Jury Service

A comment on my recent post about the Stephen Lawrence trial made me think. Derf:

It is still a mess. It will remain a mess. I am glad I wasn't on the jury.

Yep, me too. Trying to sift actual hard evidence out of the morass of hearsay, political pressure and 'that' video footage must have required the wisdom of Solomon. I'm sure they have done it right, and I congratulate them for it. It reminded me of some jury service I did many years ago. It must have been in about 1976 or 1977, so I expect that I won't get into trouble for talking about it if I don't mention names.

The jury system is one of the foundation stones of our civilisation. Anyone who is accused of a crime has a right for the evidence to be heard by a jury of his or her peers, and they - and only they - decide on guilt or innocence. Not the judge, nor the police, nor the newspapers, nor the Home Secretary. It's not a perfect system, but it's better than anything else yet invented. Balanced with the right to a jury trial is the duty to perform jury service when asked to do so. Most people use every trick in the book to get out of it, but I was in my early 20s and was quite happy to do my jury service just for the experience.

The case concerned a couple of young men who had been badly beaten up by some local thugs. The young men were in court, nice chaps, good families, well-spoken. The thugs were there too, and suitably shaven-headed, tattooed and thuggish. The young men had been involved with a Sealed Knot re-enactment of a Civil War battle near to Leeds, and in the evening they had strayed into the Kirkstall Road area to find a pub and have a drink. In full Cavalier dress: long, flowing hair, floppy hat with feathers, thigh-boots. When you live in a city, you get to know where you can go, and where it is not advisable. I would definitely have been in two minds over going to this pub dressed normally, never mind in fancy dress. Inevitably, a bit of name-calling started. I'm pretty sure the word 'poof' was involved, but in 1976 this was just a low-grade meaningless insult, not a crime against humanity. A fight ensued in which the young men, for all their Civil War bravado, were soundly thumped. Cuts and bruises, nothing major, but the Police got involved and quickly rounded up the local talent. Eventually, it ended up in court.

The judge was very keen to point out that we should try the case on the evidence before us, and not on anything we might think about the accused, or have heard from others, or might assume from their appearance and demeanour. That is absolutely right and proper: anything else is the stuff of mob rule, witch-hunts and lynchings. But it does raise a problem - common sense has to take a back seat.

In the case I was sitting on, this was indeed a problem. For one thing, the young men had been involved that afternoon in a battlefield enactment, and admitted that they had received some of their injuries from that. They were trying to argue that this cut was from an opposing halberd, whereas this one was inflicted by the defandants; this bruise was got in a ruck with some Roundheads, whereas this bruise was not. It was a flimsy case from the outset. Also, it seemed from the evidence that the police had been told of an assault and had immediately gone out and arrested three of the most likely candidates. In this they were probably right - the three defendants seemed a nasty lot and, if they weren't guilty of this assault, it is likely that they were guilty of others. But that's not evidence. The behaviour of the police witnesses in court was appalling. The Sergeant came in and gave his evidence and sat down. The Constable who gave evidence next positioned himself so that he could see the Sergeant, and paused before answering every question until he had seen whether the Sergeant nodded or shook his head. It was blatant collusion, and every single jury member noticed it. Added to the fact that there was no direct evidence to link the three to the assault, other than their general nastiness and being in the area at the time, and we had no option but to find them not guilty. Common sense said they probably did it; the evidence, such as it was, did not support it. The police Sergeant snorted in disgust and it didn't help when the biggest of the three, who had to file out of the court past the jury box, nodded at me in passing and said "Thanks, mate". I had been elected jury foreman, and it was me who had to announce the verdicts. An uncomfortable moment.

In retrospect, the police were doing their best to nail some pretty unpleasant characters, and they probably knew that the three had committed the assaults, or had been involved in similar offences which had not got as far as a court appearance. But the police's opinion is not enough to convict in a British court, and rightly so. No doubt the police were mightily pissed off with the jury and felt that we were stopping them doing their job, but that's the way our justice system works, and I'd rather live under this than any other system. Get the evidence, persuade a jury, convict. No evidence, no crime.

