Robbery trial collapses after judge finds victim ‘too believable’ .
on 01/14/2009 at 12:20 PM
Something isn’t right with this case ...
Mrs Dawson, who has two teenage children, was attacked as she took a driving lesson in Southmead, Bristol in December 2007.
Her student Jodie Dickinson, 26, was practicing hill starts when a gang surrounded her car.
The gang smashed her rear window with a brick, reached in and grabbed her Hewlett Packard laptop before running off.
Mrs Dawson, who still runs her driving school, chased him and asked for her computer back but he clutched it in his arms and walked away.
She then returned to her car after she spotted one of the youths rifling through her glove box. She was punched twice, and later identified Perks as one of the robbers, the court heard.
Ok, in America we say you’d “give” a driving lesson, not “take” one. That part doesn’t matter. But Dawson was not alone in the car; Jodie Dickinson, 26, was with her.
Gang. Smash. Grab. Dawson chases, crook gives her lip and walks off. Dawson goes back to car. Finds other punk going through the glove box. Where is Jodie Dickinson???
Where was Dickinson’s testimony? Did she fail to pick the punk out of the lineup? Did she refuse to testify? Did she recant her testimony? Was no forensic evidence collected at all? The reporting seems incomplete.
PS - and where is this £250 award coming from anyway? Do the judges over there have a justice fund they can dip into to hand out cash to the aggrieved, or to those who have courage? (Hey judgey baby - I chased a rat away from the garbage. It was scary. Can I have £20?)
Perks had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to burgle for his involvement in a gang which stole and sold on motorcycles and prestige cars.
Gosh, English English is so different. Our past tense of plead is plead, which we pronounce as “pled”. And that word “on” would never be used there. “which sold on”? Never. Sounds really strange. “that stole and sold” would be correct, though “which stole and sold” is common but probably less correct, since this is a restrictive clause (ie no commas).
I love to read the English newspapers, and watch the English Parliament on TV, just to experience the language being used as it ought to be. Keep the standards high!
And this is beyond disgusting. I spent 12 years of my military career in England, and the more I hear of it now, the happier I am to have PCSed in ‘94.
Ok, here’s a bit of an update, from another paper. Which includes her picture, since she’s a decent looking blonde with a curvy body. (gosh, that wouldn’t sway the jury would it?)
The point made in that article is that the judge STOPPED the trial. He had no right to do such a thing. Charges were made, the defendant plead Not Guilty, it goes to trial. By jury. That’s it, game over, done. The jury hears the evidence and decides. NOT THE JUDGE.
North-East Somerset Labour MP Dan Norris branded the judge’s ruling ‘farcical’ and said it set a dangerous precedent.
He said: ‘Surely a jury should be allowed to hear the facts and make a judgment.
‘A judge can advise on the weight with which they should treat evidence, but to throw it out altogether is bonkers.
‘Not only is it terrible for this poor woman but it sends a bad message to criminals. It is basically saying that as long as it’s your word against theirs, no matter how trustworthy they are, you are likely to get away with it.’
97 out of 97 comments there agree: dump the judge.
> The jury hears the evidence and decides. NOT THE JUDGE.
Not necessarily, Drew. I was studying Canadian law on how trials work (related since it spawns very closely off the British), and here there’s a trial by Judge and a trial by Judge AND Jury where the Jury judges the facts of the case, and the Judge deals with matters-of-law. It isn’t all in the jury’s hands like it is in the American system.
I like the American system better because it puts ALL of the power in the 12 men and women judging, which is the way it should be.
> 97 out of 97 comments there agree: dump the judge.
Probably not possible unless you remove him from the gene pool, and I swear, if these kind of injustices continue, that’s exactly what a fed up populace will start doing.
And as to those who would cry that the people taking the law into their own hands is vigilantism: The law was never solely owned by the police, or the courts, or the legislators. The law was ALWAYS in the hands of the people, delegated to the aforementioned groups as a profession. Those professions have forgotten that they are merely hired help. They must occasionally be reminded of this fact by a very, very angry populace who is willing to rise up and throw the bums out (or string ‘em up), and try to reset the scales of justice back to equilibrium.
01/14/2009 at 01:28 PM
01/17/2009 at 09:56 AM
