There goes domino number four...

By which, of course, I mean that former MP Jim Devine has become the fourth parliamentarian to be convicted following the expenses scandal exposed during the final few months of the last parliament.

He may consider himself fortunate if he doesn't follow his former colleagues David Chaytor and Eric Illsley through the prison gates when he returns to court to be sentenced.

And still the pulses run quicker in the Morley and Haddingfield houses...

Lord Taylor convicted: the third domino falls...

Given the nature of the evidence which emerged during the trial of Lord Taylor of Warwick, I am not at all surprised to see him convicted of six counts of false accounting in relation to what are now unarguably bogus expenses claims.

Indeed, given his extraordinary admissions (remember, Lord Taylor is a fully qualified barrister who specialised in the criminal law) that he claimed a total of £11,000 in lieu of a salary which members of the upper house are not entitled to, because 'that's what everyone was doing, so I thought it was all right', the only aspect of his conviction which raises my eyebrows is that he was only convicted on a majority of eleven to one.

I fear the noble lord would now be well advised to buy himself a new toothbrush before he returns to court to be sentenced, as a custodial sentence may now be all but inevitable. At this rate, Kenneth Clarke may have to consider building a new prison simply to hold convicted parliamentarians.

He could call it H(MPs) Graft.

And still the pulses run quicker in the Morley, Devine and Haddingfield homesteads...

Ex-PC Mark Kennedy courts the press...

Whatever your views about the rights and wrongs of using 'undercover' police officers to infiltrate environmentalist groups bent on 'direct action' (and for what it's worth I would be very disappointed in them if they weren't), you may agree with me when I observe that for a man supposedly living 'in fear of his life' after he was exposed as such an officer, Mark Kennedy has hardly acted as he might have been expected to if his fear was genuine.

On what do I base that assertion?

Well call me old-fashioned, but agreeing to have your photograph taken (after transforming your appearance back to what most people would refer to as 'normal') and printed in a national Sunday newspaper is hardly the action of a man fearful of an imminent lethal attack, is it?

Either that, or he's an imbecile.

And by the way; has anyone else noticed his rather startling resemblance to the late Marty Feldman?

Eric Illsley MP: The second domino falls...

So, the second of those former and in this case present, parliamentarians to be charged with fraudulently obtaining thousands of pounds in so-called 'expenses' from the taxpayer has acknowledged his serial dishonesty by pleading guilty to obtaining a total of £14,500 he was simply not entitled to.

I was going to say that he had admitted stealing it; but it's actually worse than that. Theft can be - and frequently is - an opportunist crime, committed by those presented with a spur-of-the moment chance to take something which doesn't belong to them.

But Eric Illsley like David Chaytor before him engaged in a sophisticated and protracted campaign of dishonesty and deceit in order to 'steal' that money; and in that sense, his offences are far more serious than simple opportunistic theft, particularly as he is still a serving Member of Parliament and therefore in a position of huge trust and responsibility.

I will not speculate here as to the potential sentence he faces on returning to court in a month's time, but if I was him, I wouldn't be making any holiday plans this year.

And as a corollary, I suspect that with this news, pulses in the Morley, Devine and Haddingfield houses continue to quicken whilst their rabbits' noses simultaneously twitch all the more urgently...

One down, three to go...

If you were ever in any doubt as to why David Chaytor and his fellow former MPs strove quite so long and hard - as far as the hideously renamed Supreme Court - to have the criminal charges against them for fiddling their expenses on a heroic scale quashed on the basis that they were a breach of parliamentary privilege, I suspect that the scales may have fallen from your eyes today, when Chaytor pleaded guilty to three counts of False Accounting at the Old Bailey.

This was after the ritual speech early in the process in which he expressed his determination to prove his innocence of what were charges based on misunderstandings and misinterpretation of simple, honest mistakes.

So he's not just a thief, but a liar, too. Surprise, surprise.

I wonder what the other three are thinking tonight...

The Kinsella campaign...

It would be difficult to disagree with Brooke Kinsella's personal campaign to reduce the number of killings on our streets; a campaign she launched following the murder of her brother, who was knifed to death two years ago

Whilst obviously sympathising with her grievous loss, I have to ask whether the manner in which a victim is murdered automatically renders the offence more or less serious.

If, for instance, stabbing someone to death - possibly with only a single blow to the chest or abdomen - renders the offender liable to life imprisonment with a minimum term of twenty-five years', why does the act of repeatedly kicking and stamping on their victim's head until he, or increasingly she, dies render that offender liable to a minimum tariff of only fifteen years?

Forgive the bluntness of my point, but aren't both victims equally dead, and aren't both their families equally shockingly bereaved? So why the disparity in the minimum tariffs for their perpetrators?

