Althouse: She's so good with a knife.

May 17, 2017

She's so good with a knife.

"Student who stabbed boyfriend may avoid jail as it would ‘damage her career’/Aspiring surgeon Lavinia Woodward admits attack but judge defers sentencing because of her ‘extraordinary’ talent."

56 comments:

MisterBuddwing said...: You're heard that old joke: "What's the difference between God and a surgeon?"

Answer: God doesn't think He's a surgeon.

(I can say that, being the son of a now-retired surgeon who never had a God complex.); 5/17/17, 7:13 AM
Martha said...: This is not the person you want to be in charge in the OR. Ever.

She should go into psychiatry—preferably in therapy.; 5/17/17, 7:14 AM
Rae said...: Oh, this is in the UK. I thought they outlawed knives there?; 5/17/17, 7:16 AM
Bad Lieutenant said...: Rae, N.B.: Bread knife

Meanwhile, who says she's all that?; 5/17/17, 7:18 AM
Bad Lieutenant said...: She should check her pretty privilege.; 5/17/17, 7:18 AM
Tank said...: Leave her alone, she's just a girl !; 5/17/17, 7:18 AM
JAORE said...: Taking the just out of justice, one judicial decision at a time.; 5/17/17, 7:22 AM
MathMom said...: That's who I want doing surgery on me!

/sarc; 5/17/17, 7:26 AM
rehajm said...: Stop empowering them!; 5/17/17, 7:29 AM
Bay Area Guy said...: Sounds like a budding young psycho queen.; 5/17/17, 7:30 AM
jr565 said...: If I stab someone I'm going to bring my guitar to court and play the judge and jury some songs that show off my fingerpicking stylings.
THat's my defense. I'm really good at guitar.; 5/17/17, 7:32 AM
jr565 said...: If I shoot someone I'm going to bring some targets to court and show them my awesome skill at doing trick shots.
"He's such a good shooter, he can't go to jail!"; 5/17/17, 7:33 AM
jr565 said...: Jack the Ripper was also really good with knives.; 5/17/17, 7:35 AM
mockturtle said...: Girls just wanna have fun.; 5/17/17, 7:36 AM
MAJMike said...: Maybe she could be a prison doctor for 10 to 15 years.; 5/17/17, 7:39 AM
mockturtle said...: I remember when Norman Mailer was pressing for early release from prison of Jack Abbott, whom he considered a very talented writer. Shortly after his release, Abbott stabbed a guy to death and went back to prison. Moral: Some very wicked people are brilliant and talented but they should never be given a pass.; 5/17/17, 7:46 AM
Bill R said...: The End Times are upon us.; 5/17/17, 7:53 AM
Ipso Fatso said...: Nice to know that our aspiring surgeon does drugs too. It comforts me to know that she could do a line or two of blow off of my chest as she opens me up for heart surgery.; 5/17/17, 7:58 AM
Michael K said...: The NHS will be pleased. Killing patients is the coming thing.

About 25 years ago, the Navy had a serial killer heart surgeon. She would fit right in.

It happens sometimes, but I wouldn't celebrate it.; 5/17/17, 8:03 AM
Matt Sablan said...: Well. The Rule of Law was good while it lasted.; 5/17/17, 8:05 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "I remember when Norman Mailer was pressing for early release from prison of Jack Abbott, whom he considered a very talented writer. Shortly after his release, Abbott stabbed a guy to death and went back to prison. Moral: Some very wicked people are brilliant and talented but they should never be given a pass."

