Will Cornick - 20 years too long?

[Sugar Ape]

Seen a few articles from people unhappy with the sentence. What say the GF? Fair or not?

 

Background article for you people not aware of the case. I'll put the other articles in another post.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/ann-maguire-murder-teenager-killer-jailed-for-life-named-as-william-cornick-9836321.html

 

 

Ann Maguire murder: Teenager killer jailed for life named as Will Cornick

 

 

To his loving and supportive family, committed teachers and classmates Will Cornick bore all the hallmarks of a typical teenager.

 

 

Quietly spoken but academically successful he was a young man on the brink of adulthood. There had been troubles in the past, and some considered him to be a little withdrawn.

 

But no one, it seems, knew or could believe that inside the mind of the strapping 6ft 2in teenager burned a deep-seated and irrational hatred of a popular teacher whose life he was to cut brutally short.

 

In the first murder of a teacher by a pupil in a British classroom, Cornick, aged just 15, unleashed a frenzied attack on Ann Maguire in April – a killing it was later to emerge he had planned for months in advance, and which he hoped to celebrate with a bottle of Jack Daniels smuggled into the Roman Catholic school he attended in Leeds.

 

Today Cornick, who had no previous criminal convictions, was told by a judge at Leeds Crown Court that he would most likely die in jail as he was ordered to serve a minimum of 20 years after admitting the murder of Mrs Maguire and showing a chilling lack of remorse for his actions.

 

Following the attack he told psychiatrists he “could not give a s**t” about the grief of his victim’s family.

 

“I know [they] will be upset but I don't care. In my eyes, everything I've done is fine and dandy,” he told experts. Mrs Maguire’s family described the attack as a “monumental act of cowardice and evil”.

 

The killing took place in front of traumatised classmates who screamed in terror and panic as they watched their classmate wink at another boy before approaching the Spanish teacher – known by all as the “mother of the school” for her decades of loyal service in which she had shepherded generations of pupils through their exams.

 

The youngster was a foot taller than his slightly built victim, towering over her as she helped other pupils with their work. After stabbing her seven times in the neck and back from behind, wounds described as the most horrific ever seen by one paramedic, he gave chase – but was blocked by the heroic actions of another teacher who tried to usher her to safety.

 

He then sat down telling classmates it was a “pity” that she had not died instantly. Pupils described how the boy appeared pleased with what he had done and declared “good times”.

 

Despite suffering from an adjustment disorder and having psychopathic elements to his personality, his mental condition was not considered sufficient to mitigate the horror of his crime.

 

Mrs Maguire’s murder led to a huge outpouring of national grief and sparked a renewed debate on classroom safety.

 

But it emerged that neither the authorities, nor his “decent and responsible” parents had any idea the youngster had developed an “inexplicable” murderous antipathy towards Mrs Maguire, 61, who had taught at the successful and popular Corpus Christi Catholic College in Leeds for 40 years, and was due to take retirement at the end of the last academic year.

 

The court heard how the teenager had sent Facebook messages the previous Christmas in which he outlined his scheme to kill Mrs Maguire in a classroom. He wanted to be caught and spend “the rest of his life in jail so as not to have to worry about life or money," prosecutor Paul Greaney QC said.

 

Mr Greaney said the defendant had told a psychiatrist that he considered his victim to be “barely human”.

 

“I wasn't in shock, I was happy. I had a sense of pride. I still do. I know it's uncivilised but I know it's incredibly instinctual and human. Past generations of life, killing is a route of survival. It's kill or be killed. I did not have a choice. It was kill her or suicide,” he said.

 

Two months before the killing he had told another friend that Mrs Maguire was: “The one absolute f****** bitch that deserves more than death, more than pain and more than anything that we can understand.”

 

 

On another occasion he had spoken of killing a pregnant teacher and her unborn child. On the Sunday before the attack he had decided to take a large kitchen knife with him into class.

 

The teenager, whose divorced parents Ian and Michelle Cornick were in court to hear the details of the case outlined, showed no emotion as Mr Justice Coulson said he should serve a minimum of 20 years in prison for the “truly grotesque” murder.