Could Bamber be innocent after all?

As something of a student of these things, I have to say that, irresepective of my now oft-repeated support for the presumption of innocence, I had always thought that the jury in the Jeremy Bamber trial got the verdict right, even if it was by the tightest possible margin of 10 - 2.

However, this article in today's Daily Telegraph gives me cause to reconsider that position.

If, as it would appear, Bamber's father telephoned the police on the night of the murders, suggesting that his daughter had gone 'berserk' and stolen one of his guns, it throws a second call, made to the police ten minutes later by Jeremy Bamber himself, into even sharper focus than before.

Because in that call, Jeremy Bamber told police that he had just spoken to his father, and went on to recount an almost identical account to that allegedly contained in the newly-uncovered call made by his father.

As the article goes on to say, the legitimacy or otherwise of that call was to play a vital role in the jury's deliberations, as the judge himself described the matter as pivotal to the case.

Unfortunately, the jury were not made aware of either the existence, or the content of the earlier alleged call from Bamber's father, a call which on any reading of the facts of this troubling case, would have strengthened his son's defence immeasurably if its contents are as they have been reported.

All that said, there is still an amount of evidence which points to Jeremy Bamber's guilt: his mention of the potential inheritance of £426,000 were all his relatives to perish, the existence of certain forensic evidence linking him to the murder weapon and the alleged discussion with a former girlfriend of the possibilty of hiring a hit-man to kill them, to name but three of the most compelling.

But that is to avoid a fundamental issue.

The jury responsible for convicting him - by the thinnest of margins, remember - were never told of the existence of the newly reported phone call from Bamber's father; a call which if it, at the risk of sounding repetetive, actually happened and was as has been reported, undoubtedly lends credibility to Bamber's account that his father had in fact phoned him; an issue described, remember, as one about which the entire case turned.

I see that the case is back with the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Good.

If this evidence actually exists, it has the capacity to cast doubt on the safety of Bamber's conviction and the matter ought to be brought back before the Court of Appeal as quickly as it can be.

Bamber might just be innocent, and if this new evidence is credible, a new jury in possession of all the facts, must be allowed to consider that possibility.

Credit for early guilty pleas...

I fail to see how anyone, other than those who stand to lose out financially, (of whom more in due course), could disagree with Lord Justice Leveson when he suggests that suspects who admit their guilt at the earliest opportunity - i.e. whilst being interviewed at a police station - should receive a more significant discount on their eventual sentence than those who admit their guilt later in the process.

Doesn't such an admission at least suggest a degree of genuine contrition on behalf of the offender, rather than the confected version put forward on their behalf by a lawyer who has convinced his client to plead guilty because of the overwhelming weight of the evidence against him (or her)?

And shouldn't that genuine contrition, or remorse; whatever you want to call it, be rewarded in a real and tangible fashion?

I think that it most certainly should.

But then, as the article goes on to say, there are other eminent voices, such as Paul Mendelle QC, the Chairman of the Bar Council, who are vehemently opposed to the very idea.

Call me cynical, but I suspect that there may be just the slightest hint of self interest lying behind his remarks; because more early guilty pleas and fewer Crown Court trials would mean less business (money, to be vulgar) for him and his colleagues at the Bar.

And that aside, remember this: in the vast majority of cases, those under arrest on suspicion of committing a crime know full well whether they are guilty or not when they are sitting in the interview room and it is disingenuous in the extreme to pretend otherwise.

For those who are genuinely innocent of the accusation they face, or for those tiny few who simply cannot remember whether they are or not, due process of law, backed up by the all-important presumption of innocence is there to protect them.

I can't see a downside to this.

There again, I'm not a defence lawyer with one eye on a potentially shrinking practise...

Two very lucky men and other knuckle-draggers...

I'm endebted to my local paper, the Lancashire Telegraph, for this story concerning the conviction of two men, cousins Azeem and Tabassum Shah from Nelson, for abducting three tipsy fourteen and fifteen year-old-girls, who they drove to a hotel twenty miles from their home town.

A further charge of 'engaging in sexual activity' with one of the girls against Azeem Shah was allowed to lie on the file.

Interesting expression, that; here's what it actually means, according to the CJS online database:
An offence not admitted to by a defendant may be allowed to lie on file if the
judge agrees that there is sufficient evidence, but it is not in the public interest to
have a trial, as the defendant has admitted other offences, and a further
conviction would make a difference to the sentence.

As you will have read, neither man was jailed, irrespective of the fact that the maximum penalty for child abduction - for that is what these girls were, vulnerable children - is seven years' imprisonment.