I remember when Norman Mailer stabbed his wife.; 5/17/17, 8:06 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "On the night of November 19, 1960, Mailer and his then-wife Adele Morales hosted a party, intended to launch his proposed New York mayoral campaign, at the Upper West Side apartment the couple shared with their two young daughters. Mailer had enlisted his well-connected friend, journalist George Plimpton, to attract figures from the city's "power structure;" he hoped to unite at his party this elite echelon with the "disenfranchised" population he saw as his natural constituency—having written of the "courage" of hoodlums in his 1957 essay "The White Negro"—into a voting base that would propel him to office. Though David Rockefeller and the Aga Khan declined the invitation, the party's approximately two hundred guests included the poet Allen Ginsberg, as well as several "derelicts, cutthroats, and bohemians"—many of them homeless—whom Mailer had recruited off the street. This produced an atmosphere characterized by later commentators as, at best, "legendarily tetchy" and, at worst, "the most dangerous evening I've ever spent in my life" (from publisher Barney Rossett, a guest at the party). Fights broke out throughout the course of the night, and tensions ran high—by some accounts, Norman Mailer at one point divided guests "on opposite sides of the room according to whether he considered them 'for' or 'against' him"—with a near-incoherent Mailer eventually leaving the apartment to seek trouble elsewhere. Morales later recalled that "he was down in the street punching people…He didn't know what his name was, he was so out of it." When Mailer returned at 4:30 A.M. to find all of the guests departed but for the "five or six" who remained in the dining room, and Morales getting ready for bed, the altercation broke out. The enraged Mailer burst into the room, and Morales taunted his heterosexual masculinity and made a disparaging reference to his mistress. Mailer rushed at her, stabbing her with a rusty two-and-a-half inch penknife, once in the back and once through her breast, puncturing her cardiac sac and narrowly missing her heart. Mailer addressed the shocked guests standing over Morales' prostrate body, saying "Don't touch her. Let the bitch die." Nevertheless, she was rushed downstairs to the apartment of novelist Doc Hume, and from there in a taxi cab to University Hospital for emergency surgery."; 5/17/17, 8:09 AM
MisterBuddwing said...: The NHS will be pleased. Killing patients is the coming thing.

"Coming thing"? Have we forgotten the case of Harold Shipman?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shipman; 5/17/17, 8:09 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: He was probably committing non consensual compersion.

She wasn't feelin' the 'luv'; 5/17/17, 8:14 AM
mockturtle said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/17/17, 8:14 AM
Johanna Lapp said...: I really admire a surgeon who can't finish what she starts.; 5/17/17, 8:16 AM
MisterBuddwing said...: Did Mailer server any time?

Wikipedia: "His wife would not press charges, and he later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of assault, and was given a suspended sentence."; 5/17/17, 8:25 AM
Jupiter said...: mockturtle said...
"Ann, I didn't remember that. Did Mailer serve any time? [Hah!]"

As I recall, the New York Literati rushed to his defense, and the whole matter essentially disappeared.; 5/17/17, 8:27 AM
mockturtle said...: Thanks, Jupiter. I deleted my comment because I decided to look it up. Mailer served a whopping 17 days in a psychiatric hospital, even though his wife was hospitalized in critical condition. Privilege. Oh, and he lied to the police, saying that she had fallen on some broken glass. There were scores of witnesses, however...Privilege.; 5/17/17, 8:30 AM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: Attractive, young, middle-class, white woman with viable professional aspirations. How often would someone like this actually end up in the slammer? I bet as her circumstances were presented the judge felt paternal. Or horny.; 5/17/17, 8:38 AM
MaxedOutMama said...: I'm just glad this is not a US judge, although I darkly suspect that it could have been.

After this lovely young person stabbed the boyfriend, she continued to battle:
Woodward, who lives in Milan, Italy, with her mother, stabbed her then-boyfriend in the leg after punching him in the face. She then hurled a laptop, glass and jam jar at him during the attack on 30 September last year, the court heard. She was in court to hear the judge’s comments.

Maybe she's just not cut out to be a surgeon. If she's as brilliant as claimed, then she could go into some other scientific field in which nurses and patients wouldn't be victims of her temper.

Not giving her a prison sentence doesn't change anything about her character problems. There's a reason why doctors are supposed to be of good moral character - they have a lot of power over vulnerable people. We've already got violence and substance abuse. This is not a person who should be given that sort of professional power.

I can't imagine why a prison sentence wouldn't be given out.; 5/17/17, 8:42 AM
MisterBuddwing said...: Attractive, young, middle-class, white woman with viable professional aspirations.

Humph. As if there were privileges in being attractive, young, middle class - and white.; 5/17/17, 8:44 AM
Swede said...: Another article, which I am too lazy to link to, says that she also has a recent history of illegal drug use.

How is this person even a candidate for surgeon?; 5/17/17, 8:53 AM
Larry J said...: Reverse the sexes and see if the judge would be willing to give a young man the same benefit of the doubt. I suspect not. You want equality? Well, it should include equal consequences for the same crime when the defendant is a woman.; 5/17/17, 8:55 AM
lgv said...: Wow, what a slew of witty comments. That's why I love this blog.

