ACI       Better that ten guilty men go free than - - - - -16 December 2005

In legal circles it is often said that it is better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted.  This sounds a wonderful ethic, until you start to examine what it actually means.  Let me pose another pious saying that few people could object to:  "It should be government policy that the minimum amount of suffering takes place in the peoples that it serves.  There are, it seems, two contradictory principles, with both being highly desirable.

So something has to give; which should it be?  I have given the matter some thought and have come down on the side of the second principle.  A few further thoughts may bring a reader towards my view.

In the times of capital punishment, the first policy was probably correct in that it was not possible to reverse a decision.  But now that we have a different system, other considerations take precedence.  Take some practical cases as a way to help clear the mind:   Hanratty was probably not guilty of the A5 murders.  The police were being harried by the press to 'get someone'.  and to get the press off their back they decided to do just that.  They managed to fit Hanratty to the evidence and put him before the Court.  If they were wrong, nobody would would miss that petty career criminal.  Of course, it shouldn't have happened, but I shed no tears for the parasite that was hanged for a murder he didn't commit.  But I do shed tears for some of the victims of the dregs of society.  Elderly ladies that are beaten blue to provide the useless piece of humanity with his next fix.  The press might give a picture of the victim to help sell the newspaper, but within a day or so she will be forgotten as she fades into oblivion and an early death.  All the news will be about the perpetrator and his trial with the 'do-good brigade doing their best to get the thug released because "he fell into bad company"

I really do believe that the police do their best, but if one looks at the difficulties of identifying and proving that a certain individual was responsible for the suffering of the unfortunate victim, you can see how hard their job is.  When in Court the accused is allowed to lie his head off to try and persuade the jury that he was not the responsible character.  (There are no penalties for lying in Court if you are the accused, unless you choose to go into the Witness Box.  I think that should be made mandatory for the accused.)

Hard proof is difficult.  Absolute proof is impossible.  There must always be a shred of doubt no matter how much evidence is presented.  So the finding of "beyond reasonable doubt" is the criterion.  But I believe that the present Court Rules lean a little too heavily in favour of the accused, and I agree with one thing the Blaire bunnies have done is to allow evidence of some past convictions to be given to the jury.  Of course, it is highly undesirable for an "innocent" person to be convicted, but in a large number of cases, the accused is not innocent, he is just not guilty of the specific offence against which he was charged.  The police "round up the usual suspects" in the firm knowledge that one of them is the party they are looking for. Occasionally they get it wrong, we all make mistakes.

My argument is that IF the occasional person is jailed for a crime he did not commit, and that picks up a lot of the thugs that terrorise the population, this is a price worth paying.  In the few known cases where so-called criminals have been jailed for crimes that they did not commit, they have had recompense at a later date.  The injury to a falsely-jailed person is much less than the injury to the victim of the crime.  Not until medical science allows interrogators to read the mind of accused persons, will near-perfection be obtained.  I just think that the pendulum has swung a bit too far in the wrong direction.

I know I would be very unhappy if I were jailed for a crime I did not commit, but if I were honest I would have to accept that this situation is preferable to the initial principle I outlined above.  Jail these days often seems to be so un-penal that it is becoming a sick joke.  I knew an ex-screw who worked in Lincoln prison twenty years ago.  His assessment of prison  life was that "they were better off that I was at Butlins.  The only real discipline was imposed on the screws themselves."