years of drug abuse and violence since his release. I don't remember the details of the reasoning behind the release of the two murderers (unfortunately I can't forget the details of their crime so easily) so I'm not sure whether or not this was another case where psychiatrists intervened, possibly suggesting that they had been 'cured'? If not, I'm at a total loss as to why they were released when they were...Anyway, while he hasn't resorted to murder again, Venables has obviously shown that he has violent tendancies which his years in prison did nothing to 'cure' (and apparently, according to psychiatrists, he was the less evil of the two). Who's to say that the same won't be the same with Sutcliffe?

He's one man who should remain behind bars for the rest of his life, imo. Like someone said earlier, some people are just plain born evil, and nothing will ever change them.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

If not, I'm at a total loss as to why they were released when they were...

The European Court of Human Rights said their rights were being refused by them being locked up.

Of course anyone who kills 12 people is going to be a bit mentally unballanced. Well you'd hope it wouldn't be the norm anyway.

All this talk of human rights does sicken me - victims have rights as well as murderers. It's like in the eyes of court murderers can twist things to make out they're now the victim of a savage state. But the state has never been so lenient with murderers.

It does make me wonder where we're heading as a society. I don't really believe in the death penalty, but when murderers just flaut the law like this I can't help but think it'd be simpler for Sutcliffes victims families if he was just hung in the 80s.

But we can look through history to see what the death penalty brings us. Britain under the death penalty didn't bring justice, it brought huge injustice, with many flimsy and frankly wrong trials brought to court, and innocent people killed by the state. A feeble weak apology is all we managed for Derek Bentley, but it could never bring him back.

[Jason Thompson]

The European Court of Human Rights said their rights were being refused by them being locked up.

This utterly infuriates me every time I hear something like this. Those two brutally murdered a toddler, for crying out loud! It wasn't a game that went too far. It wasn't an accident they tried to cover up. They deliberately took a very young, innocent victim they selected off the streets and beat him to death! They then left his body on railway tracks to try and make it look like an accident. How can scum like that possibly HAVE any human rights after taking such vile actions? Why are the rights of others not taking precedence? How can infringing the rights of two violent criminals like them be taking priority over safeguarding the rest of the population against them?!

[Philipnet]

Quite. I haven't the statistics to hand, but someone who is diagnosed as being a paranoid schizophrenic and is medicated correctly is very unlikely to committ a crime - or at least a violent one.

That's a big if.
What if he stops taking the medication?
A release from a stable, safe environment into something that inherently unpredictable could easily go wrong, especially if the person concerned doesn't have the full mental faculties that most other people have.

[Jason Thompson]

That is a fair point. Patient non-compliance is one of the biggest factors affecting the successful treatment of mental illnesses of all kinds.

However, the bigger point is that 'mental illness' covers a whole specturm of problems with a whole spectrum of intensities. It is this fact that is overlooked by the media and the public at large. Rather in the same way that 'nuclear' doesn't actually mean 'deadly', 'mentally ill' doesn't actually mean 'dangerously unbalanced'. To listen to news reports, however, you'd think it did.

[Alex]

That's a big if.
What if he stops taking the medication?
A release from a stable, safe environment into something that inherently unpredictable could easily go wrong, especially if the person concerned doesn't have the full mental faculties that most other people have.

Oh, absolutely, and in this case it's one of the reasons I think he should remain behind bars, as he refused to take any kind of medication until he was forced to many years later. My point was just a general one, in that most schizophrenic's hate their condition, and seek out all the help they can get.