"No surprises in this evening’s TV ONE coverage. The QC showed the common court lawyer belief that costs are irrelevant when “justice” is at stake. To him it was imperative to retry Bain simply because otherwise serious offences would go unresolved. He showed no apparent recognition that the evidence has now been trawled, the battle lines are drawn.
Why would a new jury change any minds? Those convinced of Bain’s guilt will not change if a jury is persuaded now to feel that it can not be proved beyond reasonable doubt. Those who already feel the evidence did not meet that standard will be similarly unmoved by another $10m spent rummaging through stale evidence and rickety memories.
Bain has served most of his sentence. By the time he is reconvicted it will have virtually expired. The Crown is not obliged to compensate him. He has not asked for a new trial to clear his name.
This sleeping dog should be left to lie. It has been rolling in ordure. Nobody will want it near them, whatever they may think from a distance."
I followed up twice on 28 April and 2 May this year. Long before that I’d tried to persuade a Solicitor General and an Attorney General to apply more cost/benefit assessment in old cases, where the limitation period should probably preclude a trial anyway.
Instead they’ve wasted money and exposed many dedicated police to deep disappointment, by purporting to serve the interests of justice when they’re really displaying only self importance in the justice establishment.
In April I mentioned " the Elliotts, who lost their daughter Sophie to her murdering economics lecturer in 17 months ago, still have not had the closure of a trial. Police who should have been free for that case have been tied up in the Bain folly. …
Many justice insiders believe that what they do is sacred. They are sincere,and it is important. But they are not challenged as they should be [by demanding that they prioritise]."
The Bain retrial was a scandalous mis-prioritisation. If resources were unlimited perhaps it could be justified. In my opinion Bain probably did it. But at this distance ‘reasonable doubt’ is the prudent conclusion.
There are many wrongs that go unremedied. While current criminal trials are held years after the event the use of scarce resources for another crack at Bain was inexcusable.
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Stephen, this bit I don’t get.
You say he probably did it?
The Police clearly think he is the offender.
At what point does the justice say……er sorry too hard?
Surely a very dangerous precedent to set?
[Clint – Justice often says “too hard” – the Police frequently have suspicions so strong that they feel they “know” who did it, but not enough admissable evidence to secure conviction, guilty people are frequently acquitted because of technical flaws in prosecution. Justice is a system of rules designed to keep the number of false convictions to the level consistent with not permitting too many guilty to go free. In the famous phrase – “better that 10 guilty go free than one innocent be convicted”. That is not the same as believing that 100 guilty should go free to uphold the rules that protect 1 innocent from being convicted.
It is childish to think that a human system can be devised that completely avoids either type of risk. The best we can do is balance those two risks.
There are many legal rules that can be justified only because they are pragmatic, the only way that a system can work. The Solicitor General’s Prosecution guidelines direct the Police to look at the chances of success and other practical outcome assessments.
Think, for example, about the rule that people are deemed to know the law, even when patently many can not. We uphold that rule because of the practical outcome if ignorance of the law were a defence – the courts would soon hear that we were all ignorant. SF]