Bearing in mind the 'qualifying' criteria for an offence to lie on the file, are we to understand that HHJ Newell would not have jailed Azeem Shah on conviction for 'engaging in sexual activity', whatever that euphemism means, with one of them?

The comments attached to the Telegraph's story are highly critical of the lenient sentences these men received, probably because they strongly suspect that the only reason these two men - one of whom is a married father of two children, for goodness' sake - took the girls to that hotel twenty miles from their homes on an August evening because, in that charmingly innocent, but simultaneously damning phrase, they intended to 'engage in sexual activity' with them.

I think that the Shahs can count themselves very lucky indeed not to be in jail tonight, and if I were involved in conducting this prosecution, I would be busily preparing my appeal against this unduly lenient sentence even as I type.

But to conclude, irresepective of the fact that I think Judge Newell got this sentencing exercise quite badly wrong, too many of those condemning him for his leniency in the comments section lapse into nakedly racist language in doing so.

Shame on them; (if they are familiar with the concept) because not only do they reveal their ignorance, they also serve to undermine the very cause they are purporting to support, because anyone with a modicum of decency will simply ignore their rantings as the howling of knuckle dragging imbeciles.

Ali Dizaei: the high-stakes 'game' is afoot...

The 'game of high stakes' I wrote about here is now most definitely afoot.

I await developments in the case with interest...

The English 'Columbine' Two...

Regular visitors to the Throne will recall that I yield to no man in the strength of my support for the presumption of innocence in respect of those charged with criminal offences. For newer, or more occasional visitors, I have written of my support for the concept in cases as diverse as the recent Gerrard ‘affray’ case, of which of course, he was famously acquitted, the Ali Dizaei case and the potential charges to be levelled against the police officer involved in the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protest in London.

That said, any civilised society, and despite the best efforts of the present government, we still just about qualify to consider ourselves as such, requires a robust system for managing the prosecution of (potential) offenders. Every such system of which I am aware is centred on there being independent courts of law in which those accused of criminal behaviour may plead their innocence in front of a jury of their peers.

That, in essence, is what I understand to be role of the criminal courts: to assess whether those accused of offences are either guilty as charged or not.

That is why I am astonished by the tidal wave of legal and journalistic criticism being faced by the Greater Manchester Police and, more savagely, the Crown Prosecution Service, for instituting criminal proceedings against Matthew Swift and Ross McKnight, the teenagers from Manchester who were alleged to have been planning an English ‘Columbine’ massacre.

Indeed, I have looked in vain for a single report into the acquittal of these two boys, which has not indulged in sometimes trenchant criticism of the decision to prosecute them in the first place. To illustrate my point, I have provided links to press reports from across the political spectrum here, here and here and just for good measure to three more here, here and here. I could have linked to more, including the BBC; but I think you get the picture.

All of them refer to the criticism levelled at the prosecuting authorities by defence counsel, Roderick Carus QC, for taking these boys to court in the first place.

Before I go any further, it is only fair to acknowledge that Mr Carus’ knowledge of the facts in this case is infinitely greater than mine, as, I have no doubt whatever, is his knowledge of the law; but let me just examine one or two of the points he made in his court-steps critique of the decision to prosecute the pair for conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions – effectively to potentially commit mass murder, such as:

“Why could they [presumably the police] not take them to one side, slap them on the wrists and say ‘don’t be silly boys, now off you go and enjoy your careers in the Army?’”

Or:

“I would hope the prosecuting authorities make more allowances for the frivolity of youth in future.”

Well let me see, Mr Carus. Imagine for a minute that the police had simply taken the pair of them to one side and “slapped their wrists” and then released them to join the Army, where, presumably, they would have access to firearms and explosives. Continue to imagine the firestorm of criticism which would have been levelled at the police had either of them used their access to those weapons and explosives to put their 'frivolous' and ill-conceived ‘plans’ into operation, resulting in the violent deaths of large numbers of people.

That firestorm, hungrily stoked by the same journalists currently criticising the decision to prosecute in this case, would doubtless result in the resignation, or even dismissal, of the Chief Constable of GMP, to say nothing of numbers of his subordinates, and in all probability the resignation of the Home Secretary, were he or she a member of a party other than Teflon Labour.

It may be an unfortunate analogy, doubly so, since the two boys were acquitted, but I wonder what the fourth estate and the critical Mr Carus would have made of a decision to give the parents of Baby Peter a ‘slap on the wrist’?

Mr Carus’ comments aside, what of that decision to prosecute?

