Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 August 30

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August 30

"No body, no parole" laws - do they actually work?

Where I live, there's something of a debate going on around introducing legislation, whereby in the case of a murder conviction in the absence of a body (a relatively uncommon occurrence, but it definitely can and does happen), the murderer should be denied parole until he/she reveals the location of his/her victim's remains. The obvious purpose is to help provide "closure" for the victim's family.

An obvious issue here, is that by the time the murderer is up for parole (murder sentences can last decades), any remains of their victims are likely to have deteriorated beyond identifiable recognition, making any recovery impossible, even if the murderer reveals the location. (though after conviction and exhaustion of all appeals, there would be no need for the murderer to wait until parole eligibility comes to reveal the victim's location). And some murderers may themselves not know where their victim's body is (e.g. they dumped it "somewhere" in a lake or river). But lets put those issues aside, as they are not germane to my specific question.

My question is, in those jurisdictions which have adopted such laws, have they, at least to some degree, worked? Like, has there been an increase in the number of victims' bodies subsequently recovered, in cases where the murderer was convicted in the absence of a body?

The main difficulty I can see here is the limited data-set, such successful "no body" murder convictions being the exception, rather than the rule. But can anybody track down actual experiences of jurisdictions which have experimented with such laws, and how well they did or did not work? Or research on this question? Eliyohub (talk) 12:50, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Still no bodies: Five years of 'no body, no parole' in Queensland, Australia

- Monique Moffa, Michele Ruyters, Greg Stratton 2A01:E34:EF5E:4640:9992:A3BC:8948:4388 (talk) 17:07, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Seems like without a body, a significant part of the evidence in a murder case, the evidence itself would be rather flimsy to convict anyway. Of course, I'm in the US and we're known for unreasonable and wrongful convictions, so I'd lean to the side of "probably not a great idea and unlikely to work" just based on having been extensively involved in multiple murder trials and seeing how evidence is presented and handled first hand, as well as the decades of cases of individuals wrongfully convicted of murder.

I of course don't have any evidence myself in the form of sources, so... PICKLEDICAE🥒 17:12, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

• This here is the study referenced by 2A01:E34... above. --Jayron32 17:21, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

A very topical issue in Australia right now. A man has just been convicted of murdering his wife 40 years ago. No body has ever been found. He is being asked to reveal the location of the body. Here. Which has just made me think. It's obviously possible that this is a bad conviction and he is innocent. The proposal of no parole without a body would make the impact of any mistake worse. HiLo48 (talk) 23:52, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Indeed. The whole prison system operates on the legal fiction that a conviction implies guild. On the whole, that probably is a necessary assumption, but we should not forget that it actually only is a fiction. That's one reason why modern systems of justice focus more on rehabilitation than on punishment. Not only does it work better, it also mitigates any remaining errors. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 06:03, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

It's certainly the case that a convicted murderer might not have committed the crime (maybe for a very small number of them), which would make it hard for the convict to tell where the body is. Meanwhile, I'm curious to know which countries you consider to have "modern systems of justice [which] focus more on rehabilitation than on punishment." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:52, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

That would be in most Western European countries. Concerning the very small number of convicted murderers who haven't commited the crime, this number is very hard to estimate, but I've read about some research in my generally reliable newspaper a few years ago, concluding, based on the fraction of convictions that get overturned on appeal and the assumption that the higher courts are about as likely to make errors as the lower courts, that about 10% of the convicts who have no more option of appeal is in fact not guilty. That was in the Netherlands. I expect the number in other western countries to be similar, and higher in less free countries. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:14, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

In the US, wrongful convictions are unfortunately common. Eyewitness testimony, trendy forensics practices unsupported by science, and juror/judge bias effect this. Improvements in DNA science have been helping, though. Some numbers here: 4% for capital cases, 6% overall. https://innocenceproject.org/research-resources/ Temerarius (talk) 15:49, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

What are these trendy forensics practices called? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 13:22, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