I have been reminded of this by the Stephen Lawrence trial, and the criticism of the police in their apparent tardiness in searching and then arresting the racist thugs that committed this dreadful crime. An anonymous tip-off isn't evidence, and we are so quick to blame the police for heavy-handedness when it suits us. Perhaps they were just aware that the case needed to be strong, and that arresting and searching people without sufficient cause would make a successful prosecution less, not more, likely.

Riot sentences "too severe"

According to 'MPs and justice campaigners', some of the sentences handed down in the last few days to people convicted of offences during the recent riots are too severe.

On Tuesday two men were jailed for four years for using Facebook to incite riots and another was given 18 months for having a stolen TV in his car.

Just think: if we were in the habit of giving sentences like as a routine, would the rioters perhaps have thought twice about burning and stealing other people's property in the first place?

Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake said sentences "should be about restorative justice" not retribution.

Then Tom Brake is a muppet. Retribution has always been a legitimate purpose of sentencing. It expresses society's rejection of the behaviour and lets the rest of us feel that the problem has been dealt with - that awful pop-psych thing of 'closure'.

Mr Brake told the BBC's Newsnight that some of those convicted had received sentences which would have been different if they had committed the same crime the day before the riots.

Told you he's a muppet. Of course they were different. If I light a cigarette in my garden, that is a very different thing from society's point of view than* if I light it in my local petrol station on delivery day.

"This should be about restorative justice - in other words making people acknowledge the offences they have committed - and preferably, if the victims want it, [to] actually sit down face to face with the victims so that they can hear from the victims the impact they have had. But it should not be about retribution," he said.

Personally, if I have just had my business burned to the ground or my home and its contents destroyed, the last thing I would want is to sit down with the perpetrators and discuss it - unless it was in a closed room, no cameras, and I had an AK47 to help me out.

Leading criminal barrister John Cooper QC said he believed the sentences were "over the top" and were likely to be overturned by the Court of Appeal.

I'm sure if he has anything to do with it, they will.

"What we need to remember here is that there's a protocol for sentencing, and there are rules and procedures in sentencing which make them effective and make them fair. What we can't do, in my view, in situations like this, is suddenly throw the rule book away simply because there's a groundswell of opinion."

Well for one thing, John Cooper QC is a barrister, which means he is employed by the rest of us, not the other way round. And yes, you can throw away the rule-book because of a groundswell of opinion. The rule-book is only the groudswell of popular opinion taken over a longer period of time, after all. Bring on elected Police chiefs!

Sitting at Manchester Crown Court, sentencing Judge Andrew Gilbart QC said: "I have no doubt at all that the principal purpose is that the courts should show that outbursts of criminal behaviour like this will be and must be met with sentences longer than they would be if the offences had been committed in isolation.

"For those reasons I consider that the sentencing guidelines for specific offences are of much less weight in the context of the current case, and can properly be departed from."

Precisely.

In the comments, from John O'Hagan:

Since this country is good at out sourcing services to Mumbai and other places, what say we out source our Prisons to Mumbai where real prisons exist, would probably only cost the tax payer around £2 per day you would'nt get much rioting after that i can tell you

Heh.

* Yes, I know we say 'different from' and the Americans say 'different than', but the first sounded wrong and the second sounded right, OK?

What is the point of the Police?

Bit late to the party on this one, but I've been busy, and I couldn't let it pass.

What is the point of the Police? That's not a rhetorical question. Most people would probably agree that their purpose is twofold: firstly to deter and prevent crime from happening, and secondly to detect offenders and bring them before a court. I would hazard a guess that most people would regard evidence of successful policing as a low crime rate, however that may be achieved. But of the two approaches, which is the most important? Is it better that the Police act in such a way as to prevent crime from happening in the first place, or should they devote their energies to chasing the bad guys and bringing them to justice?

