Many family members of those killed by Valdo Calocane are extremely angry.
The reasons are:
1. They cannot understand how it was that a paranoid schizophrenic was not compulsorily detained in a psychiatric hospital, leaving him free to plan, prepare and carry out the killings.
2. They think it was entirely wrong that Calocane’s plea to manslaughter was accepted by the Crown Prosecution Service. In their eyes this was premeditated murder, and it should have been prosecuted as such. Their anger is compounded because at least some of them believe they were not properly consulted over the acceptance of the pleas.
3. They want the Attorney General to use her powers to refer the sentence to the Court of Appeal, which has the power to quash the hospital order and impose the life sentence that they believe the case requires. Continue reading “Calocane: horrific though his crimes were, the CPS and the judge made the right decisions”