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Negative portrayal on TV and discrimination

Robert124

Last night I was watching a documentary on C5 about the Rachel Nickel murder.  They made a clear comment that the actual killer, Robert Napper, had Asperger's syndrome.  Was that necessary?  Is it discrimination?  If they had talked about his race, religion, nationality or skin colour, there would have been an uproar.

Parents

  • I mean you can imagine situations where autism might be argued as a defence. Say an autistic man is having a BBQ and is out cutting meat in his front garden. A neighbour who doesn't like him volts over the fence, walks upto him and screams in his face repeatedly causing the autistic person to panic, feel very threatened, have a melt down and lash out with the knife killing his neighbour. That would generally be manslaughter anyway but with the autism you could argue he had an inaccurate perception of the threat he was under and was in a mental state where he might not have realised he could run away. You could argue he legitimately believed he was acting in self defence. The question will then be was the use of force reasonable (probably not, courts tend to disregard mental state when assessing this, but you never know.) Failing that you could argue that a melt down amounts to a state of automatism, a complete, abet temporary, loss of control, this could also be a defence. #notlegaladvice

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  • I mean you can imagine situations where autism might be argued as a defence. Say an autistic man is having a BBQ and is out cutting meat in his front garden. A neighbour who doesn't like him volts over the fence, walks upto him and screams in his face repeatedly causing the autistic person to panic, feel very threatened, have a melt down and lash out with the knife killing his neighbour. That would generally be manslaughter anyway but with the autism you could argue he had an inaccurate perception of the threat he was under and was in a mental state where he might not have realised he could run away. You could argue he legitimately believed he was acting in self defence. The question will then be was the use of force reasonable (probably not, courts tend to disregard mental state when assessing this, but you never know.) Failing that you could argue that a melt down amounts to a state of automatism, a complete, abet temporary, loss of control, this could also be a defence. #notlegaladvice

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