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"That Bas-tard Verdict"


dodd
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Whatever happened to to 'innocent until proven guilty'? That's rather what 'not proven' relies on. I'm not familiar enough with the case to make any kind of judgement (nor are most people in this thread, I respectfully suspect).

Think you will find having been amongst the 1st persons on scene any comments I may make are correct and as per my statement and very familiar with the case and how it began!

 

Believe me I could have said an awful lot more !

 

Please respect Shetlink's T&Cs, keep the tone civil, the discussion objective and the information relevant.

 

As for my tone it was blunt, truthfull but civil and my view on the british legal system which is a shambles?

 

Where other in the world would pedofiles, rapists and murderers be paid damages because they had to empty their own portaloo !

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Whatever happened to to 'innocent until proven guilty'?

 

Not today thanks. :evil:

 

If you have concern for innocents; save it for them that have to watch justice fail them because a jury believes in spontaneous combustion, twice over, then have to sit through toad boy smearing itself over the telly, in the most vomit inducing, pathetic scene ever.

 

May it choke on its own poison.

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"Not Proven" is a highly unsatisfactory verdict, but IMHO a necessary one. However, is its level of use today not down more to circumstances created by the attitude towards prosecutions by the Police and/or the Court, than anything else?

 

What happened to the almost standard procedure, of, unless in cases where they were almost certain of gaining a conviction, of always laying an alternate lesser charge as well that was the norm 20+ years ago.

 

It seems to me the Police/Court attitude of today is "all or nothing", go for a murder rap if there seems to be the slightest chance of getting it, and not bother with a Plan B to fall back on if it starts to unravel. Murder, as I understand it, requires that the court proves beyond reasonable doubt that the person standing in the dock intended to kill before they began to act, and that their actions were intended to kill, or were of a nature that they knew full well were highly likely to kill. That level of proof requires a significant amount of strong evidence.

 

Not so long ago, when the Police/Court were less than confident of a murder conviction they'd have also laid the alternate charge of Culpable Homicide or something similar, where the burden of proof, as I understand it, only requires that the person on the dock, is shown beyond reasonable doubt to have been involved in actions which they knew full well were highly likely to kill. As such it was a much more easily attained conviction, there being no requirement to prove intent to kill at any stage of the accused actions, only the need to prove their behaviour was such that they knew full well it was likely to kill someone.

 

Seems to me that by not laying an alternate lesser charge these days, or if they do it never gets mentioned in the press and/or is never used by a jury, the jury are left on far far too many occasions with the near impossible task of choosing either guilty or not guilty, when neither is appropriate, so have little option but fall back on not proven, when a culpable homocide conviction would perhaps have been much nearer to the verdict they'd have wanted to deliver.

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I'm not aware of any procedure where crown office can offer two charges against an accused for the same crime. Only circumstances I have heard of murder reduced to culpable homicide is on specific grounds such as diminished responsibility for instance.

 

If I'm wrong I'll accept it, I'm good like that! :wink:

 

I've been reading back through old posts, having just come back to Shetlink after a hiatus of a year or so and a move south and have seen Sherlock say on a thread that once the cops report the case, it's out of their hands and charges are decided by crown office so for once you can't blame them for this, ghostrider. That's if it's even possible to offer alternative at the same time as a higher or more serious charge.

 

Seems you'd be showing straight away that the evidence wasn't there for a higher charge being proved?!

 

I'm sure they go through cases carefully before they get to court to make sure they are happy with the charge being offered.

 

Anyone know if it is possible? [/u]

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^^ I wouldn't know about "procedure", I just know it was something that used to happen on a not infrequent basis. I could name at least one specific case locally where it happened, but dunno where such would stand with the T&C's given that the case is from some time back.

 

It involved a fatal RTA, and unless my memory has entirely gone to La La Land, in which case I'll withdraw my comments above, the accused came to court facing two possible charges. Time makes the details vague, so I can no longer recall whether the jury themselves decided which was the most appropriate charge to consider, or whether the Sheriff in his summing up directed them to disregard a specific one of the two and find on the other.

