Why do police value a proven criminal’s statement the same as an innocent man?
April 21st, 2010 by Darren Good | Posted in Legislation, Violence | 2 Comments »
Tags: Reasonable Force, Self-defence, The Independent
I read an interesting story yesterday about a man, Mr Roberts from Nottingham, who protected his mother’s home by stabbing two burglars. The man had been charged with murder but he was acquitted this week.
Apparently, when he came to her house he found the patio door of the semi-detached house in Nottingham smashed to pieces. So he grabbed a kitchen knife from a drawer nearby to protect himself and then he was attacked by a 14-year-old burglar, who was brandishing a blade. In the struggle the youngster, who hasn’t been named for legal reasons, was stabbed twice in the leg and then was chased off the property by Roberts. The second burglar Mr Juett, was upstairs checking a bedroom. He then rushed down the stairs to confront Mr Roberts. In the fight Mr Roberts sadly stabbed the teenager in the shoulder which severed one his major arteries resulting in the burglar’s death.
The 14 year old accomplice told the police that Mr Roberts had chased him outside and then stabbed him outside of the property this was key to the investigation. The fact that he said it happened outside and then Mr Roberts went back into the house armed with a knife to get the other burglar is the reason Mr Roberts was acquitted.
Mr Roberts on the other hand, was clear with the police he said he stabbed both burglars in the house as self defence, it was the other burglar that had said he had chased him out.
The idea to prosecute Mr Roberts is interesting and it all stemmed from the stabbing outside in the criminals statement. This is because the prosecution said he could have called the police rather than going after them in vengeance or retaliation. By definition this isn’t self defence and it is clearly breaking the law.
However, the 14-year old changed his story and admitted when was re-interviewed by the police. He then told them he had been waiting for the other burglar outside the house which matched Mr Roberts statement. In other words Mr Roberts never actually went outside of the property. This in the eyes of the law shows he was simply protecting his home in self defence not retaliation. He was simply frightened and outgunned and did what most people would do pick something up to protect themselves.
The Independent’s article reported:
In a press conference immediately following the hearing, it emerged some police officers did not want the case to be brought against Roberts.
His mother Jacqueline McKenzie-Johnson, 47, said the law now needed to be clarified.
At present home-owners are not allowed to use "unreasonable force" but there have been calls for it to be strengthened so that only "grossly disproportionate force" would warrant prosecution.
She said: "There’s a need for clarification on ‘reasonable force’. I particularly believe that when you are faced with an intruder in your own home, the expectation that you behave reasonably doesn’t seem to fit.
"There are number of things that have had a bearing and I am sure that the General Election had something to do with it. Also, the overwhelming support we have had from the public may have influenced the decision as well as the fact there was no evidence."
In the eyes of the law you are allowed to protect your property, including the garden, but once you go off your property you should phone the police as this could then be seen as overly aggressive. This event apparently actually all happened inside the property. So it is seen as reasonable for Mr Roberts to have picked up a kitchen knife, when he had two armed burglars in his house. The intent was simply to defend himself and his mother’s home.
The law doesn’t need changing
The laws are there to protect us, personally I don’t feel the law actually does need clarifying. The general public just need to understand the law better. The mistake here was from the police and forensics in my opinion. If they had interviewed the younger burglar earlier they could have got the true story from him. I don’t know what the reason was why they didn’t sort this side of the investigation out immediately. Because once they got to the truth it all became clear and the charges were dropped.
Questions that need answering
My questions are these:
- Why did it take the police to get so long to the truth?
- Should the police take witness statements from known criminals with the same amount of validity as an innocent man protecting his mother’s home?
- If all of these events did take place in the house why didn’t the forensic evidence either back up Mr Roberts’s story and negate the 14-year olds story?
As you can see there are more questions than answers here but the law is clear if you are scared for your life you can protect yourself in your own property. However, you simply can’t chase someone down the street with a machete and attack them and expect to get away with it as that would never be seen as reasonable.