 

It was likely, in light of the severity of the crime, the trauma it had caused the young people that witnessed it and the defendant’s total “total and chilling lack of remorse” that he might never be released from prison.

 

The judge later overturned an order banning the identification of the killer and allowing him to be named in media reports. 

 

The prosecution said that the boy’s family were decent and responsible people and despite separating when he was young had worked hard to foster a close relationship.

 

“They are at a loss to understand how and why their son has turned out as he has and they have cooperated fully with the police and with the prosecution,” Mr Greaney said.

 

But whilst neither his family nor his teachers had noticed any serious change, classmates and friends observed that his personality altered. Cornick was diagnosed with diabetes aged 12.

 

The condition meant he could not fulfil his ambition of joining the military. It led to episodes of self-harm and minor theft from his home but he continued to make progress academically, enjoying a 100 per cent attendance record and earning the praise of his teachers, one of whom described him as a “delightful boy”.

 

There had been a series of run-ins with Mrs Maguire that year following an otherwise high-achieving school career which had seem him already pass five GCSE exams. But relations between the teenager and the Spanish teacher had deteriorated when she banned him from attending a school trip after he failed to complete homework. He clashed with her during a disciplinary meeting, walking out and eventually being placed in internal exclusion.

 

Despite his professed hatred for Mrs Maguire, other pupils said she treated him exactly the same as she did other classmates.

 

Richard Wright QC for the defence said the actions were clearly those of “a deeply disturbed young man”. But he said there had been "no sign to anybody of what was to come".

 

In victim impact statements read out to the court, the true extent of the pain felt by the teacher's family was clear. They said they were “looking to the future with a fragile hope”.

 

But Mrs Maguire’s husband Don, with whom she planned to retire to a “rural backwater”, said his dreams of spending the rest of his days with his "beautiful, vivacious, generous, caring" wife had been destroyed.

 

Daughter Kerry said: “Mummy was a constant. Her love was boundless and her heart was open. She was a beacon of light, guiding and protecting me through my life.” Other daughter Emma said: "Every morning, I wake up and I pray that this is all a bad dream, just a split second of hope which quickly vanishes and the horror of the reality sets in."

 

 

 

[Sugar Ape]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/04/will-cornick-sentence-defies-logic

 

Will Cornick’s 20-year sentence for the killing of Ann Maguire defies logic

 

 

One or two people have been idealistic – and brave – enough to complain that there has been a lack of compassion in the sentencing of 16-year-old Will Cornick for the murder in April of his teacher, Ann Maguire. I’m not among them. What irks me is the lack of logic.

 

I don’t want a criminal justice system that exists to convert public outrage into incarceration years. I want a criminal justice system that stands above that, simply coming as close as possible to doing what is right, under the most challenging of circumstances. This case suggests that what we have instead is a system that doesn’t know what is right, but does know what is popular.

 

The judge, Mr Justice Coulson, imposed an indeterminate sentence on Cornick, who was 15 at the time of the murder, stipulating that he should serve a minimum of 20 years and warning that he may never be released. I’m not keen on indeterminate sentences anyway, and this case highlights their manifest shortcomings.

 

Is the judge saying that he simply doesn’t know how long Cornick should serve – that he doesn’t quite know whether the taking of Maguire’s life deserves a punishment of 20 years or 60? Or is he saying that he’s no expert, but that in his amateur opinion it’ll be at least 20 years before Cornick is rehabilitated and no longer a danger to the public, and maybe many more years than that?

 

Whatever. I’m afraid that one of these elements can’t help but contradict the other. If it’s truly a possibility that Cornick is so dangerous that he can never be released, then what is he being punished for? Having an unacceptable mind? Being Will Cornick?

 

It’s one thing to incarcerate a person because of what he has done, and quite another to incarcerate a person for who he is and what, therefore, he might do. This sentence seems to assume that it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other, as all indeterminate sentences essentially do. I’m not saying it’s wrong to lock people up for life, in order to protect the public from them. I’m saying that it’s wrong to present this as a punishment rather than pragmatism.

