Miscarriages of justice when found not guilty

As this thread is about not-guilty verdicts I'm not sure what relevance that observation has.
 
Rolfe said:
As this thread is about not-guilty verdicts I'm not sure what relevance that observation has.
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There was a strange verdict in Dubai when that bloke was convicted and imprisoned for supposedly touching the hip of somebody at a bar. There have been rumours of strange verdicts in Israel recently, but I suppose it might be difficult to find an impartial judge there.
 
There seems to be problems with the administration of justice in Egypt. An Egyptian woman has just been jailed for advocating pre-marital sex. A British woman has just been jailed for bringing medicines into the country. I don't know what happens when they are found not guilty, but it's obviously unfair.
 
Henri McPhee said:
There was a strange verdict in Dubai when that bloke was convicted and imprisoned for supposedly touching the hip of somebody at a bar. There have been rumours of strange verdicts in Israel recently, but I suppose it might be difficult to find an impartial judge there.
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I heard a lot about that on the radio, where people who have lived there and journalists with knowledge of the country all agreed, the police and courts do not bother with evidence. Instead it is the opinion of witnesses that counts. The man at the bar who was touched was accepted as telling the truth, the accused admitted touching but said he had an excuse, which was dismissed and he was found guilty.

Then, if a witness is a local and the accused is foreign, the accused is assumed guilty.

That part reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend who helped with the influx of refugees to Scotland a few years back. Many ended up in Glasgow, in Sighthill. There was a lot of controversy and friction with locals. My friend was part of a survey of the immigrants to see what could be done to improve the situation. To his surprise the police came out top as the group the immigrants were most happy with. That was because if they made a complaint about a local, they were believed and the local was arrested. They had expected to be the ones to be arrested, no matter what the evidence.
 
In several of these miscarriage of justice cases when found not guilty the victims who have been wrongly convicted and imprisoned end up being paid a million dollars in compensation. It's a waste of money and bad police work.
 
But this thread is not about people who were actually convicted, it's about the seriously bad consequences that can result for people despite them being found NOT GUILTY.

Why is it so hard to read the title of the thread?
 
Exactly, the whole process of being accused of a crime can destroy a persons life, or at least put it on a temporary hold, which can be years waiting for a trial. That a verdict of not guilty is considered to be a successful result, when it is shown during the trial that the person should never have been accused in the first place, is wrong. Turning to some one who has endured 2 years of hell and claiming a not guilt verdict is justice, when it has been shown they were innocent from the begining and only accused because of a deeply flawed police enquiry, is wrong.

I am arguing that there are far more miscarriages of justice than is accepted by the police and legal system, because they ignore not guilty verdicts.
 
Rolfe said:
But this thread is not about people who were actually convicted, it's about the seriously bad consequences that can result for people despite them being found NOT GUILTY.

Why is it so hard to read the title of the thread?
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That article from the Daily Mirror is on topic <snip>. It was a case where a man spent several years in prison for rape when it was later proved by DNA that it was done by a man who had murdered several young woman. It's lack of vision.

Edited by TubbaBlubba: 
Rule 12/0. Be civil and polite, and adress the argument, not the arguer.
 
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Henri McPhee said:
That article from the Daily Mirror is on topic <snip>. It was a case where a man spent several years in prison for rape when it was later proved by DNA that it was done by a man who had murdered several young woman. It's lack of vision.
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He was found GUILTY and sent to prison. This thread is about those who have been found NOT GUILTY, but were accused when they should never have been and how that is also a miscarriage of justice.
 
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Nessie said:
He was found GUILTY and sent to prison. This thread is about those who have been found NOT GUILTY, but were accused when they should never have been and how that is also a miscarriage of justice.
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You are misinformed. From the internet:

When Romano van der Dussen was finally released from a jail in Palma de Mallorca on February 11 after spending 12 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit, he was greeted by a horde of reporters eager to hear his story. Few there that day noticed a woman standing patiently to one side, waiting until the 42-year-old Dutchman had finished talking to the journalists.
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Henri McPhee said:
You are misinformed. From the internet:
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He spent 12 years behind bars without having been tried and found guilty by a court! I had no idea the Spanish imprisoned people without due legal process.

