"But innocent until proven guilty is a legal fiction. If you were truly innocent, you wouldn't be in court in the first place."
Very true, no-one in the history of British justice has ever been convicted of a crime they did not commit.
29 minute jury deliberation
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David Johnson
- Posts: 7844
- Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 2:40 am
You definitely are on the booze
"If someone was regarded as truly innocent why would they be accused?"
Err, repetition. I will have to call in Kenneth Williams now. Oh no, I can't. He's dead.
Err, repetition. I will have to call in Kenneth Williams now. Oh no, I can't. He's dead.
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David Johnson
- Posts: 7844
- Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 2:40 am
Give it up, it's no good for you, you know
"In this country a jury doesn't decide who gets arrested or charged."
Well I wouldn't want to argue against that one.
However whether a case is heard in the crown court or a magistrates court, the burden of proof is on the prosecution to provide and the accused has no burden of proof whatsoever. Liked the reference to the EU by the way. I assumed it was all their fault. !wink!
In both cases, the prosecution presents it's evidence and the defence provides witnesses/evidence etc. and the relevant bods, lay judges or magistrates in one case, the jury in the other make their decision.
Mine's a whisky and lemon, easy on the ice.
And in the immortal words of Kenneth WIlliams "Stop messing about".
Well I wouldn't want to argue against that one.
However whether a case is heard in the crown court or a magistrates court, the burden of proof is on the prosecution to provide and the accused has no burden of proof whatsoever. Liked the reference to the EU by the way. I assumed it was all their fault. !wink!
In both cases, the prosecution presents it's evidence and the defence provides witnesses/evidence etc. and the relevant bods, lay judges or magistrates in one case, the jury in the other make their decision.
Mine's a whisky and lemon, easy on the ice.
And in the immortal words of Kenneth WIlliams "Stop messing about".
Re: Are you on booze?
Si i suppose the guildford four and the birmingham 6 were not truly innocent then Esssex Lad?? Just fitted up by bent poilice...but thats ok i guess isn't it??
Re: You definitely are on the booze
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
Re: 29 minute jury deliberation
Judge:
"but it is important that the complainant, who is clearly scarred by an experience, should understand that the jury verdicts does not necessarily involve rejection of his account of a sexual encounter or encounters with the defendant".
So guilty (in a way) but the prosecution failed to present in a manner that enabled a conviction or words to that effect (possibly).
"but it is important that the complainant, who is clearly scarred by an experience, should understand that the jury verdicts does not necessarily involve rejection of his account of a sexual encounter or encounters with the defendant".
So guilty (in a way) but the prosecution failed to present in a manner that enabled a conviction or words to that effect (possibly).
Johno and Six
You are both completely missing my point: the presumption that someone is innocent until proved guilty is and has to be a legal fiction. I am guessing that neither of you are lawyers ? you consider yourself to be a barrack room lawyer Johnson but that is not the same thing. This is, however, a point I have discussed with lawyers and they have been unable to contradict me.
I don't know how many times I have to say it before it sinks through your thick skulls (using the Peter Mandelson tactic of repeating stuff till you understand it might work): if someone was regarded as innocent they would not have been in court in the first place.
No idea what the reference to the Birmingham Six or Guildford Four has to do with my point. For your point to have any relevance, the police who arrested them, the legal system that prosecuted them and the juries who convicted them would have had to have known they were innocent ? which presumably they didn't.
If you, Johnson, get arrested because the police think you have downloaded kiddie porn it is because they think you are guilty of that offence. If they did not think you were guilty, you would not have been arrested. If the CPS decides that there is sufficient evidence to prosecute. If they thought you were an angel who had never put a foot wrong in his life, you would not have been arrested never mind charged in the first place.
if you cannot understand that simple (and I keeping it simple especially for you, Johnson) idea, then you are not as bright as you seem to think you are.
The jury system ? long may it continue (although it won't if we remain in the EU) ? is a safeguard against the state fitting people up. It has nothing to do with the presumption of innocence.
I don't know how many times I have to say it before it sinks through your thick skulls (using the Peter Mandelson tactic of repeating stuff till you understand it might work): if someone was regarded as innocent they would not have been in court in the first place.
No idea what the reference to the Birmingham Six or Guildford Four has to do with my point. For your point to have any relevance, the police who arrested them, the legal system that prosecuted them and the juries who convicted them would have had to have known they were innocent ? which presumably they didn't.
If you, Johnson, get arrested because the police think you have downloaded kiddie porn it is because they think you are guilty of that offence. If they did not think you were guilty, you would not have been arrested. If the CPS decides that there is sufficient evidence to prosecute. If they thought you were an angel who had never put a foot wrong in his life, you would not have been arrested never mind charged in the first place.
if you cannot understand that simple (and I keeping it simple especially for you, Johnson) idea, then you are not as bright as you seem to think you are.
The jury system ? long may it continue (although it won't if we remain in the EU) ? is a safeguard against the state fitting people up. It has nothing to do with the presumption of innocence.
Re: You definitely are on the booze
I have to repeat stuff because it doesn't penetrate your thick skull otherwise.
Johno talking bollocks as per...
David Johnson wrote:
> "In this country a jury doesn't decide who gets arrested or
> charged."
>
> Well I wouldn't want to argue against that one.
>
> However whether a case is heard in the crown court or a
> magistrates court, the burden of proof is on the prosecution to
> provide and the accused has no burden of proof whatsoever.
Please show me where I have said it isn't.
> Liked the reference to the EU by the way. I assumed it was all
> their fault. !wink!
Yes that's it. You are such a fucking smart arse. Knock something that you know fuck all about.
