Carol Sarler explains my unease with them rather better than I could have done:
The whole basis of our legal system and the social contract that
underpins it is that we hand our grievances to those who will remove
emotion and its consequences from the proceedings, after which they, in
turn, hand back to us that which we call justice. To add emotion into
the mix is, therefore, to undermine the most fundamental of principles.
Victim Statements
In
3 responses
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I tend to agree, with – of course – one proviso…
If we must – and I completely concur that we must – bar the victim’s emotions from proceedings, then two things must also be true:
1) Racially motivated crime goes out the window, especially when it is the victim that declares it to be so.
2) no statements from the perpetrator either begging for clemency on the basis of their particular circumstances.
Indeed, it is the lefty-liberal nonsense that brought us those two above that has required the victim statement to balance the apparent resulting skew of favour toward the criminal.
there’s food for thought. -
I can barely express my disdain for the inaccuracy of Cleanthes’ comment: It has long been possible for defendants to enter pleas in mitigation.
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Marcin,
OK, that’s probably fair in itself, but does not address the substantive point: if the victim’s circumstances are irrelevant in terms of the damage done and hence severity of penalty, why should the perpetrator’s circumstances be relevant?
You either remove the emotion from both sides or neither.
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