So how come Spain is in the EU and ECHR? Has no one spotted they send people to prison without going to a trial?
 
Nessie said:
I had no idea the Spanish imprisoned people without due legal process.
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There's a risk of going off topic here, but are you sure about that? (Actually maybe it's not off topic because it's fairly likely the Catalan politicians will never be convicted of anything.)
 
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Frank Esposito arson case and false confessions

I have mentioned the Frank Esposito arson case in New York previously, but I don't think I provided any links. He gave a false confession, but cell phone evidence put him elsewhere at the time IIRC. He was found not guilty, but the law firm that defended him had to forgive much of the cost of the defense.
 
This is interesting and makes for very concerning reading;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...er-a-not-guilty-plea-hits-seven-year-low.html

It goes back to 2008 and for E&W, but "Overall 17,184 people out of the 28,391 people who pleaded not guilty in the crown court were acquitted last year.". Scottish government figures had the conviction rate for all crimes in that year as 89%.

This is where more questions need to be asked about evidencing standards;

" The Tories said they were concerned that police forces, who have been pressured by the Home Office to hit targets, may not be carrying out investigations thoroughly enough before cases came to court.
Henry Bellingham MP, the shadow justice minister, said: "I am concerned that there is a trend in terms of conviction rates for not guilty pleas.
"I plan to ask the justice department whether police are coming under pressure with the Crown Prosecution Service to bring prosecutions too quickly or if there is not enough evidence at the start."
 
This is a miscarriage of justice where the suspect should be compensated and the police involved charged with a criminal offence;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-42365521

"The Met Police is to hold an "urgent" review of a rape case after being accused of failing to disclose vital evidence.
Liam Allan, 22, was charged with 12 counts of rape and sexual assault but his trial collapsed after police were ordered to hand over phone records.
A computer disk containing 40,000 messages revealed the alleged victim pestered Mr Allen for "casual sex".
Prosecution barrister Jerry Hayes accused police of "pure incompetence".
The charges against the criminology student were dropped three days into the trial at Croydon Crown Court when Mr Hayes took over the case.
It is understood police had looked at thousands of phone messages when reviewing evidence in the case, but had failed to disclose to the prosecution and defence teams messages between the complainant and her friends which cast doubt on the allegations against Mr Allan."

It should be treated as an attempt to pervert the course of justice for failing to disclose evidence that clearly relates to the accusation, by hiding exculpatory evidence. The officers involved should be charged and brought to trial. The Met should compensate the accused.

Instances like that are miscarraiges of justice as much as if the accused had been found guilty.
 
More on this shocking story, which I think deserves far more attention than it is getting;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-42366629

From the accused

""There was no possible real gain from it other than destroying somebody else's life... It's something I will never be able to forgive or forget."
But he said he wanted to use his experience "to change the system".
"This wasn't a case of people trying to prove my innocence, it was a case of people trying to prove I was guilty," Mr Allan said."

Police officers clearly do not understand the presumption of innocence, think it is OK to set someone up to try and get a conviction and that culture is ingrained.
 
Discovery

Nessie,

That's a great addition to this thread. One wonders why the records were not released earlier, but it points to the importance of discovery. IMO open discovery should be as much a part of due process as the right to cross examine witnesses.
 
The case is being widely discussed world wide I think. It is one of those that may engineer change. It seems the English are slightly better than average at dealing with their mistakes, and that prosecutor is a good man. I wonder why he should be the exception though. It should be routine for prosecutors to change sides when confronted with evidence like this. Never in New Zealand have I seen it, though that does not mean it hasn't happened. Does anyone know of a similar situation?
 
It is cases like that why I started a thread on how I think the police should be recruited, trained and organised.

