Celebrities, Skewed Law and Privacy

Changes in the law in October 2012 have meant that many defendants who don’t qualify for legal aid are now liable for their own legal costs even when acquitted.

Given the expense of retaining a legal defence it is suspected (by members of the legal profession apparently), that some defendants have weighed this onerous financial impact against what they perceive as the ‘lesser of two evils’ by pleading guilty.

After all, if the cost of proving your innocence is greater than the consequences of pleading guilty and you are at a stage in life where a criminal record isn’t likely to make a difference to the way you live, a person would do well to take time to consider their options.

The principle that the loser pays the winners’ costs has been fundamental to English law and was the safeguard that prevented litigators and prosecutors from launching actions on a whim.

In the UK, we presume innocence until proven guilty yet this new system proposes that even when proven innocent, the defendant stands to lose. If we are convicting innocent people because they can’t afford legal representation then the new system is dangerously wrong and we are employing a system of justice for those who can afford it and rough justice for those who can’t.

I am not an apologist for criminals of any kind or in any way. I trust in the justice system of our country to safely convict criminals in the vast majority of cases, based on evidential proof. There are always going to be those who are wrongly convicted and whilst my heart goes out to them, there is nothing I can do to alter the fact.

The purpose of my rant?

I’m shocked at the intense public divide of opinion in the prosecutions of Dave Lee Travis, Bill Roache, Stuart Hall and other celebrities who have been very publically ‘roasted’. . I’m not so much interested that these defendants have been convicted or acquitted as concerned they have been judged fairly and correctly. If only we had that confidence in the justice system, perhaps people wouldn’t need to vent their opinions with such vitriol.

I’ve heard people talking, I read the papers etc.. and there is such a chasm between those berating the authorities for bringing these cases to court in the first place and those whose comments include;  ‘guilty as hell’ , ‘a guilty man got off’ and ‘confiscate his house and assets’, ‘put his wife on the street to die’ and ‘should die in jail’.

The truth is, we don’t actually, physically, absolutely know that Bill Roache and Mr Travis are innocent in the same way we don’t actually, physically, absolutely know that Mr Hall is guilty – or a victim himself,  in the way I’ve described above.

We’ve not been privy to the court papers and interview transcripts and we certainly weren’t ‘there’ when these things ‘happened’, so what right do we have to be so judgemental? We actually ‘know’ nothing and for this reason, we do have the right to expect our justice system to balance the scales evenly.

It should not matter if a person has wealth or none at all. We should all have the right to defend ourselves without penalty – until such time as proven guilty when penalties should apply.

We should all expect privacy, only the verdict being made public - along with transcripts and notes. I looked at Oscar Pistorius on the news this morning. Surrounded by cameras and media, his life being paraded, every expression analysed. It is for the South African court to decide his guilt, not the media, not us. His Prosecution should be the business of barristers, a judge and jury. If he is found guilty his life should then become the property of the state. Until then, leave the man alone.

We should all be able to believe in the incorruptibility of our justice system and stop being encouraged by the media to become judge and jury ourselves.