Two arrests - Justice for Stephen Lawrence?

[Skepticemea]

It does seem a tad flimsy however have to remember that the media reports only cover a fraction of what will have been seen and heard by the jury. Plus the tendency for the likes of the BBC to apply "balance" when reporting court cases, this can lead to there being a perception that both the prosecution and defence cases were fairly "even" when that might not be the case.

On what grounds do you think it will be appealed?

Sorry, Darat, was unconscionably busy yesterday. Dunno what my work were thinking there!

I believe it may be appealed on the grounds that they were unable to receive a fair trial. There's some weight to that argument considering the press given after the public enquiry ended (esp. The Daily Mail front page). I have a friend who

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/02_04/paperDM2502_468x433.jpg

Please don't misunderstand me though, Dobson, Norris, the Acourt brothers and Knight are scum and, to my mind, are as guilty as all hell.

 

[Rolfe]

But the fundamentally-important point is that any retrial of Fhimah would be based on essentially the same evidence as was presented in the original trial. But let's deal with a hypothetical: imagine if new advances in DNA typing were able to show that Fhimah's (or al-Megrahi's) DNA was on the bomb or the suitcase containing the bomb, and that there was very little chance that this DNA could have arrived there via contamination. In my opinion, this would certainly warrant a retrial of Fhimah, owing to significant new evidence.

Under current legislation (I am assuming here that Scottish law is not dissimilar to England/Wales law in this respect), there's simply no way that a new trial of Fhimah would be allowed as things stand right now. It doesn't matter how vindictive or blinkered the Scottish police, the FBI, or any prosecuting authorities might be towards Libyan involvement in the bombing: the very limited scope of modification of the double jeopardy rule would ensure that Fhimah would never be brought again before a criminal court in relation to this crime until and unless very significant evidence were to emerge.

I hope and believe you're right. Of course if DNA from either suspect was found on any of the items in the bomb suitcase, it would be a slam-dunk. But that's not what they're talking about. They have had these items in storage for 23 years, and have been able to test them for DNA at any time. So far as I know, that has not been done.

Nor are they undertaking any open-minded review of the case. (We all know where that would lead.) On the contrary, as Prof. Black says, the attitude is that if it doesn't appear to implicate Libya it isn't evidence.

What they are talking about now is scouring the post-revolution remains of Libya to try to find some documentary evidence they can use to bring Fhimah to trial for the second time. Maybe the investigators wouldn't forge anything. However, the Libyan rebels seem quite well aware that one way to get into the good graces of the West now is to provide some documentation that will support the assertion that Gaddafi was responsible for Lockerbie. (The idea that Gaddafi might have been responsible for Lockerbie but neither Megrahi nor Fhimah had any part in that doesn't seem to be on the radar either.)

We know fabricated stories purporting to implicate Megrahi and Fhimah were fed to the US investigation in 1991, after it was made plain who the investigators wanted to be implicated. (Announcing a $4 million reward for evidence against two named people is a good way to procure this.) I wouldn't be at all surprised if the same thing happened again.

It's back to the suspect-centred investigation. If the investigation in the Lawrence case wasn't suspect-centred, and it just so happened it threw up newer and better evidence against the original suspects, fair enough. But the rhetoric coming from Mulholland scares the pants off me. The new legislation is an absolute engraved invitation to suspect-centred analysis of the evidence, and we all know where that leads. It's not only the Italian forensic labs that have been caught with their fingers in the cookie jar.

I also hope you're right that the Scottish judiciary would throw out the idea of a new case against Fhimah if there wasn't compelling evidence. I don't think that's the case though. Go off and read the Zeist judgements and see what you think. I don't trust these bastards either.

It's also a question of the effect all this has on the suspect. Fhimah is currently reported to be in terror of being re-arrested by the Scottish police, after having been in jail for two years already on remand, 1999-2001. He's cosying up to the Libyan provisional government, hoping that if he's good they won't extradite him.

I don't like people like Mulholland having this power.

Rolfe.

 

[Skepticemea]

14 yrs, 3 months and 15 years, 2 months for Norris and Dobson respectively.

 

[LondonJohn]

14 yrs, 3 months and 15 years, 2 months for Norris and Dobson respectively.

These sentences were never really in any doubt. Norris and Dobson by definition had to be sentenced under rules relating to juveniles, owing to their age at the time of the murder. They will remain on licence indefinitely, and these times are the minimum custodial sentences that each man will serve before even being considered for parole. In my opinion, the notoriety of the crime and the seeming lack of remorse of both men probably means that they are highly unlikely to be released at the end of this minimum period.