Does the EU plan to abolish trials by jury?
Perhaps the most disturbing part of the Amsterdam Treaty was its provisions for the legal system known as Corpus Juris to be introduced throughout the EU. (Corpus Juris can be introduced by Qualified Majority Voting, so the EU can introduce it even if we were to refuse it by a 100% majority in Westminster.)
[Section II, Chapter 8, heading (d): "Measures for countering fraud against the financial interests of the Community"]
Corpus Juris will set up a European Public Prosecutor with over-riding criminal law jurisdiction throughout Europe, initially on matters of fraud against the EU budget, later to be extended to all criminal activities, which will thus come within the EU purview. Habeas Corpus and Trial by Jury - rights enjoyed by Britons since Magna Carta - are explicitly to be abolished under these proposals.
[The proposals are being drawn up by EU Commission (XX DG) which details an EU criminal code and code of procedure. Article 26.1 explicitly provides for cases (where the sentence can be up to seven years) to be heard by Courts "consisting of professional judges, excluding simple jurors and lay magistrates."]
The implications of this proposal cannot be overemphasized. As Churchill wrote "...the great principle of Habeas Corpus and Trial by Jury ... are the supreme protection invented by the British people for ordinary individuals against the state. The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him judgment by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian governments."
[Winston Churchill, minute to the Home Secretary, 21 November 1943]
The obligation to conform to the requirements of the Amsterdam Treaty explains the Government's determination to press ahead with the abolition of the right to Trial by Jury for certain offences, despite defeat in the House of Lords and widespread opposition from lawyers and civil rights groups.
And as that well-known left-wing rag The Economist reported:
"MARK TWAIN regarded trial by jury as ?the most ingenious and infallible agency for defeating justice that human wisdom could contrive?. He would presumably approve of what is happening in Russia and Britain. At the end of 2008, Russia abolished jury trials for terrorism and treason. Britain, the supposed mother of trial by jury, is seeking to scrap them for serious fraud and to ban juries from some inquests. Yet China, South Korea and Japan are moving in the opposite direction, introducing or extending trial by jury in a bid to increase the impartiality and independence of their legal systems. Perhaps what a British law lord, the late Lord Devlin, called ?the lamp that shows that freedom lives? burns brighter in Asia these days.
>
> In both cases, the prosecution presents it's (sic) evidence and the
> defence provides witnesses/evidence etc. and the relevant bods,
> lay judges or magistrates in one case, the jury in the other
> make their decision.
>
Again please show me where I have said it isn't.
> "In this country a jury doesn't decide who gets arrested or
> charged."
>
> Well I wouldn't want to argue against that one.
>
> However whether a case is heard in the crown court or a
> magistrates court, the burden of proof is on the prosecution to
> provide and the accused has no burden of proof whatsoever.
Please show me where I have said it isn't.
> Liked the reference to the EU by the way. I assumed it was all
> their fault. !wink!
Yes that's it. You are such a fucking smart arse. Knock something that you know fuck all about.
Does the EU plan to abolish trials by jury?
Perhaps the most disturbing part of the Amsterdam Treaty was its provisions for the legal system known as Corpus Juris to be introduced throughout the EU. (Corpus Juris can be introduced by Qualified Majority Voting, so the EU can introduce it even if we were to refuse it by a 100% majority in Westminster.)
[Section II, Chapter 8, heading (d): "Measures for countering fraud against the financial interests of the Community"]
Corpus Juris will set up a European Public Prosecutor with over-riding criminal law jurisdiction throughout Europe, initially on matters of fraud against the EU budget, later to be extended to all criminal activities, which will thus come within the EU purview. Habeas Corpus and Trial by Jury - rights enjoyed by Britons since Magna Carta - are explicitly to be abolished under these proposals.
[The proposals are being drawn up by EU Commission (XX DG) which details an EU criminal code and code of procedure. Article 26.1 explicitly provides for cases (where the sentence can be up to seven years) to be heard by Courts "consisting of professional judges, excluding simple jurors and lay magistrates."]
The implications of this proposal cannot be overemphasized. As Churchill wrote "...the great principle of Habeas Corpus and Trial by Jury ... are the supreme protection invented by the British people for ordinary individuals against the state. The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him judgment by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian governments."
[Winston Churchill, minute to the Home Secretary, 21 November 1943]
The obligation to conform to the requirements of the Amsterdam Treaty explains the Government's determination to press ahead with the abolition of the right to Trial by Jury for certain offences, despite defeat in the House of Lords and widespread opposition from lawyers and civil rights groups.
And as that well-known left-wing rag The Economist reported:
"MARK TWAIN regarded trial by jury as ?the most ingenious and infallible agency for defeating justice that human wisdom could contrive?. He would presumably approve of what is happening in Russia and Britain. At the end of 2008, Russia abolished jury trials for terrorism and treason. Britain, the supposed mother of trial by jury, is seeking to scrap them for serious fraud and to ban juries from some inquests. Yet China, South Korea and Japan are moving in the opposite direction, introducing or extending trial by jury in a bid to increase the impartiality and independence of their legal systems. Perhaps what a British law lord, the late Lord Devlin, called ?the lamp that shows that freedom lives? burns brighter in Asia these days.
>
> In both cases, the prosecution presents it's (sic) evidence and the
> defence provides witnesses/evidence etc. and the relevant bods,
> lay judges or magistrates in one case, the jury in the other
> make their decision.
>
Again please show me where I have said it isn't.
Re: 29 minute jury deliberation
They haven't rejected it, but nor have they accepted it enough.