Rumor has it that the Telegraph is going tabloid after the summer. Still the Times and the Independent are there already and the Guardian has gone Berlinner.
But the Telegraph as a Tabloid- that confirms its real status. All they will need is to make the Masthead red and it can really join the Redtops!
Have just reviewed the whole discussion and what becomes apparent to me is:
All my arguments have been about the rule of law, administration of Justice, Law making, and Government in general- that is to sayI have been a stickler for Judges, the CPS, and politicians applying the law as written and trying to deliver justice under those conditions.
All of your agrumnets are about vengeance or defending people acting outside the law- a very strange mixture.
I want the law made, administered and carried out fairly and rationally with a sense of justice and equity and decided by a legitimate governmental and judicial system.
You seem to desire the rule of the jungle and trial by tabloids.
Convince me that I am wrong.
In certain aspects you are 100% right.
Yes I do cry out for vengeance when I see a grave miscarriage of justice.
Yes I will defend people acting outside the law when I believe that their actions carry justification.
No I do not want the rule of the jungle.
Trial by tabloids? now you are really being silly.
This is my last posting in this particular thread as it seems to have degenerated into an attack on myself.
Perhaps the mods would kindly close it.
Pit threads often degenerate into personal attacks, but this is not one. Much of the argument would have been appropriate for GD.
I see no miscarriages of justice here- the law has been applied as required by statute and the people have been found guilty or not guilty acording to such statutes. In the case of Tony Martin, no government or other bill has been introduced to change the law on self defence and consequently the law remains what it was- the law. I repeat, no miscarriage here.
Defending people who act outside the law is quite acceptable- I would defend certain peace protestors and demomstrators. But I would not say that they were innocent or not to be dealt with by the law as it currently is, but would advocate a change in that law.
I would not make statements such as:
*I stick by my beliefs, the burglar got what he deserved unlike the child killers in this OP
The two arsewipes referred to in my post MURDERED a child of a few months old and they got away with it and that disgusts me and many more like minded people.
Tony Martin should have served no time at all in prison, he was defending what was his.
I actually know very little about the English judicial system, what I do know is that when it comes to handing out appropriate sentences for criminal/civil offences the whole thing is woefully lacking in common sense.
*
All of which tend to rule by the mob rather than the rule of law.
And BTW, I see you are new around here. The Pit can be a dangerous place for the faint-hearted. The Pit rules are at:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=365973
The BBQ Pit is the forum for flaming other members, complaining about the board, its moderators or their moderating actions, or for unleashing reasoned vitriol too heated for the other forums. Although the standards of discourse are significantly looser than the other forums, it is not a free-for-all. Think before flaming, and be prepared to live with what you post.
If you can’t stand the heat then get out of the pit!
I realise I said I wouldn’t post in this thread again…but!!
Just supposing Pjen that one of your children was abducted and his/her body was found 3 mths later with multiple fractures, bruises and so on.
Imagine also that you had proof positive who the killer was.
Let’s go further and imagine that in a court of law that person was found not guilty and was freed.
Would you be prepared to accept that?. Would you blithely go about your business in the belief that justice had been seen to be fair?.
This is hypothesis I know but would you?.
Be honest.
Surely the point of a legal system is to protect us from ourselves. If our own child is violated we would want blood. It is up to the community/legal system to think more rationaly.
The legal system protects the victims family from crimes of retribution and allows the accused the opportunity to defend themselves to someone more detatched.
If there was evidence then I would expect the police to investigate and the CPS to prosecute. If I had such evidence I would ensure that it was brought to the attention of the police and CPS so that they could do so. If the “evidence” I had was merely a gut feeling that person X or persons X and Y had done it, I would have to accept that the law requires evidence to be of a certain standard, and that mine fell below that. I would not be in a position to insist that the “evidence” be used, or to assert that the people were guilty; to do so would be criminal libel.
I would accept it because it is by such rules and limits to the system of coercion that a legal system essentially is, that such systems are stopped from making considerably more errors by wrongful convictions of the innocent.
I would not feel comfortable about the outcome, but I would understand that a certain level of proof is necessary.
