Should Lucy Letby have been made to go to court?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 21 August 2023
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lucy Letby has been given a whole life order for her crimes. She joins only a small group of prisoners to be given a sentence so severe that they can never be considered for parole. But she wasn't in court today to hear it for herself. She chose not to appear, much to the victims' families fury.
The Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition want the law to be changed to force criminals to face their days of reckoning in person. It sounds simple - but is it? Lewis discusses with a former Old Bailey judge and a victim of the Manchester Arena Attacks whose own cowardly perpetrator also refused to confront the court.
And after the Lionesses' near miss in Sydney we ask why politicians always sound so weird when talking about football. We talk to the politico's politico and genuine football obsessive, Lord Danny Finkelstein.
Editor: Tom Hughes
Producer: Laura FitzPatrick
Social Media Editor: Georgia Foxwell
Video Producer: Will Gibson-Smith
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:08.1 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:11.6 | I have to sentence her in her absence. I shall deliver the sentencing remarks as if she was |
| 0:19.0 | present to hear them. And I direct that she is provided with a |
| 0:23.9 | transcript of my remarks and copies of the victim personal statements read to the court. |
| 0:31.4 | That was Mr Justice Goss at Manchester Crown Court. |
| 0:35.3 | Goss was sentencing Lucy Letby, now among Britain's most prolific |
| 0:39.4 | child killers, to a whole life order, the most severe sanction the British justice system |
| 0:45.3 | can bestow. She will die in prison, never eligible for parole. But it made for a strange sight. |
| 0:52.4 | For though the judge was reading his sentence as if to Lettby, |
| 0:55.8 | addressing it to her, a catalogue of wickedness, he was talking to an empty dog. Lettby was not in |
| 1:02.6 | court to hear the sentence, nor the final account of the terrible toll her actions have wrought |
| 1:07.9 | on its victims and their families. There was no power for the court or state to compel her to be there. |
| 1:14.7 | But now politicians, from the prime minister down, think there should be. |
| 1:19.2 | Was justice not fully done in Manchester today? |
| 1:22.5 | Was let be, for one last time, able to exercise power, she had no right to wield. Welcome to the news |
| 1:30.5 | agents. The newsagents. I think it's cowardly that people who commit such horrendous crimes |
| 1:40.7 | do not face their victims and hear firsthand the impact that their crimes have had on them |
| 1:47.5 | and their families and loved ones. |
| 1:49.0 | Now we are looking and have been at changing the law to make sure that that happens. |
| 1:54.0 | I think that we should change the law. |
| 1:56.0 | We've made an open offer to the government. |
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