International Law

Justice behind the screen

By John Hirst

Like good curry, good law is hard to cook up in haste. The government, however, has little alternative but to legislate quickly in response to a court ruling last week that could put dangerous men out on the loose. A £6m murder trial collapsed yesterday, because it relied on anonymous testimony - a reliance that the law lords had last week declared illegal. In the words of the presiding judge yesterday, their decision had "derailed" the case. The Lords ruling came in a separate murder case and had already made inevitable the quashing of the conviction there. It could soon scupper several gangland prosecutions - not to mention some terrorist trials that are already in train. Judge-bashing populists will no doubt take last week's decision as fresh evidence that the courts are out of touch and indeed dangerous. The truth is that the law lords' reasoning was perfectly sound, although the consequences of their ruling are, indisputably, a mess.

Son of supergrass

The law lords are right: offering total anonymity to witnesses creates a serious legal hazard

Back in the 70s, when the police found it almost impossible to get convictions in the growing number of armed robbery cases in London, the prosecuting authorities hit on the idea of the supergrass. In exchange for a short sentence and a new identity, former armed robbers could give evidence against their colleagues. Initially, the idea was a spectacular success, the number of armed robberies declined sharply and many career criminals were jailed for long sentences.

In recent years, London has faced a wave of a different form of armed crime and one of a more deadly nature: gang murders. While the average murder clear-up rate is an admirably high 80% to 90%, in such crimes convictions were running at about half that level. How would it be possible to halt the killings and jail the gunmen?

This whole idea of rebalancing justice in favour of the victim was a bad idea from the start, because it obviously leads to an injustice against the accused.

Now Jack Straw is in a panic as he tries once more to patch up the damaged public confidence in the Criminal Justice System. He will be seeking to introduce legislation which will have retrospective effect. This has all the hallmarks of Alice in Wonderland and the White Queen punishing before the crime has been committed.

Full post as published by prisonlawinsideout on June 25, 2008 (boomark / email).