To take an example: if a policeman were walking down a busy street and met a gang of armed bank robbers, which would be preferable: that he spoke to them, advised them that the area was bristling with coppers and that they were bound to be arrested, and sent them home to think again; or that he allowed the robbery to take place, and then pursued and caught them, and turned them over to the CPS for prosecution, with all the risks to the general public that this would entail? There is an argument to be made for both. Prevention and deterrence is surely the ideal; but if there are repeat offenders, ones who do not seem to be amenable to deterrence, it may be necessary to catch them and then bang them up for a long time. But would the police ever be justified in allowing a crime to take place, purely so that they could get the evidence to do this? That is a step on the road to deploying agents provocateurs, which would be abhorrent to most people.

I am thinking of the recent case of Michael Thompson of Grimsby. He flashed his headlights to warn oncoming motorists of a mobile speed camera. He was pulled over by the police, taken to court, and found guilty of "obstructing a police officer in the course of her duties". He was fined £175, with £250 costs, and the iniquitous £15 'victim surcharge'. This is an outrageous decision, and one that must be overturned. If it isn't, it calls into question the principles of policing that I mentioned above.

The mobile speed cameras are part of a strategy to improve road safety by reducing speeds. That's a whole debate in itself, but let's accept for the moment the notion that reduced speeds mean fewer accidents, which is something we would all welcome. So what were the Police doing there? Were they deterring motorists from speeding, or where they trying to catch offenders? The fact that mobile camera sites are all well-signposted with those camera signs suggests that deterrence is the main aim. In that sense, someone warning other drivers of a camera is actually doing the Police's work for them. He is acting to slow down drivers who are approaching a hazardous area (it is a hazardous area, isn't it? I mean, that's why the cameras are there, aren't they?). Why would the Police advertise camera locations with those signs otherwise?

Unless ... unless the Police actually want people to speed so that they can catch and fine them. Here we come to the crux of the matter. Mr Thompson has angered the Police, and by extension the courts, by alerting people so they conform to the law, rather than blunder into a trap. He's shot their fox. And that reinforces our deep suspicion that these cameras are all about punishment, and by extension revenue, and nothing about safety and compliance.

Of course, the people he warned were probably only a few mph over the limit. If a lunatic in a big 4x4 doing 120 had been approaching and by his actions he had slowed it down to a safe speed, would the Police not have commended him for his public-spirited actions in preventing a possible tragedy? We'll never know. If speeding is as dangerous as they say it is, then any action to moderate other people's speed should be commended, surely?

To go back to my original example: here we have the Police, knowing that an armed bank robbery is about to take place, allowing the gang to go down the road, into the bank, waving their guns around, but ready to collar them when they emerge and then boast about their detection rates.

It's simple, really. He was "obstructing a police officer in the course of her duties", and now we know that those duties consist of allowing a crime to happen, and then catching the criminal red-handed. Anything preventing the crime is 'obstruction'.

It stinks. And if this judgement isn't overturned on appeal, then the cat is out of the bag. Speed cameras are money-machines, and nothing to do with safety.

Justice? I don't think so.

Almost exactly a year ago, I posted this about the case of Mohammed Ibrahim, who was jailed for a derisory four months for running over a young girl, Amy Houston, in 2003. He knocked her down, saw what he had done, and ran away, leaving her dying underneath his car. Ibrahim did not hold a driving licence at the time of the accident and had previous criminal convictions.

At the time of my original post, he had appealed against the deportation order following his sentence, citing his 'right' to a family life under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act. The UK Border Agency appealed against this decision (good for them), but today we learn that two senior immigration judges have ruled that he can remain.

Ibrahim has been crafty. On his release from prison, he met an English woman and they now have two children. This is the ultimate 'get out of jail free' card for the clever asylum-seeker, of course. The 'right' to a family life trumps everything else in the crazy world of rights and entitlements.

If he wants to keep his family together, what is stopping them following him to Iraq when he is deported? If she loves him enough to bear him two children, surely that is a small price to pay for staying with the love of your life? If he is the love of your life, that is. Perhaps she is unwilling to go: "Hey I didn't agree to that!"

