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Do you remember Diesel ...who is now doing life?
No? I remember some pretty heated debates on these forums about sex and gender but no-one saying shit like that!
Steelgate was a very scary looking guy who said he should be entitled to take sex whenever and wherever ...cos no one would give it willingly that entitled him to take it ...it was a human need ...he believed this shit!
Diesel was an American white supremist and his views on women weren't quite as bad as Steelys but wern't pleasant ...he ended up on weapons and explosive charges ...and in the past had connections with the assination of martin luther or some such person ...nasty piece of woork.
There are a lot of people who believe that women are partly to blame, or that the important thing is to prevent the man being punished if he is innocent. Many people I know have that view, to differing extents, and I disagree with all of them. None of them would deny that it is serious or say it's a myth.
Honestly though, I'm happy he's said that. Too many people have forgotten how similar the BNP are to the Nazis. Hopefully a few people will wake up and the BNP will lose the popularity they've somehow gained.
Yeah.
At least they are being honest and open about being a bunch of evil cunts.
You can lock me up anywhere with him :flirt:
This is a really peculiar comment - are you saying it's not important to prevent miscarriages of justice / wrongful convictions? It's better for one guilty man to walk free rather than one innocent man to be in prison, don't you think?
Yes, but is it better twenty guilty men walk free rather than one innocent goes to prison?
Yes.
I dunno. Bit of a tangent there? My argument is that in the case of a criminal prosecution, we have an 'innocent until proven otherwise' system, and it should remain so. With the media, many people assume guilt based on sometimes little more than hearsay, which means we have to remain vigilant of wrongful convictions. Which is why, a jury should always be certain (beyond any reasonable doubt) that the guy is guilty.
As has been said before it is hard to prove in the case of rape, but I really don't think the solution is lowering the burden of proof as that means more innocent people will go to jail.
I was thinking, there must be a line somewhere. You could say, is it better 100,000 guilty men walk free vs. 1 innocent go to prison. If that's the case, then lets abolish the legal system and just have no punishments, as then there is no risk whatsoever of an innocent man going to prison.
I mean, silly example, it's just what went through my head.
Might as well just do away with trials and let everyone go free then as you are looking for something unrealistic. You are never going to get a system where there is no miscarriages of justice until we reach some utopia of human perfection. In the meantime how do you deal with rapists being let free to cause misery and suffering?
This is getting creepy - on my last post on another thread I quote you and then scroll down and see MoK has agreed with me. On this thread I quote MoK and scroll down to see you have agreed with me :nervous:
It really depends on the system, there are extremes either way.
If you have a system like the West Mids had in the seventies where there are a number of wrongful convictions then it's bad and a complete failure. If you have one where tens of thousands of guilty men go free then that is bad and a failure too.
However, the system we have were guilt has to be proven is the best one. We should assume innocence until there is enough evidence to show beyone reasonable doubt that this is the case. Yes it leads to large numbers of guilty people walking free, but a society that doesn't protect the innocent really doesn't have much justice anyway.
There will always be the odd conviction that is "unsafe", I'd like to think that it couldn;t happen but I cannot think of a single system where it will be prevented, but we should always be aiming for that ideal.
I think I answered the rest of your post in my previous response, but to this I say, you gather evidence, get it right this time and convict the guilty person. You don't grab the next person walking by and bung them in jail.
I'm not sure I'm saying we should. However, a system where only 5% of people are convicted is as broken as one where innocent people go to jail.
I'd be happy with a 50:50, so to protect one innocent man one guilty goes free. But I'm not happy with a system where to protect one innocent man, nineteen guilty go free - especially when the cost of that may be that it is my wife, mum or sisters who will have to pay the price.
We have a system where only 5% of people who are suspected of rape are convicted. The system is clearly broken, particularly given that the Home Office's own figures show the false reporting rate for rape is between 2% and 5% of complaints. Even assuming a third of women who report rape are mistaken or lying (which is a ridiculously high figure) that still means 60%-65% of people walking free from court are rapists who will attack again and will attack my wife, your daughter, my sister or your grandmother.
It's fair to say that if the conviction process is tightened up what will happen is that more rapists will go to prison, not more innocent men. To try and argue otherwise is ludicrous.
