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26 Apr 02 - 05:54 AM (#698965) Subject: Damilola Taylor From: Fiolar British justice triumphs once again. All four defendants in the Damilola Taylor murder trial are now free. The verdict on the last two was reached yesterday when the jury found them not guilty on all counts. I shall now sleep easier in my bed knowing that the poor "angels" will not finish up in clink like the Birmingham Six or the Guildford Four. |
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26 Apr 02 - 06:22 AM (#698975) Subject: RE: BS: Damilola Taylor From: McGrath of Harlow I wasn't on the jury, listening to the evidence over the last few weeks, and nor was Fiolar. If they thought that on the evidence there was not enough evidence to convict, the jury had no choice but to acquit the accused boys.
It's an imperfect world. Innocent people sometimes get convicted, guilty people sometines don't. The most important thing is to find ways of stopping crimes happening, punishing them after they happen is very much second best. |
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26 Apr 02 - 06:37 AM (#698981) Subject: RE: BS: Damilola Taylor From: Skipjack K8 To yet again paraphrase George Burns, too bad all the people who know how to sort the country out are too busy cutting hair, driving taxis and prefacing red-neck threads on a music discussion website with the word Bullshit. Skipjack |
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26 Apr 02 - 09:16 AM (#699041) Subject: RE: BS: Damilola Taylor From: GUEST,Strollin' Johnny Right on the button Skipjack. SJ |
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26 Apr 02 - 09:47 AM (#699061) Subject: RE: BS: Damilola Taylor From: Skipjack K8 Sorry, Fiolar, fired that off like a red-neck myself. Always think better further down the space/time continuum. My father has written thousands of letters, slept on them, and torn them up, and it is an example I try and follow. Not this time, huh? Pax? Skipjack |
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26 Apr 02 - 10:58 AM (#699099) Subject: RE: BS: Damilola Taylor From: Morticia You may want to aim a little spare vitriol at the UK media who put appalling temptation one childs way by offering fifty thousand pounds as a reward for "bringing his killers to justice"....or the fact that they would have crucified the CPS if they hadn't brought the case to court irrespective of the weakness of evidence ( and chief witness). |
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26 Apr 02 - 01:00 PM (#699164) Subject: RE: BS: Damilola Taylor From: Mrs.Duck Everyone wants to see the killers brought to justice but we must accept that the evidence against the two boys was not sufficient to find them guilty. Just because they may be the 'sort' of people that might have committed such an act does not mean they did! Evidence put both boys about two miles from the scene at the time of Damilola's death. Perhaps the crime will never be solved but assuming that these two have 'got away with it' could prejudice attempts to find the actual guilty ones. |
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26 Apr 02 - 03:19 PM (#699243) Subject: RE: BS: Damilola Taylor From: Manitas_at_home Evidence put the boys a lot closer than that but for some reason the judge refused that evidence. |
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26 Apr 02 - 06:10 PM (#699322) Subject: RE: BS: Damilola Taylor From: pavane According to the evening paper, a reporter got from one place to the other, only a mile and a third, in 6 and a half minutes, which demolishes the alibi. But he took a short cut, not the panda car route. |
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26 Apr 02 - 06:56 PM (#699338) Subject: RE: BS: Damilola Taylor From: McGrath of Harlow Well people are always saying the police these days never get out of their cars and walk.
It appears that in this case they don't seem to have realised that there's a short cut across the park which cuts the distance very considerably, from 1.8 miles to 1.3 miles.
Every non-police detective in fiction from Sherlock Holmes on seems to have run up against police investigators who make mistakes like that. But on top of that to have a team of high powered lawyers who apparently couldn't even read a map... |
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26 Apr 02 - 09:09 PM (#699355) Subject: RE: BS: Damilola Taylor From: Peter K (Fionn) Fiolar, is the point of your sarcasm that you wanted these defendants jailed "like the Birmingham six and the Guildford four" - that is, jailed when innocent? I've just been attending a case in the court of appeal of a man wrongly (as I believe) hanged 40 years ago this month. My guess is that his conviction will be revoked, as should have happened many years ago. So too little, too late, but still a small step in the right direction. Likewise in the cases of Stefan Kiczkow, the Maguires, Stephen Downing, and many others. Always too little, too late. But in most countries on this planet miscarriages of justice are never acknowledged. At least the UK, like most European countries, has jettisoned the death penalty, so that all those people I mentioned above (and the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four) did live to see their names cleared. Obviously it's better by far that where a case cannot be proved, no-one should be convicted in the first place. To that extent the Damilola trial was indeed a triumph for UK justice. If that pisses off people of Fiolar's mentality, too bad. It was only because of pressure from that kind of mentality (as evidenced in the tabloid press) that such a hopeless case got into court at all. |
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27 Apr 02 - 05:20 AM (#699397) Subject: RE: BS: Damilola Taylor From: Fiolar Fionn: Recognise sarcasm when you see it.Regarding the case of the man who was hanged 40 years ago, I presume you mean James Hanratty? I am familiar with that case as I worked in Bedfordshire when the case was on and sad to say, his brother later spent some time in psychiatric care. The Hanratty case was I agree most certainly a miscarriage of justice. It was a case of finding a culprit come hell or highwater. My feelings in the Damilola case is that the prosecution case failed because of its weakness. As mentioned above the distance from the scene was never really investigated. The prosecution's chief witness may or may not have been lying, but as a young teenager stood little chance against skilled defence lawyers. More power to them, their job was to defend their clients but anyone who has been savaged by defence/prosecution lawyers in court will feel a certain amount of sympathy for her. The people I feel sorry for are the parents who now have to live with the fact that their son's death will most probably never be fully solved. |
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27 Apr 02 - 07:13 AM (#699407) Subject: RE: BS: Damilola Taylor From: Peter K (Fionn) The sarcasm was the problem Fiolar. I would have agreed with all your first post if parts of it had not been intended sarcastically. Your last post I agree with entirely, for although I am glad those brothers were acquitted (and believe they were innocent, or at least innocent of the Damilola charges) I do accept that witnesses need to have some kind of assurance that they will be treated decently - otherwise even fewer will come forward. Incidentally, those who favour capital punishment in the belief that guilt can sometimes be proved beyond all doubt may care to reflect that if the Hanratty verdict is overturned, it will be overturned in the face of forensic evidence (DNA samples) that would seem to prove his guilt. My own experience of the law is that where a defendant pleads not guilty, it is nearly impossible to prove otherwise. Where guilt continues to be denied for years afterwards, that person is invariably is innocent. Most of us, me included, are too predisposed to assume that all crimes are solvable. Many crimes are not, and no-one has failed when the guilty go undetected in such cases. |
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27 Apr 02 - 02:10 PM (#699456) Subject: RE: BS: Damilola Taylor From: McGrath of Harlow Noone ever gets found innocent. Not having been found guilty means that the presumption that you are innocent with which you start remains.
I remember at the time of the OJ Simpson criminal trial there was a lot of criticism of a juror for saying that she thought he was "probably guilty", but still she voted to acquit him. People suggested there was some contradiction in that. But thinking someone is "probably guilty" isn't strong enough to justify convicting them, because "probably" means there's still room for a reasonable doubt. |