It is ironic, and deeply disgusting, that Ibrahim's so-called 'right' to a family life has trumped the more ancient right of Amy's parents to have their daughter alive and well, and not dying in the gutter because some cowardly criminal chooses to run away rather than face the consequences of his actions. (Just remember: she was alive when he left the scene, and might have survived had he called the emergency services before running away. Her father had the heart-breaking task of turning off her life support several hours later.) I'm sure the two senior judges would have wished it otherwise, and that their 'hands were tied' by the legislation (European law over-rides every other law, no matter how ancient), but when will someone within the system stand up and say that this is WRONG?

Another reminder:



I despair of my country.

At last, some common sense from the Bench

Via JuliaM, this doozy of a story:

A RESTAURANT owner spoke of his astonishment last night after a clamping firm tried to charge him for “loss of earnings” because he warned customers to avoid a private car park next door.

The restaurant owner was losing business because the clamping firm were pouncing on his customers who left their cars for a few minutes to pick up a takeaway. The land in question is a private car park belonging to another firm, but it is immediately adjacent to the restaurant and is the obvious place to leave your car when stopping for a short time.

Note that the restaurant owner was not objecting to the clamping itself, which we can assume is legitimate, but was taking the step of warning his customers so that they did not inadvertently get clamped and have to pay a £150 release fee. The clamping firm threatened legal action against the owner, citing 'loss of earnings'.

In a letter to Mr Hussein, Jason White wrote: “If you carry on to warn people away from the car park causing me loss of earning I will have to issue a county court summons in the region of £150 for each day you do this.”

Mr Hussein was stunned when he then received a letter from Northampton County Court saying Mr White had lodged a claim for £535. The clamper had demanded £500 “loss of earnings”, a £35 “court fee” and £150 per day until the court case.

So the clamping operation is not to stop illegal parking, it is to generate revenue for the clampers. Anything which prevents them from fining people is 'interference with trade'. Thank goodness the judge who heard the case had a gram of common sense:

At Southampton County Court District Judge Andrew Grand dismissed White’s claim, saying that Mr Hussein was allowed to warn customers.

He said: “It is ordered that the claim is struck out as disclosing no reasonable grounds for bringing proceedings.

“It is not tortious to warn people of vehicle clamping operating in a car park.”

A legal judgement based on reasonable common sense? Well, that's a novelty.

Whites Car Park Solutions and the car park owner refused to comment.

I'll bet.

Oh, and that 'Solutions' in your name is annoying too.

There was a story a while ago about a burglar who prosecuted the police for arresting him and thereby preventing him going about his normal business. I thought that was a joke, but these days it's getting hard to tell.

The Blame Game

It didn't take long. No sooner has Moat topped himself and the Police refer themselves to the IPCC* and start the inevitable soul-searching investigation, than the criticisms start.

Chris Brown's family (the boyfriend of Sam Stobbart) have led the charge. Staff at Durham prison told Northumbria Police that Moat's ex-girlfriend was at risk, but it seems that no action was taken. Not surprisingly, Brown's family are upset:

Beckie Njie, aged 33 years, who lives with their mother, Sally, in Montem Lane, Slough, Berkshire, said: "We've got a lot of unanswered questions. We are really angry and we want answers.

"Something went wrong and it has cost Chris his life. They should have warned them. How did they allow that to happen when they knew he (Moat) was a danger? That's what I want to know.

"It makes me really angry, they knew about Moat and they should have done something."

Perhaps they should. No doubt, in retrospect, there are a lot of things the Police might wish to have done differently. There would appear to be a lack of professionalism in their failure to take action on a specific threat against a member of the public. My gut feeling, however, is that if they 'took action' on every case of a minor hard man saying he was going to 'get' someone after he got out, they wouldn't be doing much else. Perhaps they had heard it all before. That doesn't excuse their inaction in this case, but it might explain it.

But let's be perfectly clear about who is to blame here. It was Moat (allegedly) who killed Chris Brown, not the Police. He had a shotgun and he chose to pull the trigger, and he ended a man's life. His decision. Whatever the Police did, or did not do, it was he who decided to inflict a mortal injury.

It's the same with social workers. Baby Peter was killed by his mother, her boyfriend and the lodger. No-one else. Social workers did not kill him. Nursing staff did not kill him. The doctors who examined him did not kill him. He was killed by the people closest to him, and no-one else.