If we can increase the effectiveness (i.e. anonymous trials on both sides, victim never having to confront attacker, specilialist rape trials and prosecuters - I'm not a legal person but I think these would help) without taking an easy option of saying to the jury 'if you think he probably did on balance, then you must say he is guilty' vs the current 'if you think he did it beyond all reasonable doubt'. If he says he had sex with a girl and it was consensual, she said it wasn't but has no evidence that it wasn't, then there is a very reasonable doubt as to whether the man did it. We can all make our minds up (and very often the media does) and I'm in no doubt plenty of those who walk free are actually guilty, but in a court it has to be proven beyond doubt so we can be sure (as sure as we reasonably can be) that the person we are sending to prison is guilty.
In legal theory the burden of proof is "without reasonable doubt". The definition of reasonable has been discussed a million times and was pretty much defined in a case called Wednesbury.
In practice, of course, juries consider the fact that the woman hasn't gone to pieces to be a "reasonable" doubt. They consider the fact she was wearing a short skirt to be a "reasonable" doubt. They consider the fact she had a few drinks to be a "reasonable" doubt. They consider the fact that she wasn't beaten black and blue to be a "reasonable" doubt. The police, solicitors, judges and barristers are just as bad.
Making people understand that wearing a short skirt is not a "reasonable" doubt as to the truth of the complainant's story is NOT "lowering" the burden of proof. Making people understand that not all rape victims go to pieces is not "lowering" the burden of proof. It is not a reasonable doubt at all. It is keeping rapists out of prison and on the streets, free to rape again.
I agree with making the implementation of legal framework better, but I don't agree with changing it. I hope that clarifies my position. We should still start a case with innocent until proven guilty, and making sure an innocent doesn't go to jail is still one of the top priorities. Changing this as some people want will do more harm than good.
Rape is quite a technical case, the legal system could cater a bit to make it fairer. But it is a social problem too.
I don't know. Either way lives will be destroyed. Of course people have to be careful in these cases, and not just believe the victim, but I find it strange that many people I know believe that people shouldn't be found guilty the first time they're arrested for rape, because they might not have done it, and they would prefer that he is released and rapes a few other people then arrested, because then they would know that he's guilty. As far as I know rape is the only crime that has to be proven beyond all doubt, rather than beyond all reasonable doubt.
I agree with you that the idea someone shouldn't be convicted because it's their first offence is preposterous. I thought in the first post you meant that making sure innocents aren't convicted wasn't important, just an afterthought.
The fact is though, that even if a rapist's first trial didn't get to a conviction, if he's accused again and again it makes it seem more and more believable it's true, there's no smoke without a fire etc.
It has everything to do with the law.
You can only convict if the case is proven beyond all reasonable doubt. A reasonable doubt would be, for instance, the fact that the complainant changed their story three times or the fact that the defendant had an alibi.
A reasonable doubt would not be, for instance, that the complainant was black and therefore must be lying. A juror who refused to convict because the complainant was black would probably find themselves behind bars for contempt of court.
Other types of prejudice are covered by the law and by practice rules and I really think it is high time that prejudice against the victims of rape is covered. It isn't just about women, either, before all the men start bleating on about how women get everything their own way. When you understand how hard it is for a woman to secure a conviction against her rapist that doesn't even begin to describe how hard it is for a man to secure a conviction against his rapist.
Specialist rape prosecutors- right from complaint to trial- will improve the rape conviction rate. using specialist prosecutors will not "lower" the burden of proof, or send thousands of innocent men to prison, it will simply mean that juries, judges and lawyers correctly apply the burden of proof.
With the lack of any other evidence though, he should go free. Her word alone, quite rightly isn't enough.
It has to be one or the other. As it stands we have a judicial system that only convicts if the victim behaves enough like a victim. If she was wearing a short skirt or, perish the thought, had a few glasses of wine then she will see her attacker walk free from court.
The reason why it always ends up like this is because the police don't collect the evidence and don't listen to the victim. The CPS lawyers are legally not allowed to speak to the victim and disregard the evidence put before them and the juries are made up of knuckleheads who think that anyone wearing a short skirt was asking for it. Where there are specialist rape investigators, rape crisis centres and specialist rape prosecutors the conviction rate increases dramatically.
This is something that people were saying should happen five years ago and still fuck all has happened. Obviously banning fox hunting was much more important.
And I love this one:
Obviously had no problem with him expressing views such as these for the past 3 years though:
Suddenly all apologetic as soon as the media pounce on it. :rolleyes: