ID Theft
Witness identity protection,are the law lords right?
From a personal viewpoint I see the dangers of these sort of witnesses and can also see the point of view of wanting to convict at any cost some dangerous people like the murderous scum that killed the Shakespeare girl in Birmingham,trouble is with witnesses being allowed to remain anoymous is in the short term it's got it's advantages but think seriously it's not always going to be used just in sensational murder cases and this system is open to corruption.Does anyone have an opinion?
Public Comments
- I fail to see how this system is open to corruption. The sole purpose of this system is to protect vulnerable witnesses, protecting their ECHR rights. There are a number of cases where the accused has fought to have any witnesses against him be identified, also a right under the convention. If you have a look at these cases (Rowe v Davies, for example) you will notice the hard work and reasoning that goes in to making a decision just and fair.
- See R v Davies on Appeal from Court of Appeal Criminal Division [2008] UKHL 36 of 18th June 2008. If you are legally minded and can struggle through the judgement it gives a wonderful insight into the problem and how various countries have tried to ensure fair trials for the accused and protection for witnesses. It ranges from the obvious unfairness even of the Inquisition, and Sir Walter Raleigh's trial for treason .. all using anonymous witnesses and shows how thorough the question has been gone into. The crux of Davies ( much simplified ) is that it conceded he was convicted of murder only by the identification of 3 anonymous witnesses. Granted Davies didn't help himself by fleeing on a false pass port to America, refusing to answer Police questions and producing a last minute, untested, so called 'alibi'. There were various witness protection devices all designed to ensure total, absolute anonymity including voice distortion. A particular compelling argument I myself feel obliged to accept is that even if the defence counsel discovered something about the anonymous witness such as the fact they themselves were criminals it could not be explored because of possible identification of the witness. This means a Jury would not know about potentially dishonest witnesses and take an appropriate view. If I was on a Jury I would have a troubled conscience in such circumstances. I think that trials dependant totally upon anonymous witnesses will still fail the European Human Rights test even if the UK law is altered, what I do see as perhaps possible is annoymous witnessses who themselves have a clean record - although in serious Criminal trials they may be few and far between - together with additional forensic and conventionally acceptable evidence.
