Chapter 1: What happened in the case of the teenage rapists in Hampshire?
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Chapter 2: Why was there public outcry over the sentencing of the teenage offenders?
Don't miss it. Tapahtuipa kerran, että pessimisti, optimisti ja saletisti suunnittelivat tapasiltaa. Ja niinhän siinä kävi, että saletisti onnistui. Saletisti onnistuu!
Hello, we are back in the newscast studio, which is a shame for one reason, because it was great to see so many newscasters in person at the Hay Festival and it was a fun vibe. But good for another reason, which is that we have air conditioning here. So I, for one, for now, I'm very comfortable as the UK breaks some more temperature records for the month of May.
And we're back in the not so hot seat for this episode of Newscast. Newscast. Newscast from the BBC.
Chapter 3: What role does the Attorney General play in referring sentences to the Court of Appeal?
Humanity's next great voyage begins. We are in the midst of a rupture.
Nostalgia will not bring back the old order. Six seven. Yeah. It's supposed to be me as a doctor. Daddy has also a special connotation. Ooh la la. Thinking about it like a panto helped. Do we play music now or what do we do?
Hello, it's Adam in the Newscast Studio, and shortly we will get the latest on Iran, because there have been some developments in that part of the world. But first of all, there's been a development here in the UK over that case of the three teenage boys who were given youth rehabilitation orders in connection with the rape incident.
of two teenage girls in Hampshire, rather than being given custodial sentences. There was a big public outcry about those sentences over the last couple of days. Laura Kay did that very powerful interview with one of the girls on her programme at the weekend.
And the development today is the Prime Minister announced that the Attorney General is using the powers he's got to do this to refer the sentence to the Court of Appeal, where a trio of judges will decide if this sentence was unduly lenient.
The person who can explain all of this in a lot of detail for us and help us understand what's going on is the Home and Legal Affairs correspondent here at the BBC, Dominic Casciani. Hi, Dominic. Hello, Adam.
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Chapter 4: How does the legal system handle youth offenders and rehabilitation?
Hi. Dominic, what's your take on just how this has played out, the fact that the Attorney General is going to refer this to the Court of Appeal and the events over the weekend?
Well, I think, Adam, to be perfectly frank, this has come about because there's a great deal of uncertainty about whether or not the trial judge at Southampton Crown Court has done the right thing in how he's handled the case of these three boys. And there's clearly... as we now know, a lot of public anger and astonishment at the outcome of this case.
But at the same time, I think there is a degree of uncertainty and, well, to put it diplomatically, raised eyebrows, if not worse, among prosecutors about what's gone on, because My understanding of the case is this is not the outcome that they expected to see and what they effectively went into court asking for during the sentencing last Thursday.
Now, I think if we break this down, I think the basic facts of the case are quite simple. This was a really, really appalling series of attacks on two girls by three boys. They planned the attacks. They filmed the attacks. They shared some of what they filmed online. They used those films to also further degrade and humiliate the girls that they attacked.
We're not going to get into details of what went on, but when you look at the list of charges and the specific forms of the crimes that these girls were subjected to, it's absolutely appalling. And that's why when the Crown Prosecution Service went into court last Thursday for the sentencing, they presented arguments to the judge about how he should proceed.
Now, in essence, when you have a sentencing exercise in court, it's quite simple, Adam. The prosecution go in and they say, look, these are the facts of the case, which have now been established by the jury's verdicts. This is how this case compares to other similar cases. And this is why we think this case falls within a particular range of the sentencing options.
And then obviously the defendant through, you know, normally through their barrister, they get to say something in mitigation.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of the Court of Appeal's decision on this case?
They talk about their background factors, which may have had a bearing on why they offended and also prospects for rehabilitation and what's happened since the offense. And bearing in mind, when you have offenses from a couple of years ago, very often people's lives can change. That's the background, and then the judge has the sentence.
And then basically, it's not a balancing of those two things, that a judge takes those factors into account, and then he or she comes up with the number. It gets a little bit more complicated when it comes to youth offending, and I'll come back to that in a second. But in essence, what the prosecution said was this was a series of offences of the highest harm possible.
what was called category one harm, which meant it was a sustained incident. One of the victims, at least one of the victims, was particularly vulnerable. There were additional factors which made it one of the most appalling crimes. The personal responsibility of each of the offenders was the highest because they had significantly planned this and acted together and so on.
Therefore, that meant they went to the judge and said, if this was an adult offender, we we'd be saying to you that the appropriate sentence would be between 12 and 19 years. If it was an adult. If it was an adult. 12 and 19 years. Now, in the whole scheme of sexual offences dealt with in Crown Court, that's towards the high end.
You can't get much higher than 19 years before you get into life sentences. That's the background. Now, this is where it gets complicated because A judge in a youth case then has to take into account prospects for rehabilitation.
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Chapter 6: How does public opinion influence legal decisions in high-profile cases?
It's a really important part of the exercise. The sentencing guidelines are very, very clear that when they set about looking at the young offender, they've got to look at their development, prospects for rehabilitation, whether custody is really necessary at the end of the day,
and then take a view and that's why these sentences in exercises can be quite complicated and can often lead to outcomes which if you're not in course in hearing everything said over very often over an entire day you may be a little bit surprised by the outcome.