There is clearly still a culture of not disclosing evidence which is exculpatory, as the police are out to get a detection and the CPS are out to get a prosecution. If the police were only evidence gatherers and it was the CPS (or COPFS in Scotland) who have a system for deciding where there is sufficient credible evidence to charge, then miscarriages of justice like this case would be rarer.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
Nessie,

That's a great addition to this thread. One wonders why the records were not released earlier, but it points to the importance of discovery. IMO open discovery should be as much a part of due process as the right to cross examine witnesses.
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In Scotland the police and COPFS should comply with the Lord Advocates Code of Practice re disclosure (S614 CJ&LA 2010). But hardly any cops have been trained in the process. So enquiries that should have been undertaken are ignored and evidence is not disclosed.
 
What are they doing with that lovely facility at Tulliallan then, if they're not training cops?
 
Rolfe said:
What are they doing with that lovely facility at Tulliallan then, if they're not training cops?
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They do train about disclosure and exculpatory evidence at Tulliallan and then those brand new cops go out and work with tutors and senior cops who have no idea about either. Guess who decides what evidence goes into the police report.

The worst offenders are the senior police who run CID and the grizzled old detectives who have "degrees in the university of life", "common sense" and whose culture it is to get a detection, no matter what it takes.

Only about 2% of Scottish Police officers have been trained to review cases to ensure they comply with the Lord Advocates Code of Practice on disclosure.
 
Oh dear. There was some very serious non-disclosure in the Lockerbie case, which they tried to portray as inadvertent (14,000 documents and so on) but which I rather suspect - on the basis of its exculpatory potential - was deliberate.

Do you think that as the younger, properly trained cops move up the ranks they'll be in a position to implement what they were trained to do or will they just forget all about it?
 
Rolfe said:
Oh dear. There was some very serious non-disclosure in the Lockerbie case, which they tried to portray as inadvertent (14,000 documents and so on) but which I rather suspect - on the basis of its exculpatory potential - was deliberate.

Do you think that as the younger, properly trained cops move up the ranks they'll be in a position to implement what they were trained to do or will they just forget all about it?
Click to expand...

I think that only when a Chief Constable is in place, who looks for quality rather than targets, who emphasises evidence gathering as much as getting detections and who disciplines cops for failing to follow disclosure procedure, then the culture will remain.

A big problem is that there is a bulge of cops with about 7-9 years service (the first are beign promoted) who came in under the recruitment drive by the SNP. Many were not suitable to be police officers (Tulliallan had all sorts of issues with recruit's behaviour and attitudes, it was in lock down with curfews and all sorts for months on end). One college Inspector told me that they had advised out of about 120 recruits on one course, around half were not up to the job. The course I was on was cancelled for a day because all the staff had been up during the night dealing with yet another incident. But all were kept on. They were not taught about disclosure.

Add that to the existing culture and any newer cops will just get swallowed up.
 
There is another part to disclosure that is never discussed.

Disclosure is not just about revealing evidence gathered, it is also about ensuring all reasonable lines of enquiry are made to gather the evidence in the first place. Otherwise, there is a loophole of not bothering to make an enquiry which looks like it could reveal exculpatory evidence. You cant disclose what has not been gathered as evidence.

An example of that is not bothering to interview the suspect to get their version of events. The attitude of the police was potential alibis and exculpatory evidence were for the defence to present if it goes to trial and counter charges are avoided, as both sides of the story were not revealed.

That was heavily resisted by the police when it was introduced for domestic incidents. So many domestics were not being properly evidenced, so it was realised all had to be investigated to a set standard where all enquiries were made, whether or not they appeared needed or not. The police hated the extra burden of work.

The culture was/is, it is the police job to find evidence to prove guilt, it is the accused and defence job to gather evidence to prove innocence.
 
Here we go again, #SNPbad. Government seeks to increase police numbers and the people who are recruiting make a bad job of choosing the right candidates. What do you want, for the cabinet ministers to interview all of the applicants personally?

Don't you want more police officers? Why not blame the people in charge of the recruitment process?
 
Rolfe said:
Here we go again, #SNPbad. Government seeks to increase police numbers and the people who are recruiting make a bad job of choosing the right candidates. What do you want, for the cabinet ministers to interview all of the applicants personally?

Don't you want more police officers? Why not blame the people in charge of the recruitment process?
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The fault lies entirely with the police. I have no problem with the SNP increasing police numbers. I do not see where I even suggested otherwise.
 
