{"id":1204,"date":"2015-06-10T07:04:45","date_gmt":"2015-06-10T07:04:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedin\/?p=1204"},"modified":"2022-05-13T19:39:35","modified_gmt":"2022-05-13T19:39:35","slug":"best-defence-part-two-innocence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/2015\/06\/10\/best-defence-part-two-innocence\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Defence (Part Two) \u2013 Innocence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (July 30th<\/sup> 2011)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rules of the Game<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The family of murder victim Karen Skipper took a long time to accept that her deceased husband Phillip was innocent, but they are now convinced and share the outrage of his family, which includes the mother of his daughter as well. They all believe that, rather than observing the trial of her murderer, John Pope, they were forced to endure yet another trial of Mr Skipper \u2013 a man who could not defend himself and whose rights and reputation were given no legal protections at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are further aggrieved that this time Pope\u2019s retrial occurred without any safeguard at all of Mr Skipper\u2019s right to be presumed innocent. Mr Pope, through his counsel, Mark Evans QC, was given carte blanche to put Mr Skipper on trial yet again, only he could use so-called evidence that had been ruled inadmissible during Mr Skipper\u2019s trial in 1997.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The families of Karen Skipper and Phillip Skipper are united in their disbelief that the criminal justice system tolerated this. They say that relying on old evidence that had failed to convince the jury first time round and incredible new evidence that should have been laughed out of court meant that there was no burden of proof on his accusers \u2013 Mr Pope\u02bcs defence. Where, they ask was the respect for their human rights? Where, in fact, was respect for the law?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The roles appeared to have been somewhat reversed. Prosecuting QC, Ian Murphy, was bound by the rules of evidence and Mr Pope\u02bcs right to be presumed innocent and he observed his burden scrupulously. Mr Evans effectively was prosecuting Mr Skipper, but there were no rules governing what he could say and do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Scrupulously Unfair <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The judge, Mr Justice (Sir Roderick) Evans, bent over backwards to accommodate Mr Pope \u2013 even giving a bad character direction on Mr Skipper despite the lack of convictions justifying it. Pope was allowed to sit back while his QC prosecuted Skipper with no constraints. Phillip Skipper could not defend himself from the character assassination and nobody represented his interests, even though it was in the interests of the prosecution of Pope to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a shocking abuse of the law and raises the question of why the system did not provide lawyers to represent the rights of the families of Phillip Skipper and Karen too. It got far worse. Mr Evans had even suggested that if the jury thought that it could have been Mr Skipper, then they should acquit his client. That outraged miscarriage of justice survivor Michael O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how they can get away with saying those words to the jury and why the judge didn\u2019t step in because it\u2019s already been established in a court of law that Mr Skipper was acquitted and under European law, it says once you\u2019re acquitted, you\u2019re entitled to the presumption of innocence, so how they\u2019ve managed to get away with this defence\u201d? said O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Murphy could have done so far more robustly. After all, it was in his interests to prove Mr Skipper innocent, as that would have cut the ground out from beneath the deplorable defence tactics. Sadly, this appears to be a trend in such prosecutions \u2013 nobody represents the rights of the wrongly accused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell it more than beggars belief. It just makes you angry, you know, the fact that a man who can\u2019t defend himself\u201d, Mr O\u2019Brien continued. \u201cThat\u2019s like picking on a vulnerable person and this is picking on someone who can\u2019t defend himself and it\u2019s the same principle behind it and it shouldn\u2019t have been allowed\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inadmissible evidence and also the quite frankly ludicrous evidence of Pauline Horton masqueraded as \u02bbproof\u02bc of Skipper\u02bcs guilt. The Crown could never have prosecuted such a shoddy case, so why was a defence lawyer allowed to do so by the back door?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell I think we\u2019ve got to define what significant new evidence is\u201d, O\u2019Brien says. \u201cLet me put it clearly, unless there is DNA or something of that calibre, or somebody who can describe them to a tee who didn\u2019t know the person who had done the crime, but if they\u2019re too scared to come forward where you can actually prove there was no collusion, then you shouldn\u2019t be allowed to produce this kind of evidence and blame other people as the defence, because that is just attacking somebody\u2019s innocence again\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Brien is outraged. \u201cI think that goes against everything that the court says the innocent person is entitled to and which an acquitted person is entitled to \u2013 the presumption of innocence \u2013 and I think the only reason why Pope\u2019s defence has got away with this is because they know they have legal privilege\u201d, he says. \u201cThey know they are supposed to go on the facts. What evidence is there that Phillip Skipper has done this crime? It should never have arisen a second time, but they\u2019ve done it. It has to be stopped\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there\u2019s another issue. Why did the prosecution fail to demonstrate Mr Skipper\u2019s innocence when the evidence to do so had been there all along?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (July 30th 2011) The Rules of the Game The family of murder victim Karen [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19],"tags":[24,307,300,308,309,310,311,312,313],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1204"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1204"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2426,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1204\/revisions\/2426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}