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- Doorstaff arrested on suspicion of murder
- Everyday conflict management
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1. The law says that everyone is innocent until proven guilty – in each case. It matters not one jot if a person has been previously convicted; in the eyes of the law, each participant’s statement must be taken and weighed.
This idea that we all have a right to fair treatment – no matter who we are or what we’ve done in the past – is fundamental to your liberty as much as anyone else’s.
This applies especially in violent crime, where emotions run high and judgment is easily impaired.
Remember that victim/suspect statements are PART of the evidence being gathered, not the whole. Forensics can make or break a case.
2. The police are not the people who determine whether or not a case is prosecuted. That is – and has been since the 80s – down to the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service), which is so overloaded that they tend to make a quick judgment of probability of winning a case (if it seems that it’s a 60%+ probability, they’ll push it)
3. The police clearly did not prefer the burglar’s statement over the householder’s. They took both statements, weighed them, and returned to the burglar and got a new statement. This is standard practice – keep clarifying until you’re satisfied that all the loose ends are tied up.
4. There is very little information about the forensic evidence, but if it didn’t back up the householder’s story, he’d be in real schtuck. If it was questionable enough to provide reasonable doubt that the stabbing occurred as he said, then we go back to point 1: that statements are not the be all and end all – the statements of victims, suspects, and witnesses must be balanced against forensics, and it is in the match or mismatch between the two that the case lies. And that’s why repeated interviews and careful forensic study is essential
5. Do you know the precise timeline and process for statement gathering? Do you know the extent of the boy’s injuries, whether he was undergoing other processes (medical, legal, social services) which might have put back the timing of the second round of interviews? As a minor, he would be in a different position than an adult suspect with regards to access.
5a. How many other investigations were the local CID working on at the same time? Do you know whether the timing was affected by, for example, ongoing collaboration with the drugs squad, needing to deal with a serious child abuse case or interview victims of rape or armed robbery, officers giving evidence in other court cases..?
5b. How simple was the forensics testing necessary in this case? How quickly could the tests be processed? How much of a backlog did the local pathologists have to deal with before they got to the dead burglar? How soon after medical treatment were they able to look at the injured boys wounds (this would depend on the superficiality or deepness of the injuries)? How disturbed was the scene when SOCO (Scene Of Crime Officers) arrived? How many tests were already being done by the labs when the new evidence came in?
6. Why didn’t the 14-year old provide this information immediately? Why didn’t the police get it out of him first time round? Well, seriously. He might be a pathological liar; he might have been on his first every criminal endeavour and frightened out of his mind; he might be manipulative and hard; the police officers might have only had minutes with him for an initial statement because the hospital was treating him for his wounds; the police officers might have been inept – very capable and faced with a boy who just didn’t want to tell the truth; the boy might have panicked and lied and then come to his senses later; the boy might have been bolshy and then talked round by a good brief… do you know? Neither do I, and I bet only the people involved have a clue. Remember: initial statements by immediate suspects and victims are ALWAYS followed up at least once; changes in statements are normal and expected, even when the interviewee is utterly innocent and eager to cooperate, because memory plays tricks and because people have a chance to think more calmly in between times.
Sadly, crimes are not committed to the police’s timetable. It is often forgotten that officers are often engaged in multiple investigations simultaneously, and that each of these involves taking statements, waiting for forensics to be done testing, pathologists reports to come through.
We live in the world of Miami CSI where we seem to think that police and forensics units have unlimited time, energy, and budgets and can proceed entirely unconstrained by ongoing investigations. We think that everything should be immediate, and it’s hard to understand how this stuff works in reality.
It’s terribly easy to demand that these things are sorted out immediately and perfectly, and to forget that many rounds of clarification may be needed even when there are no backlogs or other complicating factors.
Leaping to assumptions based on lack of information is a big problem, and we all do it at times.