People who have jobs which revolve around protecting other people, or helping them, or healing them, have an awesome responsibility. Sometimes they get it right, and sometimes they get it wrong. There can be clinical misjudgements, there can be operational mistakes, there can be dereliction of duty. All of these things need to be addressed, and appropriate sanctions taken.

But sometimes, reading the tabloid press (and television reporting is going the same way), you would think that the doctors in the Baby P case strangled him with their bare hands. Or that the Police in Northumbria carelessly arranged the death of an innocent man by allowing a deranged killer to go on the rampage.

Let the blame for any violent death rest with the person who caused it. We can all choose how we behave. If we choose to kill another human being, we should not expect to be partly exonerated by being allowed to blame 'the professionals' or 'the system'.

Moat (allegedly) was a killer. The Police were, at the worst, incompetent. There is a difference.

*No, not the Climate Change fraudsters, the police watchdog. Funny how they share an acronym. I seem to remember the World Wildlife Fund and the World Wrestling Federation went to court over the same issue.

Justice?

I'm almost too weary of this kind of thing to bother commenting. But here goes:

A joyrider has walked free from court after killing a police dog and injuring two officers in a road smash while three times over the drink-drive limit. Sean Lawson, 20, shouted ‘get in’ as his 12-month prison sentence was suspended at Newcastle Crown Court.

Let's just review the offences committed in one 'incident':

• Rammed a car and then stole it when the owner got out
• Tried to evade arrest by driving away
• Lost control and mounted the pavement while being pursued
• Rammed a police car trying to prevent him driving away
• Speeding, driving on wrong side of the road, blind bend, no lights
• Lost control again
• 90mph with no lights on wrong side of dual carriageway
• Handbrake turn
• Hit police car, injuring two officers
• Hit police dog van, breaking back of police dog, which had to be put down
• All of this while THREE TIMES over the drink-drive limit.

Here's a question.

If you, or I, or any other law-abiding person, had been caught after doing just one of these offences, what do you suppose the penalty would be? Certainly a fine and points for the minor stuff like the handbrake turn or driving on the pavement. Big fine, many points, and a possible ban for the speeding, evading arrest stuff. Definite ban for the drink-driving. Imprisonment for injuring two officers, killing a police dog, causing God-knows-how-much damage to the police vehicles (which you and I will have to pay for, one way or another). Definitely imprisonment for ramming an innocent motorist and stealing his car. And if you or I did all of this in one crazy episode of mindlessness?

They would throw the book at us. And then lock us away for a very long time indeed. And we wouldn't be able to drive for a long time either, which would affect our jobs and our ability to function in society.

But for Sean Lawson? He walks free.

A 12-month prison sentence - suspended for two years.
200 hours unpaid work - will he even turn up? Many don't bother.
A curfew - which of course he will diligently observe, as many have before him
A 3-year driving ban - will this make him start walking to the benefit office? I'm not sure it will.

He looks a nice lad.



As he heard his 'punishment', he was heard to shout "Get in", which I assume means that he had a feeling of victory over the system, rather than any kind of remorse. And no wonder - he's got away with it.

It wouldn't happen to us.

Understand a little less

John Major's 1993 statement that "We must condemn a little more and understand a little less" horrified me at the time I heard it. How could a politician believe that anything could be solved by less understanding? It seemed a very anti-intellectual and populist thing to say, and he went down in my estimation when he said it. However, things have moved on since then, and now I am not sure that he wasn't right. Take these stories (1) (2) (3):

A teenage girl has been jailed for life for killing a Fife grandmother during a row over £5 and a borrowed cigarette. ... Mrs Gray, 63, died as a result of a head injury after she was knocked to the ground and repeatedly stamped on.

A man convicted over the death of a Matalan store manager in east London was on police bail at the time of the killing. ... Maina, of Canning Town, was bailed after Rizwan Darbar, 17, was stabbed in West Ham during a mobile phone robbery. He was later convicted of the 17-year-old's murder and jailed for life.

