It's a long story how I came to find this article, so I'll skip that. But for once, celebrity news actually has me thinking about something that, well, isn't entirely stupid. I mean, maybe I am for not knowing the answer. But, hey, today's my day to learn something. To start with the story itself: Now, normally, it is amusing enough to see a police chief and prosecutor arguing over such a basic point, but the dispute has brought to light a proposition that I thought was an American myth about the Crown. While Mr. MacDonald did not go forward for technical reasons—e.g., lack of evidence—that is unsatisfactory to Sir Ian: See, when we were children, kids in my corner of the U.S. were taught that our legal system was set up as a counterpoint to the evil British way of doing things. What evil way? In England, they told us, you were guilty until you could prove yourself innocent. And while that was true in certain cases pertaining to the Colonies, I really could have sworn that England was not so ... um ... yeah. Sorry, I don't have a kind word for the guilty-until-proven-innocent bit. That part of our Revolutionary myth, at least, stuck. What the hell is Sir Ian talking about? And, hey, while we're on the subject of the British legal system, do you have the right to refuse to testify against yourself, and what are the implications of such a refusal on a verdict? Because in the United States, if that case came to trial, Ms. Moss would never take the stand, and the state, having no evidence aside from a picture, would simply be unable to meet the standard of evidence. Only a tailor-made jury would, under the American system, convict a defendant like that. ______________________ Notes: Associated Press. "Kate Moss should've been brought to trial: police". CTV.ca. June 6, 2008. http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080606/Moss_trial/20080606
As far as I understand it Ken MacDonald is right - in order for a charge to be raised, there needs to be proof positive that an offence has been committed -in the case of drugs this means the substances must be tested to prove what they are. At least that's what happened to everyone I know who has been busted. I suspect Blair is merely playing a political game - posturing to look tough on drugs and crime in general. I'm not entirely certain about the self-incrimination bit - certainly a jury / or magistrate in the case of a minor offence has to be convinced that the evidence proves you guilty beyond reasonable doubt - however Miranda rights where changed here a few years back by the Conservatives in one of their law and order drives to add the satement "If you fail to mention something during questioning that you later rely upon in court it may harm your defence" - effectively putting a dent in the right to remain silent.
Britain also permits double-jeopardy now. In essence: Britain is becoming more and more of a police state. Constant surveillance, presumption of guilt, double jeopardy, and no right to remain silent.
Advances in DNA profiling and other forensic technologies mean that, yes, cases can now be reopened and retried where vital new evidence comes to light. Should murderers and perpetrators of other serious crimes escape conviction just because certain things weren't known at the time of the initial trial? It's a complicated issue I know - but personally I don't think they should. Constant is an exaggeration, but we certainly have a lot of CCTV cameras. Law-abiding citizens like me find it somewhat reassuring to know that, if we're ever publicly robbed or assaulted, a bored security guard will be not watching it and recording it in grainy black and white. There's even a very small chance that the quality of the footage will be good enough to make it useable in court, and that the jury will see fit to convict the second grey blob on the left. There's no presumption of guilt. Innocent until proven guilty remains the maxim. Sir Ian - motormouth star of the OP - is therefore talking out of his behind. The right to remain silent remains. However, inferences may be drawn from this if you refuse to answer the accusations against you, fail to adequately account for the circumstances of your arrest (eg fail to explain why you were found in the back garden of a stranger's house at 4am with a screwdriver in your pocket) or if you rely in court upon evidence which you failed to mention at the time of your arrest. Hope this clears up some of your confusion.
You do of course know that a picture doesn't even prove that the defendant inhaled. All of this police state business actually breeds more crime, worse crimes, and a lot more corruption. And I don't know how they are burning surveillance cameras, but power to them for doing that.