The main issue now seems to be whether Dobson might decide to cooperate with police and prosecutors, and "give up" others involved in the murder. And if he does so, would this constitute sufficiently strong new evidence to warrant either first-time trials of certain suspects or retrials (with an exception to double jeopardy needing to be authorised by the Court of Appeal) of suspects who have already been acquitted? My personal view is that simple accusations by Dobson against others would probably be insufficient to bring successful prosecutions against those individuals, unless the accusations could be supported by physical evidence of some sort. We shall see.

 

[Skepticemea]

These sentences were never really in any doubt. Norris and Dobson by definition had to be sentenced under rules relating to juveniles, owing to their age at the time of the murder. They will remain on licence indefinitely, and these times are the minimum custodial sentences that each man will serve before even being considered for parole. In my opinion, the notoriety of the crime and the seeming lack of remorse of both men probably means that they are highly unlikely to be released at the end of this minimum period.

The main issue now seems to be whether Dobson might decide to cooperate with police and prosecutors, and "give up" others involved in the murder. And if he does so, would this constitute sufficiently strong new evidence to warrant either first-time trials of certain suspects or retrials (with an exception to double jeopardy needing to be authorised by the Court of Appeal) of suspects who have already been acquitted? My personal view is that simple accusations by Dobson against others would probably be insufficient to bring successful prosecutions against those individuals, unless the accusations could be supported by physical evidence of some sort. We shall see.

Have to agree. Dick of the Yard has already stated that there are no "live" avenues of investigation open and I'm not sure Dobson "dobbing" either Acourts or Knight in will suffice (esp. considering he now has multiple convictions).

 

[commandlinegamer]

Without physical evidence I can't see it happening either, unless you have a confession from the others alleged to have been there, plus confirmation from the two convicted yesterday.

 

[Rolfe]

It's a long time since this was just about the murder, of course. If the cops had done their job at the beginning, the murdering scum might have been behind bars for the last 15 years.

If any good comes out of this, it's not about jailing anybody, it's about police attitudes and professionalism.

Rolfe.

 

[Soapy Sam]

There is a glimmer of hope there may be some justice for Stephen Lawrence with the arrest of a retired police officer and staff member:



Is it too much to hope for that finally someone can be held accountable?

I've been hearing this phrase "justice for Stephen Lawrence" a lot.
Not sure I understand it.
Stephen Lawrence is dead. We can't do anything for him.

The people who require justice are his killers.
As for those who seem to have repeatedly bungled the investigation, if I write here what I think they merit, I might be banned.

 

[Hubert Cumberdale]

If any good comes out of this, it's not about jailing anybody, it's about police attitudes and professionalism.

Hmmm.... MacPherson. Good did come out of the MacPherson report with regards to the police. Really, the bulk of the report deals with the way the investigation was mishandled.

Its actually quite devastating to read how unprofessional both the first responders and murder investigation team was.

Its also good to note that the MPS currently has an excellent record for investigating murders and its hard to not attribute this in part to MacPherson.

Unfortunately, all most people associate with MacPherson is the phrase "institutional racism" and I cant help but think the commissioner at the time had a point when he said

....if this Inquiry labels my Service as institutionally racist the average police officer, the average member of the public will assume the normal meaning of those words. They will assume a finding of conscious, wilful or deliberate action or inaction to the detriment of ethnic minority Londoners. They will assume the majority of good men and women who come into policing ..... go about their daily lives with racism in their minds and in their endeavour.

Which MacPherson dismissed by saying that the public

..will both understand and accept the distinction we draw between overt individual racism and the pernicious and persistent institutional racism which we have described.

Which is incredibly naive. Obviously the public would and do infer, quite naturally, that the phrase "institutional racism" means that the institution is racist. The public will mostly not infer his own circumscribed, convoluted and heavily caveated version which he'd taken the best part of a chapter to describe.

IMO, the MacPherson report simply serves as official confirmation for those with an agenda to describe the police as racist, and this has caused and continues to cause a great deal of damage to the public perception of the police.

MacPherson warned against this, stating amongst other things that racism was "not the perogative of the police service" and "Nor do we say that in its policies the MPS is racist". Yet again, he was naive in the extreme. The average joe does not care for reading and comprehending 22 chapters of turgid legalese, they care for sounds bites.

