Retrial Natasha Welsh

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Please sign this petition. If autistic people are acquitted from court for violent crimes (or any other crime for that matter) for no reason other than their ASD, it makes it many times harder for autistics to be given any kind or respect or trust in broader society.

https://www.change.org/p/rt-hon-michael ... eated=true

No.

The case occurred in the U.K., and I am a U.S. citizen.

Even the U.K. has laws against Double Jeopardy (trying someone again after they've been acquitted).

Signing this petition would show contempt for the U.K. justice system, and a retrial on the basis of a petition signed by citizens of other countries would show contempt for justice itself.

Was she spared a custodial sentence just due to asd though? From what I've read she swung a bag at someone and an ice boot came out of the top of the bag (it was outside Deeside Ice Rink). Sure she shouldn't have been swinging a bag at anyone but she didn't mean to cause serious harm.
Sentencing in the UK is much more lenient than in the states and you tend have to do something pretty awful or repeatedly offend to get a custodial sentence.

I signed it.

I too shall sign it, and, pass it along to our crew.

Simply being an AS person, doesn't, or rather, shouldn't excuse this.

Acquitting was a mistake, and will only strengthen stigmas that will make others fear us.

i respect double jeopardy and its precident over any one singular case.

in the US the only loop hole is is if the defendent bribed a judge or juror ( hence one was never in jeopardy in the first place)so D.J is absolute.i dont know if that clause exists in the U.K

but like i said double jeopardy is absolute,if a person was never in jeopardy in the first place,then the 2nd trial would be single not double jeopardy

Just one thing I don't understand is why they let her go. If she is so prone to hitting someone because they set off her trigger, then she shouldn't be out in public because she would be a danger. If it happened in the states, she would be facing charges and be competent to stand trial and if someone is too incompetent or too insane to be held responsible for their actions, they get put in a mental hospital like we have done with John Lennon's killer and Ronald Reagon's shooter and Andrea Yates eventually and Cheryl that one mother who ran over her 6 week old baby in 1987 and Skywalker, the autistic man who beat his mom to death during a meltdown in 2009.

What I don't understand, is why wasn't an expert called in to testify. They could have explained that being an Aspergian doesn't somehow accidentally cause you to shove an ice skating shoe into someones head.

Nobody can have a re-trial unless there is a very serious reason for it- drastic new evidence that there was/wasn't a crime or evidence of police cover-ups as in the Stephen Lawrence case. Of course they have to re-trial if the initial trial was based on corruption.

I do think the media could use this case to badly represent aspergers/autism, but it says she got a suspended sentence? So if she gets help and still behaves like this she's going to prison. This is very common/normal. It sounds like she's been treated as a normal person who had a momentary lapse of judgement (the judge may think this was caused by her AS, which is possible in this situation, and some treatment and the threat of prison will help will remedy that problem), which happened to cause a lot more damage than intended. Do we really need her in prison if shes unlikely to ever do it again?