DOZENS of college pupils were involved in violent clashes with police yesterday afternoon (November 3), forcing the closure of Orpington High Street. ... The trouble flared at around 5.25pm when more than 40 Orpington College students waited for a bus outside Boots in the high street.... Around 15 of them boarded a route 51 before the driver shut his doors and a patrolling PCSO told the remaining teenagers they would have to wait for the next bus.

So we have a 16-year-old girl who lends and old lady a cigarette and stamps her to death when she goes to collect what she is owed. And we have a man who murders a 17-year-old while robbing him of his phone, and while on bail for that offence acts as look-out in a robbery where the store manager is stabbed in the neck and dies. And he wasn't idle in between the two killings, either:

In the ensuing 15 months Maina was involved in Mr Simpson's killing, was caught with a knife, cannabis, crack cocaine and heroin, before finally being charged in January last year with the 17-year-old's murder.

And we have a group of college students who think it is OK to riot (including hospitalising the PCSO who spoke to them and involving police from three areas, a dog unit and the TSG) because a bus was full and they were told they would have to wait for another one.

In each case, no doubt, there will be the usual pleas in mitigation, citing poor backgrounds, boredom, the newest excuse of "toxic upbringing" and probably racism, too. And the courts will listen to all this, and the sentences will be ameliorated to, if not quite a slap on the wrist, then something that most people will regard as utterly inadequate.

Nicolle Earley (the girl who killed the old lady) was given a life sentence for murder. As one who still doesn't support the death penalty, that seems about right to me. But wait - the 'life sentence' is really 14 years. That means she gets out and is a free woman at the age of 32. In what way that is an adequate punishment for murder escapes me.

Anthony Maina was given a life sentence for the murder of the 17-year-old - again, 14 years [1]. He won't serve a sentence for the manslaughter of the store manager, as he is already on a life sentence.

Several youths were arrested following the disturbances in Orpington. Who knows what chilling punishments await them?

Two things occur to me here: one is that there is now a large section of society that has no respect for human life or the law, and the other is that we don't seem to have any concept of punishing people in line with the seriousness of their offending.

I wonder if we had listened to John Major in 1993, and spent less time trying to understand people who commit crimes like this, and more effort in bringing home to them the consequences of their actions, things might be a little different? I might suggest:

• If you murder someone, you go to jail for life, and you will never get out, regardless of your home circumstances, mental state or prior history;
• If you deliberately injure someone, you will be taken out of circulation in very unpleasant circumstances and kept there for a time commensurate with your offence;
• If you riot, damage property and frighten ordinary people half to death, then those ordinary people can take you out of circulation for as long as is necessary.

The principle that we should try to understand criminals in order to help them integrate in a peaceful society is a laudable one. But it would seem that we have taken the idea that 'to understand is to forgive' a little too far, and we now fail to protect ourselves and our society against people who have grown up with the idea that no-one can restrain them in any way.

[1] Yes, I know these are 'minimum' tariffs, but does anyone seriously believe that they will be kept in after this time, or even released early if the jails are crowded enough?

Tovarishch Harman - update

More detail about la Harman's conviction in The Times today. Further to my post of yesterday, it seems that the charges for using a mobile phone were not dropped, but were subsumed into the main charge of Driving Without Due Care:

Explaining why Ms Harman was not prosecuted for driving while using a hand-held telephone, Michael Jennings, reviewing lawyer from the Crown Prosecution Service’s special crime division, said: “Ms Harman’s guilty plea to driving without due care and attention included her admitting that she had been using a mobile phone at the time. In accepting Ms Harman’s guilty plea, the CPS was satisfied that the court would have enough sentencing power to impose a penalty which could reflect her total offending.”

Of course, she pleaded guilty, so that makes it all right. ("I have paid back the excess amount in full, so it is right that we should draw a line under this and move on to the things the British people are really interested in ...")

As for leaving the scene of an accident and/or failing to report, well ...

It emerged that prosecutors had considered charging Ms Harman with failing to report the accident, which carries a sentence of six months in prison, discretionary disqualification, up to ten points and a maximum fine of £5,000, but there was insufficient evidence.

(My emphasis.)

