A well-known actor has been acquitted of charges of sex offences committed some decades ago. I have nothing to say about the case itself, but it is fair to say that many people have questioned how practical it is to gather meaningful testimony about such ancient events.
Decisions have been taken at a high level to pursue historic allegations of sex abuse, driven, I suspect, by the current focus on the interests of victims, especially in the light of the Jimmy Savile and other cases. I can understand the DPP's reasons, partly legal but with political overtones.
Nevertheless, the last word on this case has come from a jury, whose decision is final. I suspect that some others will go the same way.
I have the same feeling about some of the historic war crime trials, often recollection an memories are poor, the records are inadequate and evidence is sparse
ReplyDeleteAre we now in need of a US style statute of limitations on some offences. How reasonable can it be to try any historic one on one offence which ultimately boils down to s/he said/did without concrete evidence - witnesses cannot be enough. On the other hand, how can anyone seriously defend themselves from an allegation dating back 10 plus years?
ReplyDeleteI don't think so.
DeleteWhere would that have left Savile had he lived a little longer? Free as a bird at home, leaving his lawyers to smother the civil claims - if they ever arose in the absence of the publicity around a police investigation.
Juries may need very clear direction as to the difficulties resulting from delay and their duty to acquit unless certain of guilt, but the criminal law should not ignore serious allegations simply because the truth may be hard to ascertain or the suspect has (if the allegation is true) succeeded in pulling the wool over people's eyes for fifty years.
I'm trying to understand the ratio between rhetoric and reasoned argument in your comment, You don't write for a newspaper do you?
DeleteOne 'victim' reported as having 'no actual memory' of the events on cross-examination. Now, who's wasting the court's time ?
ReplyDeleteThis is where it gets difficult. Whilst people who have suffered are entitled to justice, the risk of 'false memories' is significant - especially where the suspect is a high profile person receiving a lot of potentially influential media attention.
DeleteThere seems to be a trend thses days to accept anything a witness or victim says as gospel, when we all know that sometimes is not the case. Witnesses, victims and defendants all have variations on the truth and trying to decide what is what from 40, 50 or even 60 years ago is terribly difficult. In the days when corroburation was required these cases would never have got off the ground.
ReplyDeleteI do not subscribe to this new way of doing things. Putting witnesses through the mill just for the hell of it is not fair to them as in aged cases like this it is very unlikely a conviction will follow. That is not however any reason not to investigate the matters thoroughly.
No such trend on any benches I sit on.
DeleteOnly yesterday I sat on a trial which came down to her word the alleged victim, against his, the defendant. Her account sounded less plausible than his for a number of reasons and, as it had not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt, out he walked.
Of course the longer ago the offence the harder it is to remember but......
When I was about ten I was in our local park with a good friend. A boy, who we later put at about fifteen or sixteen when interviewed by the police we called, rode up to us on his bike. Cutting a long story short, he took the watch my friend was wearing. I'm now over sixty but I remember it as though it had just happened.
Unfortunately you only think you remember it as though it had just happened - your recollections may be flawed.
DeleteI witnessed a traffic accident and thought I remembered it perfectly a few months later but on consulting my contemporaneous notes there were details I had completely forgotten.
What people really remember well are the emotions they felt at the time. The details, order of events, things said, you may think you remember them perfectly but that may not be the case.
what I was trying to say, in elegantly, was that the Police and CPS seems to take as gospel anything a witness or victim says, regardless of how implausible it might be. They then kick off prosecutions which are doomed from the start- the very thing the CPS was set up to stop.
DeleteI agree that time in of itself is not necessarily a bar to prosecuting as long as there is a decent amount of reliable evidence, unlike thse cases which seem to have relied on rumor and inuendo backed up with a little guilt by association!
I have always struggled to understand how anyone - lacking physical evidence - could be found guilty "beyond reasonable doubt" of something alleged to have happened 40-50 years ago.
ReplyDeleteOver the years I have spoken to a few holocaust survivors. I definitely believe them when they say they can identify their guards all these years later.
DeleteRemember Demjanjuk, the chap convicted in Israel twenty years ago? The survivors were sure, absolutely sure, that they had the right man, that he had been at Treblinka and was nicknamed Ivan the Terrible.
DeleteAfter his conviction but before the appeal the USSR collapsed and evidence from KGB archives became available suggesting strongly (1) that another man was Ivan the Terrible and (2) that he had been at Sobibor as he claimed. Not an attractive defence but he won his appeal and was returned to the USA. (Subsequently he was de-naturalised and deported to Germany where he stood trial for crimes at Sobibor; was convicted; appealed; and died pending appeal).
