i dont know where to start.

[quinnb]

Yes I also read a story this week of a mum paying her best friend to take her child to the DNA test meaning the real dads test came back negative. They both got jailed for that. But off subject rf do u think the criminal justice system works and by and large gets it right or is it fundamentallly flawed and needs fixing

[Rights Fighter]

It clearly is not working because there are too many provably innocent people in prison and too many guilty walking the streets.

What to do about it - I cannot say. I am merely Jane Bloggs - an ordinary person in the street and have no power or authority. All I can do is to try to help to right the wrongs (mostly impossible to do due to the fact that it is easier to convict an innocent person than it is to appeal those convictions) until I get to the end of my tether and give up...............

[66dw99]

It clearly is not working because there are too many provably innocent people in prison and too many guilty walking the streets.

What to do about it - I cannot say. I am merely Jane Bloggs - an ordinary person in the street and have no power or authority. All I can do is to try to help to right the wrongs (mostly impossible to do due to the fact that it is easier to convict an innocent person than it is to appeal those convictions) until I get to the end of my tether and give up...............

I hope that never happens RF, you do an amazing job and without people like you then what hope would there be !!

[66dw99]

Ydo u think the criminal justice system works and by and large gets it right or is it fundamentallly flawed and needs fixing

It doesn't work, the police are supposed to investigate fully and fairly and quite clearly they don't. All they do is collect any evidence that proves you may have committed the crime and completely ignore anything that proves you couldn't have done it. They intimidate witnesses to their own end and lie through their teeth.

[Rights Fighter]

Put it like this - I help try to appeal convictions - and it is an utterly absolutely heartbreaking nightmare. In many cases, I can see from the paperwork and getting involved with the family (sometimes) that this is an utter fabrication (for whatever reason).

What makes it soooo frustrating is that although it is CLEAR that nothing happened - the CA do not accept innocence and proof of innocence as a ground with which to appeal.

I read a judgement some weeks ago where the presiding judge actually said soemthing along the lines of "it is clear that counts two, three and four could not have physically been committed...." and then failed the appeal.

If evidence (proving the allegations could not have occurred) has been put before a blind and deaf jury and they have still come to a finding of guilt, then it is almost impossible to go to CA using that evidence as a ground to appeal.

I have got into so many arguments/discussions and people have fallen out with me / been extremely nasty to me because they will not believe that this is how the appeal system works.

Evidence that the accuser is lying at trial sometimes is not "admissible" for whatever reason. Evidence that the accuser has lied which was available at trial, but the defence didn't use it - is not a ground with which to appeal, because it should have been used at trial and this is the fault of the defendant - who has been guided by his barrister.........

Some barristers lie through their teeth and claim at CA that the defendant instructed them not to use that evidence.

For once, CA did not believe that lie from trial counsel in one appeal that succeeded in 2008 and she was heavily criticised and they actually said that her claims did not make sense and were therefore untrue.

When she knew she would be taken to task at CA she ran away to the Caymen Islands for a couple of years and her lies were presented to CA in writing. She skulked around abroad for a couple of years and now she is back practising in London, attached to a solicitor's practice.

Beware of barrister Janice "Cosie" Johnson. She does not take on board the defendant's true defence and then lies about it when confronted.

It is not often that I criticise a solicitor or barrister especially on a public site - but the news that she is now back in the UK and practising reached me the other day and I am furious that she is allowed back into the arena.

I hope that never happens RF, you do an amazing job and without people like you then what hope would there be !!

There are times when I would like to bug*er off and never come back, believe me. I have visited men in prison serving very long sentences, in the last few years some are now out after serving 9+ years - still struggling to clear their names. It's bloody heartbreaking.