And I have to stress, I wasn't in court for this one, so I don't know what the judge has said, and we don't have the judge's sentencing remarks. So we're a little bit in the dark about how the whole process came about.
But just to be clear, the system, whether it's the law or the guidelines that are given to judges or the practice on the judge's bench, does allow you, in cases like this, where the person who's been convicted is a child, that they don't have to go and serve a sentence where they're put behind bars. Okay, it wouldn't be a prison in this case because you don't go to prison if you're under 16.
But there's the scope for a non-custodial option here in the system.
Yeah, let me give you an example from 10 years ago, a case which has always stuck in my mind, which is a very serious terrorism case, which was effectively, at the time it was a 14-year-old boy from Lancashire who was charged with preparation for acts of terrorism. He was accused of effectively trying to organise a serious terrorism attack, along with other Islamic State supporters.
He was caught, he was brought to justice, And it was a real dilemma for the sentencing judge in that case. Now, that sentencing judge gave that young man, who can only be known as Boy S, gave him a life term, but with a minimum of five years, which meant by the time he reached the age of 2021, if he made progress in youth custody...
he would have a shot at getting out and being rehabilitated and going on to a normal life. And in that case, it worked, because that young man left prison in his early 20s, and I've spoken to him and had long conversations with him since, and I reported his story some time ago.
And he's gone on to have, effectively, a happy and normal life, having gone through a lot of developmental issues he had as a young man, addressed those, learned how to control himself and understand where he was wrong, and has moved on. Now, that is the aspiration of the system.
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Chapter 7: What are the recent developments regarding US airstrikes in Iran?
The system is saying, young people, their brains aren't fully formed. They haven't necessarily reached a point of maturity. Things can change very, very rapidly, particularly in a teenage mind. You've got to give time for these things to play out. The difficulty we've got, Adam, in this case is we just don't know exactly what was said in relation to these three young men.
I do know that one of the young men was described in court as having an IQ that was so low it was in the lowest 1% of the population. So you've clearly got one of these offenders with some quite serious developmental issues. It's just not quite clear. We've asked for the judge's sentencing remarks, and we haven't got them today, and the BBC's actually made a formal application
tonight saying you you we have to see what was said in court in order to actually fairly properly report this and tom just explain why we don't automatically have that because i'm thinking back to times where you and i have been sat in this studio it's been a high profile judgment and it's there on the judiciary website and we've been able to go through line by line word for word what the judge has said in that case why are we not doing that tonight
Well, look, the principle, the legal principle is the open justice rules. The open justice principle is strong that we should have access to all this stuff. In practice, a great deal of our justice system is still working on principles. that are more than 100 years old at times. And culturally, it just doesn't happen in some courts in some locations. It can be very hit and miss.
I and other court reporters, I literally, sometimes you feel like you're banging your head off a desk sometimes and your inability to get a piece of information, which you know in legal terms is public information under the open justice principle, but you can't actually guess at it because the wheels turn very slowly. So it's very difficult for us to actually find
fully report the circumstances of this case tonight.
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Chapter 8: How is the situation in Lebanon affecting US-Iran negotiations?
Now, I think the first time we'll probably get an opportunity, Adam, is when this goes to the Court of Appeal under this unduly lenient sentence review, which has now been ordered.
And then just in terms of how it's played out today, we can hear Prime Minister Keir Starmer reacting to this news, or in fact breaking this news, which he did mid-morning on Tuesday.
I think it's a really distressing case. I think it's distressing for everybody to see, to hear about, The courage, frankly, of the girls to come forward is humbling, but it is distressing. I find it distressing as a politician. I find it distressing as a father. And there are questions about the sentence.
The Attorney General has power to refer a case to the Court of Appeal if the Attorney General thinks that the sentence is too lenient. The Attorney General has now exercised that power So I can announce that that case now will go to the Court of Appeal and the Court of Appeal will now review the sentence in that case. And that is clearly the right outcome.
And then we got a statement from the family of one of the victims at the centre of this. And they said they hope the correct outcome will prevail when the case goes to the Court of Appeal. So, Dom, just in terms of that Court of Appeal process, set out how that might work.
Yeah, it's quite simple, really. So, in effect, this swift review which has happened has simply involved the Attorney General, who, although the AG is a cabinet minister, with another hat on, the AG is the top legal advisor in government and supervisors.
uh the crown prosecution service the ag's team would have got a or more than one top prosecutor in the room in the last 24 hours and said to them what do you think of this case was this what you were expecting as prosecutors how does this compare to other cases those prosecutors who are in The top courts in the land, day in, day out, would have said to the AG, this is an unduly lenient sentence.
This is what it looks like. Armed with that information, it goes to the Court of Appeal. Three senior judges will be put on this case. I'm willing to bet that the three judges chosen for this case will be among the most experienced that the Court will have available because of the public clamour to get answers over this. They will then receive, basically, an argument from the Crown.
on behalf of the Attorney General saying, look, this is an unduly lenient sentence because if you compare this to other ones, custody should have been considered and we don't understand why not. There was a case mentioned during this trial to the trial judge, which basically said that juvenile offenders convicted of rape can get a hefty jail term
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