Nessie said:
The fault lies entirely with the police. I have no problem with the SNP increasing police numbers. I do not see where I even suggested otherwise.
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OK, perhaps I'm being too sensitive. We have media which would criticise the SNP delivering a cure for cancer as throwing doctors out of work. Witness the recent feeding frenzy over the entirely anticipated, scheduled snagging for the new bridge.

It's a shame if the increased police recruitment numbers led to poor training. I've stayed at Tulliallan a few times and it seems to be a great facility and surely conducive to positive learning. A great pity if that's not happening.
 
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The training is very good, the issue was some of the recruits. What should have happened was that the police went back to the government and said, sorry, we cannot recruit enough quality candidates by the time set, can we have more time? But the culture under Stephen House was meet targets, not matter what.

To meet targets the law was often ignored, which is why many innocent people got arrested for domestic crimes where there was insufficient credible evidence. The management did not care, so long as their target was met.
 
Hubert Cumberdale said:
Does PACE not apply north of the border?
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That Act does not apply, but many of its provisions do. The big differences are;

1 - in Scotland there is no right to a phone call. Instead the police will contact a named person and all they will say is that so and so is arrested/detained, why and if they are going to be kept in cutdy for court or not.

2 - the police cannot bail anyone in Scotland, the court does that. So accused persons have to be kept in custody and sent to court for them to decide on bail and any conditions.
 
This is an example of what the thread is about. Band members of the Polish death metal group Decapitated, are accused of the kidnap and raping a girl after a concert in the USA in August 2017;

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/jan/04/spokane-county-drops-rape-charges-against-all-memb/#/0

"But on Friday – 11 days before the Jan. 16 trial date – Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor Kelly Fitzgerald filed a motion dropping all rape and kidnapping charges..."

It has been pointed out that the case involved multiple witnesses and so 5 months the Poles spent as accused, stuck in jail and then on bail in the USA is maybe not unreasonable. The issue that raises concerns for me is the prosecutor's reasoning for dropping the case;

"The motion cites “the well being of the victim” and “in the interest of justice” as a reason for dismissal.
“This has been traumatizing to her,” Fitzgerald said of the accuser. “It’s obviously something that is a multiple defender case, and it would be a lengthy trial.”
Fitzgerald said while the state has a responsibility to the community in prosecuting crimes, in special assault cases they also have to be cognizant of victims, in this case a young woman.
“We’ve discussed with her and her advocates and feel at this time it’s best for her to heal,” she said."

They claim they have dropped the case because they are worried about the girls well being. The prosecutor ahs also reserved the right to restart the case. But, evidencially, the case was looking increasingly weak;

"Two weeks ago, Graham said “new evidence” came to light that “seriously cast doubt” over the state’s case, which consisted largely of testimony from two women who told police they were kidnapped and held against their will on the band’s tour bus after the show. One of the women was able to escape while her friend was forced to stay on the bus, according to the women’s accounts."

As to the alleged victim's claims

"In 2014, she admitted to lying to police about injuries sustained during an assault, when her boyfriend was accused of stabbing three people. She was injured by her boyfriend during a previous argument, police determined."

As for the alleged victim's injuries;

"Later at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center, police noted “significant bruising to her upper arms consistent with being restrained” and “small abrasions to her knuckles that were scabbed over.”
...
“We subpoenaed the list of concert attendees and found numerous people who say that she was in the front row of the mosh pit and was climbing up on stage, and getting jostled about as much as anyone else there,” he said. “There’s no question from our perspective that the case against these four guys was falling apart.”

I attend such concerts and whilst I have never crowed surfed or entered the mosh pit, it often involves mock fighting and grabbing the arms to swing or lift them to surf. People who go over the top are restrained by others. No one wants to get hurt. It looks chaos, but there is an organisation to it. As for the other main witness;

"The victim’s friend was pulled over later that night and cited with a DUI. While in the back of the patrol car, she told the officer her friend was being assaulted, but without a specific location the officer was unable to help."

This looks like a flawed investigation by the prosecution, who is trying to save face and is suggesting there is evidence to reopen the case. But that saving of face means those Poles will forever be suspect rapists who could face a trial.
 
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