To give a good example of trial by tabloid and abuse of police powers one should consider some important cases, each of which has led to major changes in the evidentiary system:
The Birmingham 6
The Maguire 7
Colin Stagg
Cardiff 3
Judith Ward
Stephen Downing
Guildford 4
Andrew Evans
Stefan Kiszko
Bridgewater 4
Peter Fell
Sally Clark
Donna Anthony
Michelle and Lisa Taylor
The Gurnos Three
Timothy Evans
Paul Blackburn
M25 Three
Winston Silcott
Danny McNamee
Jonathon Jones
Sheila Bowler
Darvell Brothers
etc. etc. etc.
All of whom had considerably more evidence against them than was available to the CPS in this case.
All of whom were pilloried by the tabloid (and even the broadheet) press.
All of whom were found guilty by a system that at that time had looser rules of evidence.
All of whose convictions were overturned eventually on appeal and the rules of evidence changed to avoid such errors in future.
That is why we have rules of evidence and not the ‘common sense’ ‘gut feeling’ system that you propose.
p.s. I firmly believe that Barry George (found guilty of the murder of Jill Dando) and
Michael Stone (found guilty of the murder of Megan Russell) will soon be added to the above list.
The reason why it was not possible to get convictions in the case of the two parents that you cite is because of the gradual removal of previous dubious practices that have been highlighted by the above cases.
To give examples of the manner in which such conviction were previously obtained in England (and still often obtained abroad still), it is no longer possible to:
Torture defendants into giving statements
Falsify Forensic evidence
Write statements and then say that the suspect refused to sign them
“Verbal” the subjects- that is give false police testimony that they confessed
Lock people up indefinitely until they crack
Interview the mentally incompetent without support
Interview suspects without a solicitor
Take statements without recording them on a tape or video recorder
Take statements in a car and say that recording equipment was not available
Pay or coerce other criminals and informers to make up stories
Pay or coerce prisoners to say that the person confessed in their cell
Use false intelligence that is not disclosed to the defence
Fail to disclose matters of fact found in police investigations to the defence that completely exonerate or at least suggest that the person was innocent.
All of the above were once permissable, in fact normative, in English policing. All of the above are now impossible to use in court.
Instead, the police have to find real evidence.
Of course, in the USA this would have been handled differently. The DA would have arraigned both people for capital murder (the US has few checks on DA’s powers to bring charges) and then the parents would have been held in jail and then each individually threatened with the death penalty or life without parole in prison. One or the other would have made a statement incriminating the other person or themselves to avoid life in prison or death. Fine if they were in fact guilty, but not so fine if (for instance) the child was suffering from brittle bone syndrome and both parents were in fact innocent.
The administration of justice calls for hard choices to be made and the decisions will never please everyone. But I would rather have a system which avoids the above terrible miscarriages of justice, but fails to convict some people who more than likely were guilty as sin, but against whom there was NO EVIDENCE.
My sentiments exactly.
Pjen. I said if you had PROOF POSITIVE not a gut feeling, I also asked you to imagine that the killer was freed.
I did not propose a “gut feeling” please do not try to put words into my mouth or misquote me.
Do you seriously expect me to believe that you as a parent would not move heaven and hell in order to avenge your loss.
I most certainly would no matter what the cost to me.
If I had “proof positive”, then the Police and CPS would use that in court to gain a conviction. Case closed.
In the case in your original post there was NO PROOF.
And no, if this hapoened to my family, god forbid, I would not look outside the law for two reasons:
1/ It is against my Personal Morals
2/ I don’t want to go to jail, and what I would want to do would get me sent to jail.
Those feelings in their complexity are how we maintain a civil and ordered society that comes with the rule of law.
Just what would you do if the situation was reversed:
Would you kill the people, or
Just physically harm the people, or
Psychologically or socially attempt to harm them.
What would you do beyond the law’s response?
I would point out that you have adduced noting more than gut feeling for the parents in the OP being guilty. You may not have used those words, but that was the import behind your thinking.
Pjen
I stated that the scenario I painted was hypothetical and asked you to imagine how you would feel if the killer/s of your child were freed.
In answer to your question, what would I do?.
In short I would do everything in my power to ensure that killers of my kids were removed from society permanently, if I had to kill them I would and to hell with the consequences.
Personal morals my arse.