 

It has been agreed that Cornick was fit to plead guilty to murder – he is not considered to be criminally insane. But it is also acknowledged thathe must have some kind of personality disorder – “psychopathic tendencies” and “adjustment disorder” have been mentioned. I think it’s weird to punish people for their neurological deficits. I think it’s weird that releasing the teenager’s name to the media is thought to be helpful as a “deterrent”. What are other people going to be deterred from? Having similarly inadequate neurological systems? Developing similarly lethal personality disorders?

 

Is it possible that Cornick could have been deterred? Doesn’t logic dictate that he could have, if his example is considered to be a deterrent? The public debate around this, led by the media, seems confused. It’s shocking now to learn that Cornick’s antipathy towards Maguire had been publicly and flamboyantly advertised for three years, that his feelings of violent hatred for the popular teacher had been well known. Yet if one believes that the right intervention at the right time could have averted this tragedy, then how can one believe there may well be no right intervention, no right time, in even the near future?

 

At 15 or 16, a human brain is far from fully developed. The volatility of teenagers is partly a consequence of the accelerated neural sculpting that goes on in these years. We all understand this – it’s most probably the reason why Cornick’s rage against his teacher wasn’t seen as the extreme problem it turned out to be. It’s also the reason why the medical profession is reluctant to diagnose personality disorders before a child is 18.

 

Even then, the idea that personality disorders are permanent and incurable is no longer in the ascendant. It’s impossible to predict with certainty that a person who has “psychopathic tendencies” now will have them in five years, let alone 20 years.

 

Obviously, and thankfully, Cornick’s case is unique. But I have noticed that in the many reports about how bright and clever he is, that brightness and cleverness are seen as an advantage in life that should have gone some way to saving him from his awful course of action. In truth, however, intellectually gifted children quite often run into psychological difficulties. The rest of us tend not to understand how differently such children can see the world, and how isolated that can make them.

 

I’m struck by reports that Cornick says he wanted to be caught and wanted to be in prison. He clearly saw it as an environment where the burden of achievement would be removed from his shoulders.

 

As I said, I’m not interested in making a compassion argument against the sentence passed on Cornick. As it happens, I do have compassion for inadequate humans, humans who visit the degree of pain and suffering on other humans that he has. Fate dealt Maguire a terrible hand. But fate has not been kind to Cornick either.

 

Cornick – or any person who commits a crime at 15 years of age – is not a fully developed human being. The man serving Cornick’s sentences will have a materially different brain and mind from the boy who committed the crime. Child criminals should be treated differently to adult criminals for this reason, and I’m appalled that this country’s criminal justice system is unwilling to present this entirely logical argument to the public.

 

Cornick should have been given a sentence that pertained until his adulthood, at which point a judge would have been in a realistic position to receive information about the manner in which the rest of his sentence should be conducted. No one, not even a judge, can know at this point what kind of a man Cornick will become.

 

It is a terrible thing when a child commits such a crime. But children don’t stay children for ever, and our criminal justice system should be structured to reflect that.

 

It may well be that Cornick is no more amenable to rehabilitation at 21 than he is now. But it’s when he’s 21 that this matter should be decided.

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/ann-maguire-murder-will-cornick-sentence-is-too-long-say-youth-justice-campaigners-9837978.html

 

Ann Maguire murder: Will Cornick sentence is 'too long', say youth justice campaigners

 

Youth justice campaigners have condemned the life sentence handed down to the 16-year-old schoolboy who murdered teacher Ann Maguire as too long.

 

Will Cornick was sentenced to at least 20 years in jail after pleading guilty to killing the 61-year-old Spanish teacher, who was stabbed seven times from behind as she taught a Spanish class at Corpus Christi Catholic College in Leeds in April.

 

Mr Justice Coulson told Leeds Crown Court he had increased the normal minimum tariff of 12 years because of the nature of the brutal attack and the teenager’s “total and chilling lack of remorse”.

And he warned Cornick that he might never be released.

 

However, Penelope Gibbs, who chairs the Standing Committee for Youth Justice (SCYJ), an umbrella group of charities and campaign groups, said the sentence was too harsh.

 

She told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “We are out of line with the whole of western Europe. There are no other countries within western Europe which give children - and this boy is seen as a child under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and is in the youth justice system - who would give children a life sentence.”

 

Ms Gibbs accepted that the sentence had to serve as a punishment, but said there was “no evidence” for the 20-year minimum tariff.