And the sound bite says the police are racists.

And that's a shame.

 

[Rolfe]

I thought the point was that he said the police were racist.

Rolfe.

 

[Hubert Cumberdale]

I thought the point was that he said the police were racist.

Rolfe.

After a fashion, Rolfe.

"Institutional racism" does not mean that all or even most or even a significant minority of members of an institution are themselves racist. It also does not mean, as MacPherson explicitly warned, that the institution's policies are racist. In the words of the CRE

Institutional racism has been defined as those established laws, customs, and practices which systematically reflect and produce racial inequalities in society. If racist consequences accrue to institutional laws, customs or practices, the institution is racist whether or not the individuals maintaining those practices have racial intentions

Take from that what you will, but the fact is that "institutional racism" is not the same thing as saying "everyone who does x job is a bigot".

Its also of note that institutional racism is something that supposed to affect "all aspects of the culture and institutions of the whole of British society, and is in no way specific to the police service" Yet its a label that seems only to have stuck to the police.

I maintain my opinion that this labelling has had an overall negative affect on policing over the past 12 years or so, simply because institutional racism is a nebulous, ill-defined and counter-intuitive concept that does not appear to actually mean what it says it means.

 

[Rolfe]

I meant, that he pointed out something that pertained in the past, which one hopes has been addressed and indeed we are told has been addressed.

The attitude to the Lawrence murder, which saw the victims being treated a the instigators of the violence while the real perpetrators escaped, is certainly an illustration of a racist approach to handling the incident.

Rolfe.

 

[LondonJohn]

After a fashion, Rolfe.

"Institutional racism" does not mean that all or even most or even a significant minority of members of an institution are themselves racist. It also does not mean, as MacPherson explicitly warned, that the institution's policies are racist. In the words of the CRE



Take from that what you will, but the fact is that "institutional racism" is not the same thing as saying "everyone who does x job is a bigot".

Its also of note that institutional racism is something that supposed to affect "all aspects of the culture and institutions of the whole of British society, and is in no way specific to the police service" Yet its a label that seems only to have stuck to the police.

I maintain my opinion that this labelling has had an overall negative affect on policing over the past 12 years or so, simply because institutional racism is a nebulous, ill-defined and counter-intuitive concept that does not appear to actually mean what it says it means.

You're not Sir Paul Condon are you.....?

But I agree largely with what you've written, and I agree that Macpherson* was naive and aloof when he coined the now-famous "institutional racism" phrase. Like you, I think that the phrase was doubly damaging, since it was a) misunderstood by most members of the public to mean that the Met was overrun with racist officers, and b) seized upon by those with an agenda to undermine the police.

However, I think that you may have minimised the true intended meaning of the term. "Institutional racism" as it applied to the Met by Macpherson did not absolve the Met - collectively or individually - of underlying latent racist attitudes. Macpherson's intended point was that the policies and day-to-day activities of the Met were framed within a background of often-casual and subliminal racism. Policies such as the now-infamous "stop and search", official intelligence reports which stereotyped large swathes of black youths, documented ways in which officers on the beat and detectives alike dealt with white victims and perpetrators of crime in very different ways from black victims and perpetrators of crime.

All these sorts of things were devised, written, made into policy, enacted, enforced, perpetuated and condoned by officers throughout the Met - from the very top to the very bottom. Nobody ever seemingly stopped to think about what was happening, or to question why things were as they were. That was a massive failing of the Met before 1993, and the ultimate blame must lie at the two most culpable heads of the organisation: Peter Imbert (Met Commissioner from 87-93) and Paul Condon (Met Commissioner from 93-99). The buck stopped with these two gentlemen, and unfortunately they fell down badly on the job.


* As a small point of minor interest, Macpherson for some reason elected to spell his name with no capitalisation of the "p" after the "Mac".....

 

[Hubert Cumberdale]

I meant, that he pointed out something that pertained in the past, which one hopes has been addressed and indeed we are told has been addressed.

Really? Where does he say that its in the past? It may be in the process of being addressed but I'd be curious to know which institution claims officially to have addressed the problem.

The attitude to the Lawrence murder, which saw the victims being treated a the instigators of the violence while the real perpetrators escaped, is certainly an illustration of a racist approach to handling the incident.

Do you mean Duwayne Brooks? Ok, but which officer in particular was racist? MacPherson fails to identify any conscious and overt racism in the way he was dealt with but does indicate that his treatment "must reflect unwitting and collective racism" despite not being able to identify any particular officer as being guilty of actual bigotry. Hence the charge of institutional racism.

