@afneil But I thought you supported fascism? I mean, you've had your face so far up Nigel Farage's ass at times, I've wondered if you'd come up for air.
Always wanted to say that, I just don't have legal
One of the biggest misconceptions in miscarriage of justice cases is that a failed appeal proves guilt. It doesn’t.
History tells a very different story.
The Birmingham Six were eventually cleared after 16 years.
The Guildford Four after 14 years.
Sally Clark after 4 years.
Andy Malkinson after 19 years.
Peter Sullivan after 38 years.
Ollie Campbell after 33 years.
Justin Plummer after 27 years.
Tom Hayes after 10 years.
In almost every one of these cases, appeals were refused before the convictions were eventually overturned. Some applications to the CCRC were refused multiple times before the cases were finally referred back to the courts.
A refused appeal is not proof that a conviction is safe. It simply means the legal threshold for overturning that conviction had not yet been met on the evidence before the court at that time.
The justice system did recognised its own mistakes - but often only after years, or even decades, of persistence.
Anyone claiming “he’s guilty because he lost his appeal” is ignoring the long history of wrongful convictions that followed exactly the same path.
THE KNIFE FROM THE POUCH WASN’T MISSING.
This is a simple point, but an important one.
On 14 April 2004, police took a knife pouch from Luke Mitchell’s home. The pouch was empty.
After the search, Corinne found the knife that belonged to that pouch in a plastic bag left under the table alongside the dog’s water bowl. That same night, she gave the knife to Nigel Beaumont and told him the police took the pouch but left the knife behind.
Beaumont kept the knife for months before eventually producing it and making a statement confirming he had been given it by Corinne on 14 April 2004, the very same day they took the pouch.
So at some point, the police knew the knife had been found and was no longer “missing”.
Yet the knife continues to be described as missing to this day.
Why?
If the police learned that the knife had been located, why was the original assumption never corrected?
The knife wasn’t missing.
The pouch was empty. The knife was found. It was handed to Beaumont. And months later, it was produced.
That is the chronology.
And it matters.
Now that the #ockendenreport has been released, is this yet another nail in the coffin of the Lucy Letby conversations. Just what does one have to do to get a fair trial in this condemned country? #letby