July 2002. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,200-342946,00.html
Portia thanks
MOJUK for passing this on. The author's book, Thirty-Six Murders & Two Immoral Earnings,
is published by Profile Books (price: 16.99 GBP)
The criminal justice system is in need of radical reform, writes Ludovic Kennedy.
IT
SHOULD START WITH THE POLICE
Most of the spate of miscarriages of criminal justice that have occurred during my
lifetime have been the consequence of police corruption and judicial naivety; the
police in giving false evidence to secure convictions against those they have deluded
themselves into thinking are guilty and the judiciary in invariably accepting their
word in preference to those of innocent defendants.
One of the worst examples of this
were the various injustices suffered by the Birmingham Six. Four of the Six had made
"confessions" that they claimed with good reason had been beaten out of them by police
brutality. This the police denied and at their trial Mr Justice Bridge supported
them, describing the Six's allegations as bizarre and grotesque and praising the
police who had lied in their teeth as being honest and straightforward witnesses.
Next
the Six applied for legal aid to sue the police for injuries inflicted while in police
custody. When this reached the Master of the Rolls, Lord Denning, he struck it out
on the depraved ground that if it were proved that the confessions had been obtained
by violence and threats, the Six might have to be pardoned; and this was such an
appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say it would not be
right for the action to proceed.
Next the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Lane, dismissed
their 1988 appeal, despite impressive new eye-witness evidence that the Six had suffered
violence and abuse in police custody. To this he turned a blind eye, saying in his
judgment: "As has happened before in references by the Home Secretary to this court,
the longer the hearing has gone on, the more convinced the court has become that
the verdict of the jury was correct."
It was the same with Mr Justice Donaldson at
the trial of Vincent Maguire, of the Maguire Seven, who had also complained that
the police had beaten him up. "You have seen the police officers," he told the jury,
"and they denied using any violence at all." Well, they would, wouldn't they? And
then in Edinburgh we saw the absurd Lord Robertson, who despite Patrick Meehan having
been granted a free pardon for his wrongful conviction of the Ayr murder as a result
of police fabrication of evidence (for which he had already served seven years),
manage to persuade a jury to acquit Ian Waddell, who had both committed it and admitted
to it, in his dotty belief that Meehan was guilty all along.
Meehan was in court to
hear Robertson's charge to the jury, which so enraged him that he stormed out of
the building shouting that his free pardon wasn't worth the paper it was written
on while I, also there, had a strong desire to say to Robertson, "This trial has
been a farce, my lord, and you are the chief clown", but wisely or perhaps cravenly
refrained, thus sparing myself perhaps a longish spell in Saughton jail for contempt
of court.
Further confessions, brought about by police violence or threats of violence
once had a great run of successes, the police knowing that no jury would be persuaded
to believe that any defendant, whatever the circumstances, would ever admit to murder
unless he was guilty. Thanks to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and recommendations
of the Runciman Commission they are now out of fashion but they did immense damage;
in addition to 16 years of imprisonment for the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four,
the execution of Timothy Evans, the incarceration in a mental home for seven years
of the perfectly sane Iain Hay Gordon and 16 years in prison for the innocent George
Long for no other reason that he never ceased from asserting his innocence (which
proved, according to a Mrs Harris at the Home Office, that he had refused to come
to terms with his guilt).
So what reforms do we need? First and because most police
fabrication occurs in the early stages of investigations, the appointment of a QC
or other senior legal figure, analogous to the juge d'instruction in France, to direct
and supervise all police inquiries; and in this I have the support of Michael Mansfield,
QC, that most doughty and persistent of defence advocates.
A more radical reform for
which I have been campaigning for 40 years would be the abandonment of the absurd
adversary system of justice which we share with the United States, Canada and Australia,
in all of which miscarriages of justice occur on a scale unknown in countries that
practice the inquisitorial and other systems. Nor is it in the least effective, the
two highest courts in France, the Cours d'Assise and Tribunal Correctionel having
conviction rates of between 90 and 95 per cent, while contested pleas cases in the
Crown Courts here can manage only a paltry 56 per cent [see end note].
Our system
also leads to the acquittal of the guilty, permitting skilful advocates to persuade
juries not to convict defendants who richly merit it, like Norman Birkett, who saw
Tony Mancini walk free in the Brighton trunk murder case (though years later he admitted
to it), and the late Nicholas Fairbair, QC in Scotland, who told me of three villains
he was defending and knew were guilty gain acquittal.
Are we so wedded to a system
that fails us at every turn that we cannot see and welcome the need for change?
Editors end note: This is the percentage of all those initially charged, juries convict 87% of those they actually judge. See Statistics 1999.
www.slimeylimeyjustice.org