Thanks
jr565
michael mcclane
michael K

I find it quite worrisome that people attain the role of judge that have so little understanding of their own failed reasoning. It's like the travel ban judge from Hawaii. Yes, the rule of law has become symbolic words. Opening odds in Vegas are 8,000:1 she doesn't become a surgeon. She is more likely to kill someone before getting a license to kill.; 5/17/17, 8:57 AM
CStanley said...: Gee whiz, when I was in vet school at the beginning of our surgical training we practiced cutting and sewing bananas.; 5/17/17, 9:09 AM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: One of the worst serial killers in US history was a physician, Michael Swango. He didn't use knives. His method of choice was poison or overmedicating patients:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Swango

I read a book about him a while back. One of the most chilling stories was of a young woman he murdered while he was a resident at the Ohio Valley medical center. He was observed tampering with the IV of a young woman who mysteriously died, although her illness was not fatal. A patient sharing the room with the young woman repeatedly tried to report what she had seen but was ignored by the hospital administration because what do laypeople know? It's like something straight out of a horror movie - you're in a hospital bed helpless with a homicidal maniac in a white coat roaming around and the authorities believe him, not you.

Hard to know exactly how many Swango murdered, since he fled, first to Africa and then to Saudi Arabia and they initially didn't question the creds of an American-trained physician.; 5/17/17, 9:13 AM
CStanley said...: I think the most darkly humorous bit in the article was when the judge told her not to reoffend.

It's a wonder we haven't thought of this approach before...How many more crimes can we prevent if we just remember to advise criminals to stop committing crimes?; 5/17/17, 9:13 AM
Valentine Smith said...: Some just love the knife.
She'll do it again.; 5/17/17, 9:21 AM
Wince said...: Obviously she buttered-up the judge with the bread knife.; 5/17/17, 9:46 AM
Big Mike said...: She does drugs yet Judge Pringle thinks she might have an excellent career as a surgeon? I'd like to ask him whether he'd be willing to let a surgeon who does drugs operate on his appendix. Or on his kids.; 5/17/17, 10:02 AM
Anonymous said...: Drunk on her own fury.

It will happen again.

Prof. A: thanks for the note on Mailer. I guess I'm heartened to know that today's pathologies are nothing new.; 5/17/17, 10:05 AM
William said...: Young, attractive women are given a break in just about every field of human endeavor. Why should a court of law be any exception?....Also,surgery is an altruistic form of sadism. Her personality is probably not that radically different than many of her peers.; 5/17/17, 10:08 AM
jr565 said...: if Mike Tyson ever beats his wife he can use this as an excuse. becuase he's a very talented boxer.; 5/17/17, 10:15 AM
jr565 said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/17/17, 10:17 AM
n.n said...: She knows how to wield a scalpel. She is the modern model of a feminist.; 5/17/17, 10:18 AM
Unknown said...: Good with a knife? Sentence her to a meat processing plant where everyone has a knife.; 5/17/17, 10:38 AM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: But but but that Brock Lesner (sp?) guy or athlete X allegedly got special treatment in court case Y and that was proof of our patriarchal rape culture, so something like this must be proof of, ah, something.; 5/17/17, 10:53 AM
n.n said...: a meat processing plant

Or Planned Parenthood. The qualifications are the same.; 5/17/17, 11:25 AM
GrapeApe said...: The Brits have let their judiciary overrun common sense. Seriously, I have read stories about judges letting folks of with NO jail time for assault with a knife or a baseball/cricket bat. That just allows that shit to continue. Not likely to change because the folks are too scared to speak up for common sense. At least not enough of them to make a difference.

The judges are simply too invested in appeasing criminals.; 5/17/17, 12:00 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: I don't know how she is with knives in the OR, but I bet the judge could attest that she's a whiz with tulips on the organ.; 5/17/17, 12:01 PM
mockturtle said...: Maybe she's just not cut out to be a surgeon.

Good one, M.O.M!; 5/17/17, 12:27 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: Althouse could have done this when she was a 2L and she absolutely would have walked. Plus, a bread knife? Only in Britain.; 5/17/17, 1:28 PM
JaimeRoberto said...: This is like the guy who murdered his parents begging for mercy because he's an orphan.; 5/17/17, 2:55 PM
Ann Althouse said...: A bread knife is a long serrated thing used to slice a loaf of bread. Don't picture a butter knife, used to butter bread.; 5/17/17, 4:38 PM
Michael K said...: "One of the worst serial killers in US history was a physician, Michael Swango. "

I linked to the book in my comment but didn't mention the title.

The Navy heart surgeon I mentioned.

In his summation, Col. Gerald L. Miller, the chief prosecutor, noted that before joining the Navy Dr. Billig had been dismissed from one surgical job and had been stripped of surgical privileges at another hospital. But, Colonel Miller said, he was able to get a new surgical post after each dismissal. The only way to protect the public from Dr. Billig, he argued, would be to jail him.; 5/17/17, 5:23 PM