posted on Thursday, January 26, 2006 3:56 AM
by
Endie
Taking The Victim As You Find Them
File this one under "why the Scottish legal system is better than the English one."
In Yorkshire, a group of teenaged girls, of the repugnant bullying variety that end up pregnant by 15 [Edit: it turns out that one of them has done exactly this] and living off us taxpayers for the rest of their miserable and pointless lives, decided that they would physically attack another girl. This girl, a fifteen year-old called Aimee Wellock, suffered from an undiscovered heart defect, and died as a result of the attack. Originally convicted of manslaughter, the attackers have just had their convictions quashed, since in English law it was the heart defect and not the actual attacks that lead to death.
Well, in Scotland we know causality when we see it. Were these barely-bipedal vermin to have committed their crime in Scotland, they would have ended up doing several years for culpable homicide (the Scottish equivalent of manslaughter). Here, we have a principle, first established in a similar case of attack followed by heart failure, which covers exactly this. You are said to take the victim as you find them. England might take a lead on this one.