No doubt Jack of Kent (who Tweeted it on Saturday) will be posting something soon.
It was unfortunate the story broke on the same day that the police were whining about this:
Facebook is wrecking criminal trials, according to detectives.Well, that might be annoying, I'll grant you, but I'm not sure what, if anything, you could do about it.
Victims and witnesses using the social networking site to identify a suspect are jeopardising justice, police have warned.
The National Detectives Forum, a specialist unit which advises the Police Federation, has revealed that a number of trials have collapsed after victims and witnesses played detective, browsing Facebook and Twitter to find a suspect.
Oh. Wait...
Now detectives are calling for legislation to prevent victims carrying out their own inquiries on the web to track down offenders.Fantastic! How would that work, exactly? Do you even have any idea?
One officer from Leicestershire Police told Police Review: 'There seems to be a gap in legislation and in the understanding of the Crown Prosecution Service and courts that there is an entire community which is on Facebook and Twitter and everything else.'And there's a similar lack of understanding in the police
Lord Judge issued new guidance at the Court of Appeal that jurors needed to understand that 'although the internet is part of their daily lives, the case must not be researched there'.So, I wonder how the Met can justify publishing the details of sex workers. Isn't that going to similarly jeopardise any future case?
Appeals are starting to reach the courts where defendants claim their trials were jeopardised by jurors resorting to information from personal computers, mobile phones and social networking sites.
Jurors will now be warned about the internet in addition to the traditional instruction that they must not discuss their case with family or friends.
5 comments:
Yet they wring their hands and complain about legal problems and the HRA when the subject of posting pictures of violent nutters, burglars, robbers etc comes up. A clear case of 'disproportionality' - a word over used by ACPO. ALso, whatever happened to the notion of 'sex workers' as victims? Eh? Also, why are the City of London Police such dicks?
Maybe they have read too many comics and think they are Judge Dread, they ARE the law and can do whatever they want.
If they do something it must be right because they did it, or other circular, self-justifying logic.
Where to start?
Some cases rely on the victim picking the offender out on an ID parade. If the victim has already seen photos of the offender, the Defence could claim that the victim identified the offender only because he/she saw a photo previously. The ID, and the case would be pretty much out of the window.
We could argue whether this is right or wrong but it is what happens in Court regularly.
The problem with Jury members looking up the defendant on Face book, is the possibility that they will discover something about the defendant that will influence the result - either way.
I am not sure what is happening in London. The sub text of the Police statement 'The asbos against the Newham women had been used as a last resort because they were persistent offenders, and that decisions to publicise the identities of people issued with asbos were made on a case-by-case basis,' seems to suggest that the women have ASBOS, although that does not seem likely.
The Police Senior Officers are ignoring/defying The Home Office over 'targets'. Get ready for even more instances of double standards before the inevitable showdown.
Can you not see pictures of prostitutes willingly displayed on the internet.
It is called advertising.
As for personal details - how personal can you get?
"Yet they wring their hands and complain about legal problems and the HRA when the subject of posting pictures of violent nutters, burglars, robbers etc comes up. "
Yup! Full of contradictions, this one...
"If they do something it must be right because they did it, or other circular, self-justifying logic."
Indeed.
There must have been a right old ding-dong between the Sex Crimes (Photography) Unit and those anon mentions, who regard them as 'victims', behind closed doors...
"The Police Senior Officers are ignoring/defying The Home Office over 'targets'. Get ready for even more instances of double standards before the inevitable showdown."
We live in intersting times, as the old Chinese curse has it!
"Can you not see pictures of prostitutes willingly displayed on the internet. "
I believe you can, with a little searching, see ANYTHING on the internet... ;)
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