Caporegime
GD is going to love this one - Rape case collapse
- Thread starter VincentHanna
- Start date
You would be very much mistaken if you think that police/ prosecution can just draw a line on any unused material that dates before the complainant and suspect first met and not review this material properly along with everything else.
I never claimed they would, I'm just pointing out that looking at the (more likely to be) relevant ones isn't going to take very long at all.
It seems though that they've either ignored or tried to cover up the whole lot.
I just dont think you have any understanding of the complexities of disclosure under cpia
...
A targetted, brief look at an evidential or intelligence report from a digital device might be appropriate for the purposes of establishing quicktime lines of enquiry in a live investigation....
Its absolutely not sufficient for the purposes of disclosure when a case is in the court system....
Your assertion that you could just have a quick review of a report containing tens of thousands of lines of information for the purposes of satisfying police roles under cpia is pure fantasy
You're just making things up again and attacking things I've not said. I've pointed out that looking at some text messages doesn't take a long time! Perhaps they'd not have needed to get as far as a court room if they'd done their job.
It does feel like this. If it's true then heads must roll.
Caporegime
It's "pretty poor" to dismiss the idea of improving rape conviction rates as being something you do just to "please certain crowds". I'd be more concerned with the "certain crowds" who don't want to see conviction rates improved.
We know that reporting and conviction rates are very low. Why wouldn't we want to improve them? The question is how you go about doing that. This is not the right way.
You said...
'surely the ones around the time of the incident would be the ones of most interest and I doubt there are 40k of them... it isn't really going to take too long to look over those.'
You are just plain wrong.... This is not a job that can be done quickly... The whole material has to be reviewed, documented, edited and prepared for possible disclosure....
Have you ever looked at an evidential phone download or prepared one from a modern smartphone?
Because if the police make a lot of arrests but not many result in convictions, it makes them look bad. Then the government starts questioning their competence (though they will anyway now). They clearly hid evidence that would have proven the guy's innocence and had the case thrown out immediately. Whoever decided to do it should be put on trial themselves.
It isn't wrong, the relevant texts aren't going to take long to look over... why do you need disclosure if you don't prosecute? Given that the relevant texts make it pretty clear there wasn't a rape. The barrister dropped it like a hot potato pretty damn quickly.
So you haven't looked at a phone download or prepared one yourself?
I agree that pre charge (assuming the download was completed pre and not post charge) that an investigative action could/should be to have a targetted look at messages sent/received shortly around the times of the alleged offence.
But for the purposes of post charge disclosure this will not be sufficient.
Caporegime
It's like you're reading what I'm saying but not understanding it. I said this is the wrong way to achieve the result. My previous post was criticising your complaint that this is being done just to "please certain crowds" as though it's some populist agenda to want to convict more rapists.
I don't really care about disclosure re: the point I was making, you keep banging on about it with this straw man argument you keep trying to use against me - my point was simply that looking at the relevant texts wouldn't take too long and those relevant texts seem to make it pretty clear that there isn't a rape.
If fact given the way a typical millennial female texts these days each message is probably a single line of a few words... some messages will probably just be emojis.... it isn't like a 40k line written document.
So you don't care about defendants being told about material that could assist their defence or harm the prosecution?
As stated I agree that the police may have been in a position to conduct a targetted review of the phone download (assuming it was produced pre charge) and that this may have raised questions about the credibility of the allegation that could had lead to the case being discontinued at an earlier stage.
But police regularly have to review masses of unused material in such cases and to dismiss that as a quick or trivial matter is plain wrong.
That's irrelevant to my comment... you're still flogging this disclosure horse. My point was it should have been dropped when it became obvious there wasn't a rape. If you're not going to pursue a prosecution then surely you don't need to waste more time?
It isn't wrong to state that the more relevant texts i.e. the ones around the dates of the allegations can't really have taken too long to read through.
So you have looked at and reviewed evidential phone download packages then?
You are also wrong to state the texts 'prove' no rape occurred. They are relevant to the credibility of the allegation but don't 'prove' anything.
nope
I didn't say that, try using the quote function please instead of making more things up to attack.
Associate
It's called phone interrogation software. Once it downloads texts and so on it is pretty easy to use.
Would looking at say texts covering the just the few days around the date of the allegation be a particularly laborious task?