Insufficient evidence? Did she leave the scene without exchanging details, or didn't she? Did she report it to the police afterwards or didn't she? It's hardly a shades-of-grey judgement call for the prosecutors. As with all the events of 2009, it seems that there is one rule for them and one for us.

Nigel Evans speaks for us all:

“I suspect there will be a few fuming motorists looking at that judgment and wondering how she got off so lightly.”

Precisely.

Yet more ammunition for the Daily Mail

I was appalled to read this today:

An asylum seeker who fatally struck a girl with his car then fled the scene has won the right to stay in the UK. Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, 31, of Blackburn, hit Amy Houston, 12, in 2003. He was later jailed for four months. He faced deportation but successfully invoked human rights legislation granting him the right to a "family life" in the UK.

I don't want this to turn into a rant about asylum seekers, but this story does no good whatsoever for those who wish Britain to be kind and helpful to those fleeing tyranny elsewhere in the world. Let's look at the facts.

Ibrahim had either never held a driving licence, or had been disqualified from driving, depending on which story you read. He hit a young girl while driving illegally, and ran her over, leaving her underneath the car. He then ran away from the scene, and the girl died later in hospital. He was caught and convicted of both offences - driving without a licence, and leaving the scene of an accident.

I'll gloss over the 'driving without a licence' part, as that seems to quite OK these days, earning the offender little more than a slap on the wrist. But to leave a girl under the wheels of your car, and run away from the scene? That is less 'leaving the scene of an accident' and more like manslaughter to me. If he had been a little more courageous, or honest, and called for an ambulance instead of legging it, the girl may have survived, so her death is at least partly his fault (as opposed to her injuries, which were entirely his fault). And what did he get for this act of callousness? Four months in prison. Four lousy months in prison. And that, as we all know, means two months, less time spent on remand. I'd be surprised if he even needed to take his toothbrush in with him.

Now, if I were Mr Ibrahim, and I had caused the death of a young person in a country where I had fled for safe haven, I think I would serve my sentence and then quietly go somewhere else. I would feel guilty and embarrassed, knowing that I had done such a terrible thing in a country which had taken me in, and fed and housed me. The law (or at least part of it) takes the same view, and orders that people who commit serious crimes should be deported after serving their sentence. But there's another part of the law that says that can't happen:

He faced deportation but successfully invoked human rights legislation granting him the right to a "family life" in the UK. The father-of-two was due to be deported after he was taken into the custody of the UK Border Agency. But the Iraqi Kurd claimed it was too dangerous to return to his homeland and won the right to stay in Britain after a lengthy series of appeals at the Manchester Asylum and Immigration Tribunal.

Bear in mind that the accident happened, and the child died, in 2003. So this appeal process has been going on for six years. Mr Ibrahim is from Kurdistan. The Border Agency clearly believes that it is safe for him to return there. But Mr Ibrahim claims that under Human Rights legislation he has a "right to a family life" and should be allowed to stay. The court agreed with him. You have to wonder under what legislation the family of the dead girl can claim a right to a family life.

The Border Agency are considering an appeal, and Jack Straw says he is going to contact the Home Secretary to see if there is any way to overturn the decision. This is pointless. The Human Rights Act, which appears to grant rights to some people and not to others, is European law, and it over-rides UK law in every respect. Mr Ibrahim, and any like him, can stay as long as they wish, whatever crimes they commit, because they know they have the law on their side. Or, rather, their lawyers do. And who paid for six years of legal counsel for Mr Ibrahim? Oh yes, we did.

(As an additional point, I wonder what sentence I would have got if I, as a UK citizen with a blameless past and a clean licence, had been disqualified from driving, then decided to drive anyway, killed someone, and ran away? I suspect it would run to several years, and rightly so, although a life sentence would seem to me to be more appropriate. You know, 'life' as in 'until you die'.)

Just for the record:



Mr Ibrahim is now 37. Amy Houston would have been 18.

UPDATE: The Border Agency appealed, and lost. Ibrahim can stay, because he met and impregnated an English woman (twice) and now has a family in the UK. Shame about the family he tore apart. More info here.