There's always something. First thing that comes to mind is where an expert says that these fibers on the crime scene are the same as the fibers in the suspect's coat. There was phrenology, there was truth serum, there were lie detectors, there will be AI. Temerarius (talk) 18:25, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Note that Queensland, the law does not require that the body is recovered, just that the murderer has fully cooperated [1]. In the UK, even the Queensland law wouldn't comply with their human rights obligations [2]. Nil Einne (talk) 15:07, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

What if the murderer totally owns up to the crime but can't remember where he stashed the body? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:11, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Of course, if you just make everyone serve their actual sentence you don't have to worry about parole. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 17:17, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Politician picture

[3] Is this guy someone I'm supposed to recognize? Thanks. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 18:52, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Isn't this Homelander (a superhero) as portrayed by Antony Starr (an actor)?  --Lambiam 21:44, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

I guess it's possible, I'll look back to where I saw the tweet linked and see if that makes sense. Thanks. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 14:42, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it is Homelander. Matt Deres (talk) 16:37, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Siege of Caen (1417)

I've stumbled upon what appears to be a contradiction in sources. In Siege of Caen (1417), the sourced sentence says "During the sack on orders of Henry V all 1800 men in the captured city were killed but priests and women were not to be harmed", similarly Historyextra.com says "Henry ordered every male over the age of 12 be killed – or so claimed a Venetian chronicler", without mentioning women and others. But The Hundred Years War: A Wider Focus, p. 351 says "Enraged by the defenders' obstinacy, the king ordered the destruction all of Caen's inhabitants that could be found" and that "over two thousand men, women and children were executed that day". What to do about our info? Brandmeister^talk 20:22, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Just report what both sources say and let the reader decide what to make of it. Conflicting sources for stuff like that is a common situation, even for modern events like the Ukraine war. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 21:21, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

There is not necessarily a contradiction. What Henry ordered is one thing, what his soldier then did is another. When troops were sacking a town and killing all the men as ordered, it would have been next to impossible to prevent them killing women and children as well. Henry may have expected this to happen, but worded his official order so to leave himself blameless. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.208.90.29 (talk) 04:00, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

The difference between orders and actual result at Caen is described in Henry V, Holy Warrior: The Reign of a Medieval King in Context, Thibodeau, Timothy M. (2022) p. 88:

When Henry's soldiers finally broke through the defences of Caen, a horryfying massacre occurred. Henry had given an order to his men that no harm should come to women or clergy, but apparently not everyone obeyed his command.

The author then quotes another history, Henry V as Warlord, Seward, Desmond (2001) p. 104:

If the chronicles are to believed, the victors then herded all the population they could find, civilian as well as military, regardless of sex, into the market place where, on Henry’s orders, they massacred at least 2,000 of them. Blood ran in streams along the streets. The king ordered the killing to stop after coming across the body of a headless woman with a baby in her lap still sucking at her breast. Instead he sent his men through the streets, crying ‘Havoc!’ to loot and rape.

Alansplodge (talk) 10:32, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

A more rose-tinted view from James Hamilton Wylie (1844-1914) in The reign of Henry the Fifth, (1929) p. 61;

English chroniclers claim special praise for the king in that he issued orders that no woman should be outraged, no priest molested, and no church plundered — injunctions which unquestionably had some effect, though with all his discipline Henry could not prevent his men from sometimes getting out of hand.

If you can make any sense of Wylie's abbreviated footnotes, exactly which English chroniclers are specified there. Alansplodge (talk) 11:06, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Many thanks. Brandmeister^talk 11:07, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Brandmeister, I was at a loose end so I had a bit of a bash at the article. Feel free to edit. Sorry if I've stolen your thunder, but there are many other sieges of that war with minimal or no articles. Alansplodge (talk) 10:51, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

To the contrary, nice to see this fixed. I just stumbled on it while amateurishly researching casualties of the Hundred Years' War. Brand^talk 18:28, 2 September 2022 (UTC)