US judge attacks British justice

AN AMERICAN judge sentencing Caroline Beale, the woman trying to smuggle her body out of the United yesterday launched a stinging…

AN AMERICAN judge sentencing Caroline Beale, the woman trying to smuggle her body out of the United yesterday launched a stinging attack on British justice.

New York State Supreme Court Judge Robert Hanophy hit out at Mr Peter Beale, the woman's father, for calling the US justice system "barbaric".

Judge Hanophy, approving a plea bargain for Beale, called the law in Britain on infanticide "primitive and uncivilized".

Beale (32), of Chingford, Essex, was caught trying to smuggle her baby girl's body onto a flight in London after giving birth in a hotel room. She always maintained the child was stillborn. Prosecutors alleged she suffocated the infant.

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Judge Hanophy said: "I believe that any law that grants a blanket exemption from prosecution or punishment to those people who kill their children when their children are under the age of one, is a law that is primitive and uncivilized.

The judge also referred to the Guildford Four. He said that Britain "did everything to see that they remained in prison even though they knew or should have known that they didn't belong in there".

He referred to Britain as "that great country that has convicted a great many people on the perjured testimony of police, allowed them to spend 15, 17 years in prison, did everything to see that they remain in prison, even though they knew they did not belong in there."