The police investigated what they clearly believed to be a plot to commit mass murder; in other words, they did their jobs. The evidence they assembled, albeit ultimately rejected by the jury, was forwarded to the Crown Prosecution Service, who, after mature consideration, decided that there was both a realistic prospect of conviction based on the papers (in other words, in their professional opinion, more that a fifty percent prospect of conviction) and an overwhelming public interest in prosecuting the case.

In turn, two barristers were briefed to prepare and present the case on behalf of the Crown. One of those barristers was the eminent QC, Peter Wright, who led the prosecution of Steve Wright, the Ipswich prostitute murderer, those of the recently convicted ‘airline suicide bombers’ and was junior counsel for the prosecution in the Harold Shipman case; hardly the career profile of a man who would fight shy of advising that an allegedly weak case was not worthy of prosecution.

Taking the argument one step further, if the case against the two was as weak as Mr Carus suggests, why wasn’t he successful in submitting that his client had no case to answer at the close of the prosecution case? If he did make such a submission, it was clearly rejected by the judge, who in doing so made the tacit observation that there was indeed a case for his client to answer. If, on the other hand, he didn’t address the judge on that matter, then he clearly accepted that there was such a case himself; he cannot have it both ways.

But let me return to the point I made at the beginning of this post.

The criminal courts are there to assess whether those put in front of them by the Crown are guilty of the offences with which they have been charged. They do not, and should not, exist to simply rubber-stamp the conviction of those against whom the evidence of guilt is so overwhelming that there can be no question of their possible acquittal.

Similarly, when a case has reached a jury for a decision as to the guilt or innocence of the accused, the prosecuting authorities have done their job: the verdict on that work is then in the hands of the twelve people on the jury who have to be satisfied so that they are sure of the guilt of the accused, before they can convict him.

To criticise those same authorities for failing to secure convictions when the power to do so is ultimately (and rightly) in the hands of twelve people with little or no previous knowledge of the law is grossly unfair, as indeed it is to criticise the system of justice in this country when it has demonstrably worked in this case as it was designed to do.

On mature reflection and when no longer basking in the triumphalist light of the headline hungry media, Mr Carus may just agree with me.

Meanwhile, Matthew Swift and Ross McKnight are free to resume their lives, having had the presumption of their innocence confirmed at the end of their trial.

That is our system; and whatever the results, perverse or otherwise, long may it remain so.

Steven Gerrard: acquitted and innocent...

Just over four months ago, I posted this update to a post I wrote in January of this year about the Steven Gerrard 'assault' case.

I will not bore you all by rehearsing the points I made in those posts - the links are there for you to read at your leisure - but forgive me for reminding you that they both referred to the presumption of innocence granted to those charged with offences inthis country; a presumption which many in the press chose to virtually ignore in questioning whether Gerrard was fit to play for either his country or his club, because he had been charged with assault - a matter which was subseuently dropped before it went to trial - and affray.

Well the wheels of justice have now turned, Mr Gerrard has been tried and acquitted of that allegation.

And for those in the press who possibly wanted to see him convicted, allow me to point to the words of the trial judge, Henry Globe QC, in discharging and releasing him:

"The verdict is a credible verdict on the full facts of this case, and you walk away from this court with your reputation intact... what at first sight to the casual observer may seem to have been a clear-cut case against you of unlawful violence, has been nowhere near as clear-cut upon careful analysis of the evidence."

And that, in a couple of sentences, is why we have the presumption of innocence; because in a trial situation, when evidence is tested, it is often found to be far more opaque than it first appeared.

I wonder if all those journalists who salivated so obviously over Gerrard's arrest and subsequent trial will have the decency to print articles as large as their sensational originals in apologising to him and declaiming his innocence?

I won't hold my breath waiting for them to appear.

Steven Gerrard: innocent until proven guilty: update...

Just under three months ago, I posted this item, in which I wrote of my disdain for those who suggested that Steven Gerrard should not be selected to play for his country, or his club, because he had been arrested and charged with both assault occasioning actual bodily harm and affray following an incident in a Southport nightclub.

As I wrote then, there is a golden thread in English law called the presumption of innocence. For the benefit of the uninitiated, that means that any person (including famous ones) accused of a crime in this country, however serious, is presumed to be innocent of that crime until he or she is proved to be guilty of it by due process of law.

Three months on and we learn that the assault charge has been formally discontinued against Gerrard and his six co-accused due to there being insufficient evidence to justify the matter being taken to trial.

And whilst I appreciate that he still faces the affray charge, I wonder if the people - especially those journalists who really ought to have known better - who were calling for his exclusion from the England team when he was charged now realise how premature and downright unfair they were to do so.

Can we borrow Judge John Neilan, please?

What a pity Judge John Neilan sits in Irish courts, rather than English ones...

Do you think he'd consider a transfer?