Hanging on for dear life
PLOUGHING a similar furrow to last week’s documentary about the Bulger killers, CHILDREN WHO KILL (ITV) took the sentencing debate to the US, where changes to the law have created considerable heat.
“Adult time, adult crime” is the motto across the Atlantic and there are more than 2,000 people serving whole-life sentences, with no possibility of parole, for crimes they committed as children.
Advised by new neurological findings, the US Supreme Court has now ruled that such sentences are inhumane, giving many former child killers the right to appeal and perhaps one day end up free.
There was much talk of the devil in last night’s programme, as you might expect where the fiercely religious Americans are concerned, but he was also lurking in the details of the revamped law.
Exceptions could be made in rare cases, where the killer was found to be beyond rehabilitation. What that then boiled down to in the upsetting but fascinating appeal hearing we followed last night, was two sides arguing how bad someone was before a judge.
There was really no doubt that 14-year-old Joshua Phillips had committed an abominable act by killing his eight-year-old neighbour, Maddie Clifton. There was no doubt that he had torn apart the lives of Maddie’s family or that he’d behaved in a cruel and uniquely disturbing way.
It was also clear that, 20 years on, the quiet, shy man whom Susanna Reid met in prison had become a very different person.
Hearing the expert testimony of Professor James Garbarino, the psychologist whose research resulted in the Supreme Court’s U-turn, it seemed as well that the appeal judge was convinced.
Whether you’d endured an upbringing at the hands of an abnormally strict father, as Phillips had, or grown up in a happy home, your brain, at 15, is not an adult one. That didn’t make the task faced by the splendidly named Judge Waddell A Wallace III any more straightforward though.
Forced to balance the science and the abstracts of justice with the sincere anguish of Maddie’s family and the awfulness of the crime, he reluctantly denied the appeal.
Joshua was returned to prison, probably for good, on the grounds that maybe his was one of those “rare cases” and the doubt wasn’t worth the risk.
You had to wonder whether all future appeals would finish up the same way, the “rare cases” providing the get-out clause, in every case.
SEA CITIES (BBC2), back for a welcome second series, was in Sunderland visiting ships vast and tiny, watching new bridges take shape over the River Wear and taking the secret tunnel to the Roker lighthouse.
As a native of Southport, I’d hesitate to say I grew up by the sea – it was more like growing up by the sand – but we still had a promenade and an amusement arcade, hence for me, the most revealing time last night was spent among the bleeping lights of Sunderland’s Seldons Leisureworld.
There, co-owner Grant Seldon was stocking up the coin-operated cranes with fluffy toys. “They’re like random,” he said, then added, slightly changing tack, “We have them generous. So you can win a couple of toys early then not win none for a little while…”
A little while? I’ve never walked away with so much as a polyester penguin in my life.