Criminal Justice Presently from The Viewpoint of a Retired Criminal Lawyer

Our criminal courts deal with ordinary persons. The English & Welsh legal profession represent the Crown and the accused. This process will falter if it has no proper aim and purpose. I say the Death Penalty supplies that raison d’etre in murder trials and ancillary to murder cases. We should face up to this reality if we are to live with sincerity inside and outside these criminal courts. Then we may truly utter: -

“God’s Law is the law of the English & Welsh Monarchy.”

1. The Start

What can I say? My readers know my position. The modern London and English criminal jurisprudence is weakened gravely by the current non-Capital Punishment for murder and related crimes regime. Why do I say this? Because like it or not this Death Sentence would provide real vigour and muscle to the whole criminal justice enforcement process from the public to the police force upwards in England & Wales

I don’t speak of correctness. I mean the appalling lassitude hemming in our law enforcers which even wrongly affects the esteemed Director herself. The political leadership is the causative factor in my view of this status quo.

2. The Topical Cases

They are decades old and what is worse, with some exceptions; they are of only medium seriousness. Criminal justice has always meant murder trials, such as the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six. Those cases were back in the mid 1970’s. What have we had since? Patrick Magee and the Brighton Hotel bomb in Thatcher’s years. There have been numerous Republican Irish bombings and almost no prosecutions for outrages in the 1970’s and 1980’s e.g. the Hyde Park atrocious bombing, Regents Park and the Royal Marines Music School in Deal, Kent both explosions and Airey Neave MC assassination, Gordon Hamilton – Fairlie murder in North London by an explosion, the Knightsbridge bomb and several others at least one fatal and some non-fatal, but all very grave explosions and on the Mainland. I argue such cases are so grave they take precedence and should not be blocked.

Our criminal justice has become unbalanced to pursue these non-fatal historic cases of indecency, yet leave these bombers untouched. The evidence in the indecency cases depends on very long term memory – all well and good if admitted by the accused. But why have the allegations taken so long to surface? On account of fear to report we are told – granted. Nevertheless police resources are limited. We may pick off these historic sexual cases one by one. But cold blooded murder is being ignored in the 1970’s and 1980’s and even later e.g. the lorry bomb by Irish Republicans in the 1990’s in Canary Wharf killing a newsvendor in his kiosk. The Warrington bin bomb killed a child and a young person again set off by the Irish Republicans in the 1990’s. There have been no prosecutions for the Canary Wharf bomb or the Warrington Lancashire atrocity. So far we have seen no historic murder cases in court out of the sexual abuse historic files.

We are simply not seeing it through for the obvious murders by Irish terrorists. Are you telling me these Irish Republican historic murder cases cannot be brought to justice due to lack of evidence? No the English police have been told to lay off these Irish terrorists in so many words and concentrate on the historic sex abuse cases. We have made the wrong election I submit. Yes pursue all who take innocent life I agree. It will be very difficult to find many murders in the historic sex abuse cases pool and even less capable of prosecution. If you can find the historic murder and culprit in this abuse group I am the first to say bring the case to trial, but it is a long shot.

I also say these Irish Republican historic terrorist murderers should not be ignored. Their atrocities were glaring and they should also be prosecuted if our powers that be allow it. Presently the Director is “pushed” to prosecute the sexual abuse historic cases by her political superiors. The Good Friday Accords (1998-2000) are the supposed excuse for not prosecuting these Irish Republican terrorists and a very timid and pathetic one too. The Hyde Park bomb accused was in the news in London recently until allowed out of court to go home. What a travesty!

3. What Is My Thesis?

I am afraid without the Death Penalty we are emasculated as a nation. There is no point prosecuting murderers to determinate prison terms when they deserve the Death Sentence and no less. It makes our murder justice mathematical and irrelevant. You cannot treat innocent human life in that way. Such life is beyond price and value. The victim’s soul will still be saved but what about his or her precious life on Earth? That is why he or she was born and brought up to adult life. Life should not be cut short by the whim and calculation of the murderer. That is the worst crime of all and cries out for justice and the Death Sentence.

I know several senior judges who are sympathetic to my argument, but for obvious reasons they may not declare that support publicly. Where ever there is murder the Death Sentence should await the murderer, or our criminal justice becomes a charade and a game of how quickly will the guilty murderer be released. Quite simply we have severed the head and the antlers of our criminal justice and left the dead stag’s head on the wall with its antlers. The Death Sentence is represented by that once proud monarch of the glen fastened as a trophy of sport to the wall of the stately home. I cannot say too strongly we have tied our hands behind our backs in murder criminal trials by this abolitionist regime we have ushered in. You do not approach murder trials with the risk the accused may be hanged half heartedly, be you for Crown or Defendant as Counsel. Even the trial judge of such capital trials should be vitalised by the great essence of these trials.

The Death Sentence hovers over these trials in every sense now and to come. We simply do not have the gravitas as a Country in regard to murder cases as we have made murder like any other crime i.e. a limited prison term in truth. Murder cases can only regain this ultimate presence and tension in court if the Death Sentence is restored.

4. Conclusion

We have the historic cases both sexual and terrorists – and I mean all these murders about which no stone should be left unturned. We measure ourselves against the Final Sentence. Do we support it or are we beset by doubts and indecisiveness? I actually go so far as to say the whole process of criminal justice may grind to a halt in England & Wales in murder cases and ancillary to murder trials as things stand. We have released the convicted Irish Republican murderers for the Guildford crimes and Birmingham crimes in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s for incorrect reasons even if their release was obviously required. We have had several goes at the Stephen Lawrence murderers before convicting two accused. The Jeremy Thorpe murder conspiracy trial (1979) resulted in all the conspirators acquitted despite none giving evidence.

So many Irish Republican terrorists have never been proceeded against for murders and bombings on our Mainland since the 1970’s. Our criminal justice process controllers do not generate my confidence. We are not properly proceeding where we should and where we do proceed we do not achieve the result first time. The Death Sentence is the medicine to make our justice once more what it was, namely Jury Trial and real judicial independence and strength on sentence.