Hmm. The law abiding citizen in me says, "Put 'em everywhere!" But the highly suspicious side of me says, "No fracking way." I can argue in circles on this issue because I also think that law enforcement has to be a mirror of the age they live in. Police cannot be denied a technology simply because we have a classic idea as to what police activity should be. To be certain, I do want them in every subway, airport, at high-traffic hubs, and on the freeways. Also, I do accept them as part of doing business in the corporate world where the individual companies have their own PTZ's and CCTV's. But, the idea of having a police camera at the end of my street corner, or even on most of them is a bit disconcerting. What I think people, (and in my case, Americans) are forgetting is that life is sorta-rough. Bad things happen. People get robbed. People get murdered. Sometimes bad people even blow stuff up. We've become so addicted to our antiseptic lifestyle that we are emotionally incapable of dealing with the harsh reality of existing in this very, very tenuous universe: bad shit happens and sometimes you can't do anything about it. Even trying to do something about it may very well beget results that are, in the long run, far worse than the horrors of the situation that begot the whole endeavor. It reminds me of a kid who got hit in the head (in my local community) by a baseball and died from the injuries. What resulted was absolute insanity: attempts to ban playing baseball by one group, attempts at re-engineering the garb warn by young baseball players, several lawsuits, annoying news coverage and people saying the most dangerous words in history: "The government needs to do something about this!" And thankfully, praise-god-in-his-many-forms-ingly, the Mayor and City Council did what they should have done, issued a statement saying something to the effect of: "Look, as tragic as this is, tough shit happens and sometime people die. It's unavoidable in life and everybody else shouldn't be denied the right to live their lives because of one fluke accident." Would that we all looked upon most things this way. At the end of the day, I'm inclined to think that if American citizens were truly worried about crime and terrorism we'd pay a little more attention to what goes on at home instead of obsessing about what "other" people do. Maybe... just maybe, actually start funding schools, shut down the bad ones, fire the shitty teachers, and spend time with the kids. It's a simple prescription that few, if any, Americans are ready to take. ~String
In the UK we are presumed innocent until proven guilty. WRT pop stars and drugs, even when found guilty they aren't punished enough. We have this twat called Pete Doherty who supposedly is a pop star, but really is just famous for being a drug addled loser, and constantly getting busted for possession. But depite repeated convictions, the loser has only served 13 days in jail. He should be on a three time loser life stretch. His girflriend is Kate Moss, who was the subject of the photo. Now, while it's fair to assume that if Doherty is a drug user, so if his girlfriend, and the photograph seems to support that, 'Sir' Ian Blair needs to wise up. He presided over the murder of Jean Charles de Menzes, over which no officer was charged, and now he wants to trample on habeus corpus. It's men like him that make me distrust the Police a little less each day. So the UK public might be pissed off with the seeming lack of action against repeated felons, and prefer something be done, but 'Sir' Ian Blair isn't going to win favour this way. He should urge the judiciary to hand down sentences which actually demonstrate that messing with drugs is a matter we take seriously, not just fining people and letting them go, repeatedly. Anyway, the case in question wouldnt fly, the CPS and MacDonald, are doing sterling work, smacking down 'Sir' Ian Blair, and keeping British law on track. Hoorah for the CPS.
The conventional figure that gets quoted is that the average citizen appears on a CCTV 300 times every day. Whether accurate or not, you get the idea. I routinely behave in a furtive manner when I realise I am on a CCTV, on the basis that if I am doing something wrong I can demonstate later that I always act suspiciously. It's who I am.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Which are constantly on. With the ATM cameras, cameras in stores and the CCTV system you can often have a whole days movements followed. Law abiding citizens like me are concerned because 1) one of the reasons many people who believe in democracy want to limit these kinds of things is because of the rich history of totalitarian states. We are willing to take some losses to make sure that the state does not have too much power. A fascist state would have its actions and goals made much easier the more surveillance it has. Stasi, for example, would have had cameras all over East Germany if they'd been in after the internet revolutions. And it would have helped them immensely. 2) advocates of surveillance think about the issue in the most simplisitic terms. "If you are innocent, there is no problem." Actually that is naive. Humans are affected in many ways by the way they are treated. If you take two groups of school children who have the same abilities and tell one teacher the class is smart and the other teacher the class is stupid. The latter group will do significantly worse on standaradized tests after a while. And it will not be easy to pinpoint what that latter teacher did to cause this. My gut feeling is that if you monitor everyone as if they are potential criminals, you not only put a powerful tool for state abuse in government hands, you also affect the way people experience themselves. Some people say it will lead to more crime. I am not sure this is the case. My sense is it fosters a lack of self-respect and that this will affect society and individuals in a myriad of negative ways. Further your defense and the general defense of excessive surveillance has no limit. If police could stop anyone on the street and do a full body search, I promise you it would make it harder to sell drugs on the street. But.... If police could confiscate anyone's computer it would cut down on a variety of crimes, also. At least short term. However, we would be losing something as human beings - even if the state and the police never abused this power. We would be less.