She said: “Punishment is also incredibly important, particularly for the victims and families, but the fact is, how many years do we need for punishment? We have given him a sentence which is more than his own lifetime.

 

"He was 15 when he did this crime and we would say that you don't need that long to punish."

 

Gibbs went on: “What is crucial is that when he is released he is assessed as no longer being of danger to himself and others and thus we would all be safer.

 

"But there is no evidence that that takes 20 years and we've looked and we think that this is the longest sentence given to a child in at least 10 years ... I'm not going to tell you exactly what the right sentence would have been, but 20 years and a life sentence is too long."

 

She continued: "There are very good prisons, there is a prison called Grendon which is a therapeutic community, and prisoners go there for a few years and it has great results.

 

“The question is - safer society, yes; punishment, yes - but does it need to be more than his lifetime?”

 

Cornick attacked Mrs Maguire after boasting to friends that he was going to kill her. He also said he was going to murder other teachers, including a pregnant woman “so as to kill her unborn child”, the court heard.

 

He later told doctors: “I said I was going to do other stuff but I never got the chance, other murders. It was a triple homicide.”

 

After the murder the teenager told psychiatrists that he “couldn't give a s***” and added: “Everything I've done is fine and dandy.”

 

In his impact statement, Mrs Maguire's widower, Don, described the killing as a “monumental act of cowardice and evil”.

 

He said: “There will be no closure. Balance will never return. There will be no level scales.”

[PestiRed]

Agree with the idea that he should be held until his mental health can be assessed as an adult, and then sentenced with a view to balancing punishment and rehabilitation potential

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Hang him. In the street.

 

Etc.

[Dr Nowt]

Obviously an extremely disturbed boy.

 

Agree with Pesti.

[Joe Strummer]

20 years is a long time, 10 to 15 might have seemed fairer. Having said that if he does serve 20 years he'll still only be in his mid thirties when he gets out. I guess the rest is up to him.

[littletedwest]

sounds fair to me.Despite what we put in the getting older thread he will still be relatively young when he gets out. And he has killed someone like.

 

We all make bad decision when we are young but getting pissed and shaggin a bird called bulldog isn't the same as planning to kill and then stabbing your teacher to death.

[Trumo]

I don't know if the sentence is too long but I agree with this comment from the Guardian article:

 

I don’t want a criminal justice system that exists to convert public outrage into incarceration years. I want a criminal justice system that stands above that, simply coming as close as possible to doing what is right, under the most challenging of circumstances. This case suggests that what we have instead is a system that doesn’t know what is right, but does know what is popular.

[Sugar Ape]

I don't know if the sentence is too long but I agree with this comment from the Guardian article:

 

In a broad sense, sure. In this case I don't think there is any evidence that the judge has been swayed by public opinion. 

[Major Tom]

Agree with the idea that he should be held until his mental health can be assessed as an adult, and then sentenced with a view to balancing punishment and rehabilitation potential

 

Yeah, this.

 

Don't fancy his chances of rehabilitation, though. Nothing to do with him, of course, but the system.

[Paulie Dangerously]

How long did the Bulger killers get in total? Not trying to actively compare crimes but they were tried as children as well weren't they?

[Sugar Ape]

How long did the Bulger killers get in total? Not trying to actively compare crimes but they were tried as children as well weren't they?

 

Think they were tried as adults. The age of criminal responsibility is ten and I think they were that age when they abducted him.

[Boss]

He's stabbed a teacher to death in a classroom during a class, he also shows no remorse, if it was in America it'd be life without parole. 20 years seems lenient, considering the extent of the attack and the fact that all the students witnessing it will probably end up with ptsd, not to mention the teachers that may be fearful of going back to work. or the family of the woman.

[Chip Butty]

He's stabbed a teacher to death in a classroom during a class, he also shows no remorse, if it was in America it'd be life without parole. 20 years seems lenient, considering the extent of the attack and the fact that all the students witnessing it probably will end up with ptsd, not to mention the teachers and most importantly the family of the woman. He'll be out in 10 for good behaviour, makes a mockery of the sentencing in the first place.

