Super-Harsh

Nitefly

Nitefly

Nitefly

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21195269

Thought this would be another good one at provoking discussion.

Poor Barry George, how harsh is that. No compensation for 8 years false imprisonment. Obviously working from headlines, but the distinction made doesn't seem to follow. If the new evidence caused his acquittal at retrial, then the jury could not have been sure (or had reasonable doubt) as to his guilt. Yet the high court said a jury still could have reasonably convicted him on the new evidence... Seems to go on pure speculation, especially as the actual jury didn't convict him so they must not have been sure.

To add salt to the wound Mr. Lawless (great name) won his case because evidence was produced that he was a compulsive liar.

It seems to me that if you are acquitted on new evidence, you should be compensated for time spent in false imprisonment. The idea that 'it could be decided the other way' seems a flimsy reasoning to forward a policy for keeping down costs from a high volume of these circumstances.

Thoughts?
 
Disgusting, I dont know the ins and outs of the case. But aside from his life ruined for 8years for apparently no fault of his own.
 
Bit of a sticky one.

On the one hand it is harsh someone can be wrongfully imprisoned for 8 years and get nothing.

On the other hand it's to prevent people that could have been involved (or at least done something suspect) getting a re-trial, proven not to have done the original crime then being compensated (though may have been doing something suspect).

The whole system of legal compensation needs to be completely we worked and standardised because there are far too many grey areas where people exploit it for personal gain and then there are moments like this where he probably should get some form of compensation, just not 8 years worth of lost earnings as that'll be a mad payout.
 
I thought this was horrific. At the very least I feel he should be compensated for the loss of income in that time. Not to mention mental and other issues that may have come from it...

kd
 
Nitefly said:
It seems to me that if you are acquitted on new evidence, you should be compensated for time spent in false imprisonment. The idea that 'it could be decided the other way' seems a flimsy reasoning to forward a policy for keeping down costs from a high volume of these circumstances.
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Without commenting on this individual case I'd like to address this point. The idea that "new evidence" should lead to compensation is effectively imputing a retrospective test on the decision made and that's counter to good law in and of itself. If based on the evidence available at the time no jury could reasonably convict the defendant (i.e. their guilt was not proved beyond a reasonable doubt) yet they were convicted then by all means give them compensation. If, however, the decision regarding the defendants guilt was reasonable at the time then there should be no compensation because mistakes, while unfortunate, will happen. We are not dealing with absolute certainties here, we are dealing with a (generally very good but) fallible system.

I may not agree with the High Court here attempting to second-guess what the jurors could have done but to add in new evidence and use that as a basis for stating it was false imprisonment is somewhat shaky.
 
irony is , IF he did get compensation , the first thing they would do is take
a MASSIVE chuck of it back ....... to pay for his "room and board" WTF ???????
 
semi-pro waster said:
Without commenting on this individual case I'd like to address this point. The idea that "new evidence" should lead to compensation is effectively imputing a retrospective test on the decision made and that's counter to good law in and of itself. If based on the evidence available at the time no jury could reasonably convict the defendant (i.e. their guilt was not proved beyond a reasonable doubt) yet they were convicted then by all means give them compensation. If, however, the decision regarding the defendants guilt was reasonable at the time then there should be no compensation because mistakes, while unfortunate, will happen. We are not dealing with absolute certainties here, we are dealing with a (generally very good but) fallible system.

I may not agree with the High Court here attempting to second-guess what the jurors could have done but to add in new evidence and use that as a basis for stating it was false imprisonment is somewhat shaky.
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I don't follow this I'm afraid. It's not retrospective on the initial decision, it's a retrial. The whole thing is looked at again and considered in full. The question is "is the person guilty or not?", not "did we get it wrong last time?". Retrospective decisions are made all the time with regards to questions of law. When it comes to questions of fact, a retrial is obviously the right thing to do when new evidence suggests a sharp contrast to what is decided.

I also think it's a very poor idea to place the burden of mistakes, however innocent they may be, on persons that have wrongly suffered imprisonment, the worst punishment available in the UK. It would be more in the interests of justice to place the burden of these mistakes, transformed into financial terms, on the population as a whole, which would be a relatively insignificant feat.
 
Nitefly said:
I don't follow this I'm afraid. It's not retrospective on the initial decision, it's a retrial. The whole thing is looked at again and considered in full. The question is "is the person guilty or not?", not "did we get it wrong last time?". Retrospective decisions are made all the time with regards to questions of law. When it comes to questions of fact, a retrial is obviously the right thing to do when new evidence suggests a sharp contrast to what is decided.

I also think it's a very poor idea to place the burden of mistakes, however innocent they may be, on persons that have wrongly suffered imprisonment, the worst punishment available in the UK. It would be more in the interests of justice to place the burden of these mistakes, transformed into financial terms, on the population as a whole, which would be a relatively insignificant feat.
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Perhaps I misunderstood your intent here but it sounded very much as if you were suggesting that new evidence could mean the initial decision was wrong based on the evidence available at the time. There's wrong in an absolute sense and wrong in an objective sense - it could be objectively a fair decision based on the information/evidence presented and yet be imprisoning an innocent person. In a retrial you're right that it's a fresh look at all the evidence - maybe I was being a bit slow in not realising that was what you meant.

