I don't know whether the 2 guys who stand convicted of the murder of Stephen Lawrence are guilty, I suspect they may be, however the lengths that the authorities had to go to to get a conviction strikes me as being very unsafe. First the law on double jeopardy had to be removed as the accused had already been tried once and found not guilty. Excuses had to be found for the poor storage of evidence meaning that cross contamination may have (not necessarily did) occur. The accused had already been named as "guilty" by the MSM in the shape of the Daily Mail. Plus there is now an ongoing campaign to try and get to the other 3 involved. A massive and costly undercover operation was set up by the police that looks from an outsiders point of view as entrapment yet the accused were finally only convicted on 16 fibres and a speck of blood.
I don't know if they were guilty, I do know that the appeals court and the lawyers are going to have a field day over this and when or if it goes up to the European Court of Justice which will sift the evidence and the trial procedures then I suspect the case might just be overturned and hefty compensation paid out.
What was done here to try and get a conviction had far more to do with political correctness and a desire not to appear racist. The murders of Charlene Downes and Gavin Hopley have already proven that you need to be the right skin colour to get this sort of response from the police, the government and various other political groupings.
So from my strictly jaundiced viewpoint, if this was justice, God help us all.
Seems I'm not alone...
http://goingfastgettingnowhere.blogspot.com/2012/01/justice-maybe-but-at-what-cost.html
http://timworstall.com/2012/01/04/stephen-lawrence-verdict-no-not-happy-about-it/
http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/is-this-justice-for-stephen-lawrence/
http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/the-deaths-of-richard-everitt-and-stephen-lawrence-compare-and-contrast/
http://4liberty.org.uk/2012/01/03/disposable-double-jeopardy/
7 annotations:
The entire country has been told repeatedly to the point of indoctrination that the 5 SUSPECTS are all guilty, their names and faces all over the media.
Then they were bugged by the Met and the results broadcast to the nation, the recordings were incriminating but no gave no links to the actual crime.
How could they expect a fair trial after that?
After being unssuccessfully tried once the Govt decided to remove the double jeopardy law allowing them to be retried until the right result was found.
Was is justice or simply getting the right result on a high profile problem case at any cost?
I would expect an appeal on the grounds of it being impossible to get a fair trial.
Does this mean the cops will now be going after the other members of the racist asian gang that killed Richard Everitt?
Since only one of the estimated 15 was ever jailed for his death.
shared enterprise and all that?
That the two defendants are guilty as charged is, of course, undeniable. They are two evil racists who have got what was coming to them... eventually. Anyone who has viewed their most recent police interviews would conclude that. They were given every opportunity to explain themselves, but went 'No Comment'. In doing so they left themselves open to permitting a court to draw an inference from their refusal or failure to answer reasonable questions put to them in interview. It is simply not good enough to attempt to rubbish the forensic evidence within the trial. Blood and fibres from the victim was on them. How?? They lied about their association and were caught out. Norris lied about going out that night and was caught out. They were involved in other events of a similar nature. That they harboured violent racist feelings is beyond doubt. One of them was convicted for racially abusing an off duty police officer, with one of the three other potential future defendants. The police bungled the original investigation. Not maliciously, but because some of those involved were incompetent. Whatever else, the case was a watershed. Perhaps some good has come from the death of that poor young man, if it meant that the police had to look hard at themselves and make themselves accountable to the public they serve. The fight against racism has been a constant theme for my entire service and it is greatly welcomed by the majority of officers. I don't subscribe to the view that the loss of the protection of the double jeopardy rule is a bad thing because the burden of proof that the police would need to resurect a previously tried case is very high. Name me another case where the defendant(s) have been tried again. I can only think of one - that of Mario Celaire, so this will not open the floodgates. Justice demanded that Dobson and Norris be tried again for this offence, because with the advance of technology there was now evidence to show that they had a case to answer. I think that this was the right thing to do. I think that the majority of right thinking people would say the same. Finally, the Metropolitan Police got their men, not all of them, but enough of them to give the poor family of the victim some measure of closure, and sufficient to disturb the sleep patterns of the other guilty individuals.
@anonymous
So you believe that justice was done by prosecuting someone already tried and acquitted allowable by a new law brought in deliberately so they could be prosecuted?
Double jeopardy was a mainstay of our legal system for over 800 years because it forced the police to do their jobs properly when prosecuting because if they didn't get it right the defendant no matter how guilty walked free. I realise the first prosecution was a civil one brought by the family, but the defendants walked free after the case was kicked out. There then began an expensive attempt (including removing an 800 year safeguard) in order to placate the race industry by hook or by crook getting these men into prison. I suspect if they'd failed this time there would be another and another attempt. What was done here was wrong, not because the people were guilty and needed punishment, not because it gives the Lawrence family closure, but because once it's been done it can be used again and again to prosecute people the state finds inconvenient. That this current lot haven't or wont is immaterial, a precedent has been set, trials can go ahead now or in the future again and again until a sympathetic jury is found.
This wasn't justice, this was a show trial and it has allowed a breach of natural justice and one of our civil liberties as free born Englishmen to be set aside.
Yesterday was a dark day for our future freedom.
QM, 'anon' has posted this exact same boilerplate stuff at Anna Raccoon's blog, at Bucko's, and probably others I haven't read yet.
He/she's probably going to cut & paste it to every blog that mentions the case.
Thank you Julia, I've now done my round of the blogs and found this all over the place. A sort of end justifies the means copy and paste. Whilst it bothers me that guilty people can go free, it bothers me a lot more that the state has taken upon itself the power to re-try anyone who does go free under circumstances which it does not like.
A very dangerous precedent was set yesterday.
I realise the first prosecution was a civil one brought by the family,
History note: it was a private criminal prosecution, not a civil one. The Crown reserves the right to take these over and discontinue them. They are used in legal manoeuvering because they automatically generate a lot of press interest and are a way of bringing pressure to bear on the state prosecutor.
Historically, all criminal prosecutions were private - they are just another kind of petition to the court for redress.
There was a scandal after the Napoleonic Wars where complainants realized they could issue these cheaply and did so as a method of getting paid to drop the complaint. It was extortion via the legal system.
The state eventually responded by taking over criminal prosecutions so that the police would decide whether to bring a case. (This explains why rape complainants are witnesses, not prosecutors).
This led to a problem whereby many cases turned on whether the police had not merely collected but manufacured evidence, so it was relatively recently the CPS was created to handle criminal prosecution distinct from investigation.
Recently there has been an expansion of prosecuting bodies. There are problems which ever way you do it.
Post a Comment