The point is that the survivors were wrong; in good faith but wrong. You expect the defendant in the dock to be the perpetrator and your memory follows your expectation. Why else was dock ID prohibited in this country decades ago?
I have long felt that consideration should be given to a statute of limitations in criminal cases. The trouble is that it is very difficult to decide on an appropriate limitation period that would be fair to all parties.
ReplyDeleteAlmost any proposed limitation is going to be 'wrong' from somebody's point of view, which is why it is very unlikely that we are going to get any change here.
Limitation periods are variable in civil cases. (Examples : 3 years for personal injury claims, 6 years for most ofther civil claims, 12 years for adverse possession claims (etc.).) These limitation periods would all be too short for criminal liability. I would suggest not less than 25 years, maybe 30 years. After that, prosecution, as well as presenting evidential difficulties becomes oppressive.
So how does an advance in scientific process, like DNA, fit into this scheme ?
DeleteThree years for sexual offences, to end when the complaint is first made, followed by six months to charge. Non-extendable unless D is abroad. The time to run from the sixteenth birthday if the offence is said to have occurred before then. And the court to be required to dismiss any case (even if brought within those limits) if the passage of time makes it significantly harder for the defence to make out its case: if for example witnesses are dead or untraceable, or the locus in quo has been pulled down, built over, or rebuilt.
ReplyDeleteThe relentless march of cultural marxism might be impeded if ancient wrongs couldn't be aggressively aired.
ReplyDeleteThe church, marriage , education and so on might live to fight another day.
The prosecution process, which necessarily imposes great stress on the person at the heart of it, is not there for the aggressive airing of ancient wrongs, whether in opposition to cultural marxism or for any other purpose.
ReplyDeleteSomewhat off the point, but following an acquittal in a high profile case, at least we are spared the unedifying spectacle of a CPS representative appearing on TV from the court steps in the odious practice increasing being copied from across the Atlantic.
ReplyDeleteIndeed - but in the case of Watkins a CPS suit appeared on the box after he pleaded and the others were convicted demanding a severe sentence. Wholly inappropriate.
ReplyDeleteA major problem is the change in attitudes over the years. When I first started work it was quite acceptable to, say, put you arm around a girl's shoulders whilst she was sitting at her desk; now it would be considered sexual harassment. Surely we should judge anything in the past in the light of attitudes in the past and not compare them how one would react today.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely agree Andrew T about the regular appearances of cps and police appearing on the steps of court making a statement.
ReplyDeleteI must say I rather felt that the bringing of multiple - many quite minor - charges in these historic sex cases was a way to make mud stick and hoodwink the jury. It seems the jury have more sense.
I know it's a cliche, but this has to be done an a case by case basis. I had a long career prosecuting sexual offences and one case that stands out was an indecent assault that was over 40 years old, the complainant told her story as though it had happened yesterday, it had ruined her life. The defendant was convicted and sent to prison despite being an old man.
ReplyDeleteBearing in mind that a criminal prosecution is a lawsuit between the state (the Crown) and the Defendant, and was never designed or intended to 'right wrongs' - or, in modern parlance, provide "Justice for Tracey" (or whoever) - a question inevitably arises in relation to the case mentioned above as to whether justice was truly done in that case.
DeleteWas it really in the interests of the state (i.e.the maintenance of law and public order) to prosecute such an old offence?
In 50 years from now, what is acceptable today will be an offence.
ReplyDeleteAlso under the Human Rights Act, it must have been have been considered as an offence at the time of the alleged offence.
DeleteThe tragedy in this is that there will be genuine victims who's live have been affected by offences such as those charged - they know wether or not someone stuck their hands down their knickers, they know if they were raped or not but remembering the date will be nigh on impossible having struggled to put the episode behind them for years.
ReplyDeleteThere is of course those who were undoubtedly assaulted and to whom it made not one iota of difference to their lives but who felt the need to, justifiably in my mind, give their evidence to support the nature of the behaviour of the defendant - their ability to record details may be even less accurate.
People with whom I have discussed this regularly fail to see the point of some of the 'he once groped my tits 40 years ago' type of charges but they all go to prove the habits of the defendant back in the days.
DLT: 10 home wins, potentially two replays.
ReplyDelete