As Ophiolite pointed out the oft-quoted figure for CCTV appearances is '300 times a day'. So it's not 'constant' then. Which was my point. But anyway, these 300 appearances rely on fully-functioning cameras. In reality, many of them are broken, or not recording - as the woman whose house was burgled in my street found to her cost. Even when they are functioning, the quality of the recording is - as I hinted at earlier - often so poor that they're of no practical use. Grainy black and white images at the best of times, and the skip-frame technique used for video compression means that vital moments are often missed. As police investigating the Milly Dowler case found to their cost. And yet there have been equally notable successes - CCTV proved tremendously useful in capturing David Copeland, the Brixton nail-bomber, and in the Jamie Bulger case (can you imagine how much time would have been lost searching for a phantom paedophile if CCTV hadn't shown that his abductors were two 10-year-old boys?). What do you think is the likelihood of Britain abandoning it's principles of democracy, justice, it's 'sense of fair play', etc., and turning into a totalitarian state anytime soon. I grant you that we're as prone to embarrassing lapses as any other democratic nation - but seriously now. No democracy and justice aren't naturally-occurring phenomena, yes we must be ever-watchful.. but I do think you're guilty of slight hysteria here. Contrary to what you claim, there certainly is a limit to how far I and others are prepared to allow the dark forces of law and order to interfere with our everyday lives. I certainly wouldn't be prepared to meekly submit to routine body searches all round without very, very good reason (it would have to be such a good reason in fact that I can't currently imagine under what circumstances I would consider it necessary and permissible). As for the rest of your commentary, you seem to be suggesting that CCTV surveillance has unfortunate psychological consequences for the public. Well: if it makes some of us feel a little bit guilty when we notice them (personally, I tend not to), and if it makes others amongst us fear that it's the first step on the road to totalitarianism (as I've said, I feel that it's not quite time to start sounding the alarms yet), and if it has other adverse psychological effects.. I feel that these are bearable, and that the good outweighs the bad. I should add that most CCTV systems are privately- rather than state-owned (though, of course, the local Stasi can request access). So what are we to do: ban banks and other businesses from protecting their property and their premises? I work in social housing. At my workplace, we have 17 cameras busily eyeing the comings and goings of our 30-odd young residents. I've not heard a single person complain about their presence in five years (and believe me, they are vocal and forthright in complaining about everything and anything that doesn't please them). The only time the cameras are ever mentioned is when one of our residents has something go missing, or has their peace disturbed, or is assaulted (rare, but it happens). On such occasions, they are grateful for Big Brother's presence. Don't by any means let my intimate personal experience in the matter shake your generalised philosophical convictions - but do consider whether you're perhaps worrying exessively and unnecessarily, and whether, consequently, you are slightly overstating your case. In many respects, I share your concerns - just not your fears.
tiassa you were really taught that the burden of proof is on the acused in a westminster comon law sociaty? Thats just not true, in Britan, australia, NZ, canada ect the burden of proof is on the crown (or other procicuting agency) in criminal law and on the plaintif in civil law. Rember tiassa that if you want to know about the british system all you have to do is ask a canadian because all the legal systems for the comonwealth nations (ok in general, wouldnt include zimabwee right now) are so similar that UK, NZ and canadian case law is used in our high court and i have definitly heard of an australian case used in the british high court used as precident. The reason US law is not used the same way is 2 fold. The first being the ovious that we dont have the same consitutional amendments as you do and the second being that the Australian judges dont think the US system is consistant enough. You can find a case surporting any argument under US case law where as precident rules the comon law systems. Futher more in England people can apeal right the way to the eroupian court of human rights (BTW question for a british person, does this mean that the privy council has been abolishes as the highest court in the land?)
Well, not exactly That's a bit technical. No, most of the people teaching that point of history probably aren't familiar with the phrase "Westminster Common Law". The thing is that history is taught as propaganda in the United States. The point exploits the use of Admiralty Courts in the American colonies.
Technically your right. Westminster is our PARLIMENTRY proccess, the legal one is refered to as the common law system. Ie that rather than rights being writen into the consitution they come down through 100's of years of common law (precident) as well as statutes. For instance until howard got scarared that the homosexual comunity would win a case marrage was definined as man and women not by statetutes (laws made by parliment) but rather through precident set by the british courts and then into the decisions made by the high court. If you have ever studied aborigional rights you would have come across the marbo case which was the case that overturned the deleration of "terra nulius" (if you want to know more about this i can continue in another thread). This wasnt based on any statutes but rather relied on interpritation of previous cases though out the time since habious courpus (i think, bells would be able to give you more specific infomation than i can)