You would not avenge an unlawful killing of one of your children because you don’t want to go to jail, well lah de fucking dah and goodie for you my upright law abiding pillar of society :rolleyes:
So we now know that you have no respect for the law whatsoever. You would commit a murder, even knowing that you would almost certainly be sacrificing the rest of your life in jail.
Suppose that the child killer’s brother also believed as you did. You kill his brother. He can’t get to you because you are in police custody. He kills your spouse and remaining children in revenge by torching your house. Some society, eh?
As I stated above, I suspected that you were supporting the law of the jungle, and you have now confirmed it. Thank you.
You are full of crap.
I have respect for the law but if my kids were harmed and the law did nothing about it then it’s up to me to correct the balance.
Your second para. is hypothetical same as mine was which you never answered.
Go back to teaching class you useless article…and coward :wally
Pjen,
I hope you don’t mind; however, I’m just addressing two things from your lengthy post and have made majore snips to it.
Additionally, there’s really no such thing as “common sense.” It’s not quantifiable; it’s not qualifiable; and it certainly, to the extent people believe it exists, differs from person to person.
Many people seem to think that the US has one or, at the most, two legal systems. We have far more than that. First, there’s the Federal Judiciary, which, obviously is the same all over the country. Then we have the various State Judiciaries, which differ from state to state. Some states have the death penalty and some states do not have the death penalty. The only time the accused could be held in jail would be if the court denied bail or, if bail is granted, the accused could not raise bail. The trial would also require proof. If the DA uncovered proof that assists the accused, then the DA must provide that proof to said accused. If there is proof of a crime, then that will be brought out at trial and the jury will decide. The court, IMHO, would not permit a trial to proceed on the basis of a vested-interest statement of one of the accused.
I agree with the rest of your postings in this thread.
Sounds like a “Of course I’ll love you in the morning” kind of respect. If it’s convenient for you at the moment, you’ll respect (obey) the law; if it’s not so convenient for you, then you’ll disobey the law.
To avenge harm done to my family of course I would…who in their right mind wouldn’t?
“In their right mind,” you say? Why, those in their right mind, IMHO–and evidently (note that particular word, if you don’t mind) in Pjen’s also–are those who would actually avail themselves of the law to get justice.
But, then, you’re the guy who thinks theft should be punished with summary execution.
Agreed. That’s why I used scare quotes around “common sense” and “gut feeling”
I understand the US legal system fairly well. I was the irritating sod who took A’s in Civics and US History depite being the “English Kid”.
Few murders or cases of child abuse are held at Federal Level. The common thing across the US state justice system is the greater power of the DA than the CPS has in the UK.
The entire system in the US is based on plea bargaining avoiding a log jam in the courts. Most plea bargaining has been banned in English courts until recently, although it is creeping in. Because the US actual punishment for murder is so much greater than in the UK, and because of the plea bargaining system, and because of the greater compliance of US juries with the prosecution, a case as in the original post would likely in the US to be pursued in the way I suggested. One or other or both of the parents would plead guilty to avoid a trial and greater punishment. In the UK lawyers know that the CPS would not be able to progress such a case to trial without cast-iron evidence, and that the trial judge would not let a case to go to jury if the burden of proof is not fully met.
This was not meant as a rant at the US Justice system (the rest of my examples were British) but an attempt to understand what Chowder wanted to happen in this case, and I was giving an example of the manner in which another system might have used. I might also have mentioned the Napoleonic system which would allow an investigating magistrate to hold suspects in custody virtually indefinitely until s/he had full evidence, or until one of them cracked.
Now we know that Chowder is just a potential criminal and anti-rule of law, all of the above does not really matter.
How can you have respect for the law, but be willing to break it in such a major way.
And how would you cope with the family retribution in my above post.
People like you are at the root of vendetta culture that bedevils societies less ordered than ours.
Look at the case settled last week where a group of people had conspired to kill the parents of a man who they blamed for one of their gang being killed. They received thirty year tariffs (about the highest apart from the whole life tariff) because they took the law into their own hands.
Please note that I do not need to resort to mere insults, just to state the fact that you are by your own admission a potential murderer and perverter of the course of justice.
Most of us who live in and wish to continue to live in a civilized society.