In fact, throughout the whole inquiry, no officer is positively identified as being overtly and consciously a racist bigot. Which is kind of the crux of the matter. No individual is bad, yet the organisation as a whole is bad. This is indeed a difficult concept to digest.

The fact that its a difficult concept helps to explain why it has only stuck to the police, who are easy to (incorrectly) label as bigots, but it gets a bit harder for the public psyche to attach this label to nurses and firemen and civil servants.

 

[LondonJohn]

I meant, that he pointed out something that pertained in the past, which one hopes has been addressed and indeed we are told has been addressed.

The attitude to the Lawrence murder, which saw the victims being treated a the instigators of the violence while the real perpetrators escaped, is certainly an illustration of a racist approach to handling the incident.

Rolfe.

No, the Macpherson Report, which was published in 1999, concluded not only that the Met had exhibited elements of latent and overt racism in the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation, but also that the Met was still "institutionally racist" as of the time of publication of the report in 1999.

Macpherson essentially had a dual remit: to examine specific police actions and potential failings in the Lawrence investigation, and to conduct a wider examination of the possible impact of racism within the Met. His report was unequivocal in its conclusion on the second point: there was a problem within the Met that had not only existed in 1993, but which also existed - possibly to an ever greater extent - at the time of the report's publication in 1999. Moreover, the report contained a large number of concrete recommendations for addressing, tackling and remedying what Macpherson defined as "institutional racism" - recommendations that would have been moot or unnecessary if the Met had already reformed itself by the time of his report.

It's fair to say, however, that Sir John Stevens (Met Commissioner from 2000 to 2005) initiated and oversaw huge reforms in the way the Met assiduously tried to eliminate all elements of racism in its policies and practices. Stevens realised all too well that not only was there a genuine problem of racism within the force, but that public perception of this problem (fuelled by the official imprimateur that the Macpherson Report had given it) could have been fatal to the authority of the Met in London. He realised it was therefore vital for the Met to reform, and to be seen to reform. To his credit, he and his team largely succeeded in that task.

 

[Rolfe]

Really? Where does he say that its in the past? It may be in the process of being addressed but I'd be curious to know which institution claims officially to have addressed the problem.

Macpherson was writing in 1999. In case you hadn't noticed, that is 13 years ago. When he was writing about it, it was the present. Now, in 2012, it is the past.

Is that clear enough?

Rolfe.

 

[LondonJohn]

Macpherson was writing in 1999. In case you hadn't noticed, that is 13 years ago. When he was writing about it, it was the present. Now, in 2012, it is the past.

Is that clear enough?

Rolfe.

Ah I think I too was guilty of slightly misinterpreting your original post! It wasn't a huge stretch to infer that you were arguing that Macpherson's report stated that the police had been institutionally racist in 1993, but that this was no longer the case in 1999 when the report was written. Apologies for my partial "correction" of something you hadn't asserted! (Although I did cover myself by referring to the work done under Stevens after the publication of the report )

 

[Rolfe]

I don't know of any strong evidence that things improved before the publication of Macpherson.

Rolfe.

 

[LondonJohn]

I don't know of any strong evidence that things improved before the publication of Macpherson.

Rolfe.

I don't think they did - in fact, I think there's evidence that things deteriorated further between 1993 and 1999.

 

[LondonJohn]

Do you mean Duwayne Brooks? Ok, but which officer in particular was racist? MacPherson fails to identify any conscious and overt racism in the way he was dealt with but does indicate that his treatment "must reflect unwitting and collective racism" despite not being able to identify any particular officer as being guilty of actual bigotry. Hence the charge of institutional racism.

In fact, throughout the whole inquiry, no officer is positively identified as being overtly and consciously a racist bigot. Which is kind of the crux of the matter. No individual is bad, yet the organisation as a whole is bad. This is indeed a difficult concept to digest.

While what you write here is true, there are legal and political reasons why Macpherson's report could not make direct accusations against either individual officers or teams within the Met. However, the massively strong implication from the report is that the murder squad investigating the case started with at least a partial assumption that Lawrence and Brooks had either provoked the attack, or even that they had instigated the violence. There was also a strong suggestion that the police believed this murder to be "black on black" gang-related violence, and that as such they might have had an attitude of "let them all kill each other - it makes our lives easier and makes the community safer".