Innocent Man Goes Free

So Sergeant Mark Andrews has won his appeal and walks free, a totally exonerated man. The result serves to confirm what I said in my post on 11th September that, in my experience, it's extremely difficult to convict a serving police officer. I felt that cctv had made it somewhat easier, but clearly by this judgement I got that bit wrong. No doubt there are a few red faces at Thames Valley Police Headquarters, especially following the forthright comments by at least one Assistant Chief Constable. Not only will there have to be some grovelling apologies from his employers, but possibly an expensive compensation claim to settle relating to his six days in custody. 

I guess it will not surprise some that over on the Inspector Gadjet blogsite there is much gloating and unbounded praise for a very sensible Judiciary that for once has handed down an eminently appropriate judgement, and so soon after the G20 'successes'. Normally of course sentencers come in for a fair bit of derision by Gadjet for basically 'letting scrotes off scot-free'. It's funny, but I seem to recall a rather different line from him in the beginning, together with some comments from other police officers who were horrified by the cctv images. There was a feeling that Sgt Andrews had 'lost it' due to the stressful nature of the role. Nevertheless Gadjet now says he's particularly pleased at the result because it will really upset the 'handwringers'. I wonder what came of the two officers whose evidence so upset the District Judge that he reported them to their Chief Constable? 

I think it's interesting to contrast this result with the recent outburst from the Daily Mail about 'what it actually takes to get sent to prison.' An interesting point, especially on the same day this news broke about another police officer. If I'm not mistaken, isn't former Commander Ali Dizaei lodging an appeal? 



 

Is this Justice?

I see that HM Coroner is unhappy that the defence team acting for the PC who was recorded pushing over news vendor Ian Tomlinson during the G20 demonstrations have refused to hand over the results of their post mortem examination. They claim legal priviledge and say it is a defence document and therefore may withold it from CPS and the IPCC. Now not surprisingly CPS, being lawyers and part of the legal 'game', say they have no quarrel with this, but it serves to highlight a major flaw in our adversarial legal system. The suspicion of course is that any decision not to disclose must mean it does not help the defence case. For me it brings into sharp focus the fact that under our system the search for justice is not paramount - it's the game that is.

Quite a few years ago a notorious murder was committed on my patch and as is customary I was allocated the case to follow right through trial, conviction and ultimate sentence. The case was complex and hinged on the defence submission of not guilty to murder, but guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. As a result, expert psychiatric and psychology reports were commissioned by both the prosecution and defence - a total of nine if memory serves me correctly. It has always struck me as deeply worrying that, as if by magic, all the defence reports supported their proposition and the prosecution reports, vice versa. It became quite a battle of professional reputations and egos and not surprisingly the jury had the greatest difficulty trying to make sense of these eminent doctors in effect slagging each other off. They couldn't decide and a fresh trial was ordered and in the end only after some heavy handed summing up by the trial Judge, a fresh jury eventually delivered a 10 to 2 majority verdict of guilty to murder. Not at all satisfactory in my view, not least as a process for getting justice, but of course a very profitable game for all the professionals involved. I feel the answer is quite straight forward - all expert reports should be commissioned by the court, with disclosure to both prosecution and defence.