I am, however, thinking more on the question of compensation. If evidence was suppressed or should otherwise have come if all parties were doing a reasonable job and that led to the conviction of an innocent party then compensation would be the minimum for equity. If the new evidence was revealed in circumstances other than that then I suppose it depends on the instant case - that's where judicial discretion would be useful.

Nitefly said:
If he was blatantly guilty, he wouldn't have been acquitted :p
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Errors in procedure such as in the chain of custody?
 
Obviously I can never know for sure but I don't think he did it. He was an easy target not unlike Colin Stagg for the Rachel Nickell murder and we all know how that turned out.

I was disgusted when I read about this yesterday. We cannot lock someone up for 7 years for a crime they were then acquitted of and NOT pay them compensation.
 
Previously, compensation was only awarded for a miscarriage of justice if a claimant could effectively prove they were innocent.
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If they could effectively prove they were innocent, then why would they get convicted at all? Oh yeah! It's a miscarriage of justice...



But the nine Supreme Court judges widened this by saying that if a person could prove that no set of circumstances could possibly lead to their conviction by a jury, they could get compensation.
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The only way of doing the above is to avoid a trial completely. Simply being in front of a jury effectively means you are already in a possible conviction circumstance or they wouldn't be trying to convict you...


Absolutely ridiculous.
 
semi-pro waster said:
Without commenting on this individual case I'd like to address this point. The idea that "new evidence" should lead to compensation is effectively imputing a retrospective test on the decision made and that's counter to good law in and of itself. If based on the evidence available at the time no jury could reasonably convict the defendant (i.e. their guilt was not proved beyond a reasonable doubt) yet they were convicted then by all means give them compensation. If, however, the decision regarding the defendants guilt was reasonable at the time then there should be no compensation because mistakes, while unfortunate, will happen. We are not dealing with absolute certainties here, we are dealing with a (generally very good but) fallible system.

I may not agree with the High Court here attempting to second-guess what the jurors could have done but to add in new evidence and use that as a basis for stating it was false imprisonment is somewhat shaky.
Click to expand...

If the person didn't do it, whether or not the state did the best it could at the time, the state was still wrong and the person should be compensated for the loss of liberty of their lives, both from the time spent in prision and the restrictions they'll face going forward.

I entirely agree that a person who makes a resonable call under a reasonable circumstances should never face liability based on hindsight. Its not like a jurors shoud face liability for making what seemed like the right call at the time and it's not like the person involved in an accident would face charges unless they were somehow negligent.

But comparing the rights of the state to the rights of an individual is wrong. The state is not a person and spending money compensating someone who has been imprisoned is hardly punitive to the state, just a cost of doing business. The reason you should be giving compensation is to help the poor sod get on with living their life, it hardly matters if we thought they had a fair trial at the time.
 
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I agree with the court, the new test is quite specific in the way it works, and has the form it does to ensure that only people who are innocent beyond all reasonable doubt get compensation. it almost adds the scottish verdict of 'not proven' as an unofficial position following an appeal.

This strikes me as a reasonable balance between ensuring the legal system has barriers against unfair treatment of defendents, and ensuring the legal system has barriers against unfair treatment for the taxpayer.
 
I wouldn't imagine many tax payers would begrudge the man his compensation in these circumstances though?
 
I'd happily see him get £10 million for what's happened. You can't compare being in prison unjustly to someone's normal working life
 
Looking at his previous convictions he appears to be a scumbag, so no, I don't feel sorry for him.

We'd have been wise to leave him in jail.
 
Mistake was made. Mistake was admitted. 8 years were taken away from a person as a result, life from this point onwards is also affected (not just psychologically, the guy will be refused vetted job positions, custody/adoption and even travel through and to some foreign countries as a result of this mistake). He was cleared, so there is precedence to presume he is no longer considered suspect. Therefore he is owed damages. End of.

I understand law has its rules, and in this case the rule is that he would be paid damages only if no jury could convict him at the time, but the "we all thought you were guilty based on old evidence" and refusing retribution is equal to saying "we won't pay you because we think you might still be guilty but we can no longer prove it". Bad law is no law at all. Taking away someone's life, destroying it, then admitting the mistake and not paying for that mistake, is inexcusable.
 
v0n said:
Mistake was made. Mistake was admitted. 8 years were taken away from a person as a result, life from this point onwards is also affected (not just psychologically, the guy will be refused vetted job positions, custody/adoption and even travel through and to some foreign countries as a result of this mistake). He was cleared, so there is precedence to presume he is no longer considered suspect. Therefore he is owed damages. End of.

I understand law has its rules, and in this case the rule is that he would be paid damages only if no jury could convict him at the time, but the "we all thought you were guilty based on old evidence" and refusing retribution is equal to saying "we won't pay you because we think you might still be guilty but we can no longer prove it". Bad law is no law at all. Taking away someone's life, destroying it, then admitting the mistake and not paying for that mistake, is inexcusable.
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the issues that vled to the verdict being overturned were not things that meant he could not be responsible for the crime, so we dont know if a mistake was made in convicting him, and remember, the state has no money apart from that it takes from the taxpayer, therefore a balance between the two parties has to be found.
 
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