Its this whole 'no remorse' thing that sticks the most. Even at 15 you know right and wrong, you know that killing a person is a bad thing, a very bad thing. To have and show no remorse strikes me as someone who has a deep-seated hatred of someone, or something and add to that the calculated way he did it, 20 years is just about right.

 

I understand that the judicial and prison system in this country is based around rehabilitation and not soley punishment, which the US runs with - but this lack of remorse negates the rehabilitation and moves it into more of a punishment sentence, for me.

 

 

The people to really ask if 20 years is too harsh, is the womens family. I dare say you'll find 20 won't be long enough.

[Major Tom]

Even at 15 you know right and wrong, you know that killing a person is a bad thing, a very bad thing.

 

Well, that's the crux of it, isn't it? He obviously has some sort of psychotic tendency. The guy needs help while he's incarcerated. Help he'll inevitably not get.

[Teasmaid]

This is in no way a typical murder. The kid is properly fucked up. I think he should have been detained at her Majesty's pleasure, and only released when and if he is no longer deemed to be a danger (whenever that might be).

 

As it stands, there's no cure for psychopathy, so he'll probably serve his time and get released, and do it again.

[Chip Butty]

Well, that's the crux of it, isn't it? He obviously has some sort of psychotic tendency. The guy needs help while he's incarcerated. Help he'll inevitably not get.

True, however the reports of this childs life are one of quite a stable background. His parents have split but he showed no 'psychotic' tendancies through his childhood. One report states that when he was diagnosed as having diabetes, there was a change in him but not to a 'psychotic level.

His day to day life was not one that fitted a psychotic, he just had a deep seated hatred of this teacher who over a period of time had disciplined him as had other teachers.

 

For me, if you can  - consciously plan this attack, talk about it and even wink to a friend as you left your seat to commict the act, then you have enough upstairs to realise that you are doing wrong and not showing remorse puts you under a whole different light when it comes to sentencing.

 

Opens the age old question of - are people born bad or brought up bad?

[Sugar Ape]

Could be the next Michael Myers. Where is Dr Loomis when you need him?

 

[dickie mint]

He's got plenty of time to mull over his actions and hopefully regret them all.

[Teasmaid]

You're confusing 'psychotic' with 'psychopathic'.

 

Psychotic is merely being out of touch with reality. This can be short-term and recovery is possible. This lad was not suffering from psychosis.

[Major Tom]

True, however the reports of this childs life are one of quite a stable background. His parents have split but he showed no 'psychotic' tendancies through his childhood. One report states that when he was diagnosed as having diabetes, there was a change in him but not to a 'psychotic level.

His day to day life was not one that fitted a psychotic, he just had a deep seated hatred of this teacher who over a period of time had disciplined him as had other teachers.

 

For me, if you can  - consciously plan this attack, talk about it and even wink to a friend as you left your seat to commict the act, then you have enough upstairs to realise that you are doing wrong and not showing remorse puts you under a whole different light when it comes to sentencing.

 

Opens the age old question of - are people born bad or brought up bad?

 

I believe there's good in everyone. Even Stig.

[Boss]

The crime is not in fitting with psychopathic behaviour either because it was pre meditated, the wink, the bringing of the knife to school, the years of talking about killing her. Psychopaths are usually not in control of their actions, they have poor impulse control or foresight, the way he acted after the killing is psychopathic, lack of empathy, lack of remorse or guilt, but before the killing it's the opposite.

[Teasmaid]

The crime is not in fitting with psychopathic behaviour either because it was pre meditated, the wink, the bringing of the knife to school, the years of talking about killing her. Psychopaths are usually not in control of their actions, they have poor impulse control or foresight, the way he acted after the killing is psychopathic, lack of empathy, lack of remorse or guilt, but before the killing it's the opposite.

Psychopaths are typically calm, measured and calculating and devious. It's sociopaths that lack impulse control. They are both quite similar in a lot of ways though.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Psychopaths are typically calm, measured and calculating and devious. It's sociopaths that lack impulse control. They are both quite similar in a lot of ways though.

This.

[Boss]

Psychopaths are typically calm, measured and calculating and devious. It's sociopaths that lack impulse control. They are both quite similar in a lot of ways though.

 

Ah maybe i'm getting the two confused, that's interesting.