A former Crown Prosecution Service chief has warned Rishi Sunak his new law to quash Post Office Horizon convictions en masse will see some guilty people exonerated.Have you forgotten a long-held tenet of our justice system, then, that it's better for 10 guilty men to go free?
It's called 'Blackstone's Ratio, I'm sure you must have come across it, even in an organisation as debased as the Crown Prosecution Service had sadly become...
Legislation will be introduced within weeks to enact the blanket overturning of convictions - which crucially clears names entirely, unlike a pardon. Lord Macdonald gave a word of warning as he told Times Radio the move was 'constitutionally awkward'.I share some of the unease with how the government is pandering to the publicity raised by this drama series too, but this is just pure sophistry:
'... and secondly it will mean, I think, that some people who are in fact guilty will be exonerated,' he said. 'That's the price the government is prepared to pay and that's really I think a political judgment as much as anything else.'No, it's not. It's something your own organisation should have had at its heart. But it colluded with the Post Office to hound these people unlawfully. So you can warn all you like, no-one's listening, and that's on you.
Do they really need more legislation? Sure they can do what they want with what they already have?
ReplyDeleteAny conviction which relied on evidence from the Horizon system is unsafe at best. Do weant this to drag on forever? quash the lot, punish the real guilty instead, perjury, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, plenty of charges to go round
ReplyDeleteI'm all for this but there was interesting thought bought up a reporter yesterday. What if Parliament decided to vacate all the convictions of MP's who cheated on their expenses and got prosecuted?. They are so corrupt and out of touch it's a possibility.
ReplyDeleteJaded
"Do they really need more legislation?"
ReplyDeleteIt's the inevitable 'we must do something, this is something, let's do it!' that we've come to expect.
"Any conviction which relied on evidence from the Horizon system is unsafe at best."
Indeed, so let the usual system run its course.
"They are so corrupt and out of touch it's a possibility."
I would never bet against that!