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BTW it WAS Sir walter Scott who coined the term not Burns (who was probably just calling the whole legal system bar stewards given his brushes with them!).

 

Found this on Shuggys Blog where he defines Not Proven in effect as being...

 

"We think you did it. In fact we lumpsooker KNOW you did it. We cannae prove it but you better watch yer step, ya wee bar steward"

 

It's when the press crawl in and misrepresent with the assistance if the not proven suspect pointing fingers at everyone to avoid attention on themselves, that it all gets screwed up. IMO anyway :(

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^^^causing death by dangerous driving is different to actual murder tho surely?

 

Murder as you say is where someone consiously decides to take another life, I could see where that could be lessened to culpable homicide with death by driving (if it can be, sorry dunno the case you mention and your right, t&cs means we shouldn't discuss) but I can't see how that could work with murder etc and human rights which must come into it surely? The right to fair trial or whatever it is this month :wink: (just kidding I know I know).

 

Now that you mention it I think I have heard of judges directing jurys to ignore one charge and consider another. Then again I'm not getting younger and could just be recalling an old "crown court" or "Rumpole" episode!?! :shock:

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^^ Right, the charge was different, but it still involved someone's death, and the argument before the court was along the lines of whether the accuseds actions were partly/wholly responisible for the death of another, or whether the deceased's actions were partly/wholly to blame for their own demise.

 

Without being able to know/remember exactly what the two alternatives charges were, its difficult to debate on it, but it was something along the lines of that while the evidence that suggested the accused was partly/wholly responsible for the other's death was far from conclusive, there was overwhelming evidence to support lesser a lesser charge, therefor it went before a jury with the more serious charge being the one on the table, and as the evidence unfolded, either the Fiscal chose to abandon the more serious one, or the Sheriff directed the jury to only find on the lesser one etc if it was considered the more serious one was unlikely to stick.

 

Perhaps something that only applies/applied in vehicle offences, or something that used to be, that is no longer possible, I don't know. It just seems, to me at least, a far more effective way of applying justice than the fudge that "Not Proven" is. Granted, "Not Proven" will always be teh only possible verdict in some cases, but the ability to go before a court with more than one similar charge to find on can only help minimise the number of "Not Proven's" handed down.

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if a not proven can be brought back into a court if further evidence comes to light would you not understand a victims family being pissed off at what they'd see as someone getting off lightly tho?

 

Dunno if it can be done tho.

 

If they did whatever it was kagain God forbid, I found an article on the Moorov Doctrine on Wikipedia while trying to further my pitiful legal knowledge. I thought it was interesting but maybe I'm just sad that way?!

 

See, Shetlink ejookaites you. Fakt.

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When a jury is told by a professional fire investigator that the fires PLURAL were started deliberately and they completley overlook that fact and hand down a 'not proven' verdict, it proves something is severly wrong with the justice system.

 

A man can be sent to prison for clubbing animals to death (which I DO NOT condone, I only use this as an example) (** mod edit - content removed **)

 

I have lost all faith in the 'justice' system and fear for all of our childrens lives (** mod edit - content removed **) after a jury is presented with overwhelming evidence for their conviction - basically overlooking all the hard facts about the night in question.

 

One of the children whose lives could have been taken that night is my daughter and I thank God every day for sparing her. However she and her brother now have to grow up never knowing their little sister because of a justice system that is obsessed with convicting "terrorists" and "evil drug dealers" (** mod edit - content removed **)

 

The facts were there. I hope the members of that jury can sleep at night knowing they have let the death of an innocent child go unpunished.

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[mod]merge point[/mod]

 

And with that - this thread is locked.

Any reason to be stated? The last post seemed to me to be very typical of views being heard. Presumably Shetlink is fearing some kind of legal challenge, but one has to wonder if anyone really has the brass neck for that.

 

Just a general question on thread locking generally. Where should such locking be discussed? I've created this pt2 thread because I saw no obvious place to find out why the thread was locked. That is clearly not ideal.

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