Thursday, September 21, 2006
Thought Crime
The Times reports here on the conviction of a BNP member for racially abusing an Asian woman.
Now I have no truck with the BNP because of both their racism and leftie policies. What is extraordinary about this case is that there were in effect no witnesses, the Asian woman has never been identified or come forward. The person who reported the "crime" (Mrs Rees) was a receptionist who took down the car details; significantly for the court: "She thought that she heard the words ... " "“But I could not swear to the words I did hear.”". In other words as I would put it: "You don't actually know if this happened or not?"
The best this evidence can ever be is "I think there may have been a crime", no matter how unpleasant the crime, now matter how much we want such perpetrators punished, we don't even know that a crime has occurred. Now McGlynn who was convicted chose not to say a great deal and I'd agree it all looks very suspicious, but remember, we don't know for sure that a crime has been committed.
The magistrates seem to have gotten all mixed up: "The magistrates said that Mrs Rees’s evidence had been compelling and McGlynn’s less so because of his refusal to say anything at the time of his arrest. That led them to conclude that he was guilty beyond reasonable doubt." Now of course in the normal course of events they'd be entitled to assume that, providing of course that Mrs Rees had said "I heard him say those words", but she didn't she simply "thought she heard those words", it isn't even close to "beyond reasonable doubt" that a crime was committed.
Mrs Rees did receive a community safety award (before the court case) from South Wales Police, and I don't know what the criteria are for such awards, but all she did was take down a registration number and possibly visually identified McGlynn. It doesn't seem a great deal to qualify for an award. Would everyone who takes down a registration number and identifies a suspect qualify for an award?
Now I have no truck with the BNP because of both their racism and leftie policies. What is extraordinary about this case is that there were in effect no witnesses, the Asian woman has never been identified or come forward. The person who reported the "crime" (Mrs Rees) was a receptionist who took down the car details; significantly for the court: "She thought that she heard the words ... " "“But I could not swear to the words I did hear.”". In other words as I would put it: "You don't actually know if this happened or not?"
The best this evidence can ever be is "I think there may have been a crime", no matter how unpleasant the crime, now matter how much we want such perpetrators punished, we don't even know that a crime has occurred. Now McGlynn who was convicted chose not to say a great deal and I'd agree it all looks very suspicious, but remember, we don't know for sure that a crime has been committed.
The magistrates seem to have gotten all mixed up: "The magistrates said that Mrs Rees’s evidence had been compelling and McGlynn’s less so because of his refusal to say anything at the time of his arrest. That led them to conclude that he was guilty beyond reasonable doubt." Now of course in the normal course of events they'd be entitled to assume that, providing of course that Mrs Rees had said "I heard him say those words", but she didn't she simply "thought she heard those words", it isn't even close to "beyond reasonable doubt" that a crime was committed.
Mrs Rees did receive a community safety award (before the court case) from South Wales Police, and I don't know what the criteria are for such awards, but all she did was take down a registration number and possibly visually identified McGlynn. It doesn't seem a great deal to qualify for an award. Would everyone who takes down a registration number and identifies a suspect qualify for an award?
Tags: justice, liberty, rights, freedom
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
