Translate

Saturday 3 May 2014

The grounds on which Max Clifford should appeal

William Blackstone:

"All presumptive evidence of felony should be admitted cautiously; for the law holds it better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent party suffer."

The reason for this suddenly became clear to me after Max Clifford was found guilty.  While I think he probably did do it, I also wanted him to be found not guilty because I do not believe that any evidence adduced after such a lapse of time can ever be reliable enough to satisfy a criminal standard of proof.

While it is true that Clifford was arrogant and mocked his accusers playing the fool mimicking a television journalist behind his back, what he did does not call for an eight year sentence for a 71 year old man.  The term "cruel and unusual punishment" comes to mind.

If Clifford had been less arrogant or even obviously submissive, he might have got off.  So there we are: the British are now a people reduced to thinking it is all right only to give justice only to people they like, screw procedural fairness and the burden of proof. Nationalists gloating that a Labour supporter such as Clifford has now got his comeuppance should reflect on how popular nationalists and nationalism are to the average juror.

Am I the only one who thinks eight years for what he was alleged to have done so many years ago by so many women who wanted to get into showbiz (and we know what kind of women these tend to be) just a little excessive?

Also, it occurs to me that the sheer number of these allegations was reason enough to have these charges tried separately, or the barely schooled plebs on the jury would soon think in their barely schooled plebeian way that the number of these allegations was evidence itself of their veracity. Not everyone can be as consistently impartial and logical like me, after all. Not even my detractors would deny that I would probably be a senior member of the judiciary by now if I had taken all the necessary career turnings, and then be out on my ear like poor old Sir Paul Coleridge who dared to defend the only institution that would protect and maintain the patriarchy - marriage. That was why the matriarchy made him resign for daring to be so controversial as to promote - SHOCK HORROR - marriage. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2526180/Anger-judge-forced-resign-championing-marriage-Sir-Paul-Coleridge.html

In a matriarchy, the right to have extramarital sex is sacred while speaking in defence of marriage these days is concerned career-threatening blasphemy. This is the kind of country Britain has now become, suffering from homosexuality, gay marriage and dementia, as Robert Mugabe so delicately put it. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/how-i-brokered-a-peace-deal-with-robert-mugabe-roy-agyemang-reveals-the-delicate-diplomacy-needed-to-get-zimbabwes-president-to-sit-down-with-the-bbc-9268511.html

While it would have been obviously cheaper to throw all the charges at Clifford all at the same time, it is quite obvious that in a case like this, where the evidence can be so easily made up, and the number of women probably doing it for revenge and gain reckless with the truth these days so high, it is not safe for all the charges to be made one after another at the same trial, because it gives such a bad impression of the accused, especially when it is just one person's word against another.

I would have thought it was pretty obvious that the interests of justice would have required a separate trial for each allegation, especially allegations of this nature.

The way the judge went on about unproven allegations and treated them as if they had been was quite unpardonable.

Pertinent to count 3-6 is the evidence of what you did to a 12 year old girl
whilst she was on holiday in Puerto Cabopino. I am satisfied so that I am sure
on the evidence which the jury heard that this amounted to another sexual
offence against a young child. Had the offence not taken place abroad and at a
time when it was not justiciable here you would have been charged with
indecent assault in relation to it. 

23. This girl became a holiday friend of your daughter. Having groomed her by
playing a tickling game with her in the swimming pool, you got her parents’
permission to take her to a Jacuzzi in the hotel complex. 

24. Whilst your daughter was absent and you were in the Jacuzzi with the 12 year
old you put your hand down her bikini and onto her pubic mound and asked if
she was ticklish there. You then got hold of her hand and moved it onto your
erect penis and started moving her hand up and down quite slowly. You
stopped when your daughter came to the Jacuzzi

http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgments/sentencing-remarks-hhj-leonard-r-v-clifford.pdf

Interestingly, nowhere has it been said that Clifford has been found guilty of this.

http://ukcriminallawblog.com/2014/05/02/max-clifford-sentenced/

Mr Clifford was sentenced as follows (date and age of victim in brackets) :

Count 3 – (aged 15, in 1977/78) – 12 months
Count 4 – (aged 15, in 1977/78) – 18 months, consecutive
Count 5 – (aged 15, in 1977/78) – 24 months, consecutive
Count 6 – (aged 15, in 1977/78) – 24 months, concurrent
Count 8 – (aged 19, in 1981/82) – 6 months, consecutive
Count 9 – (aged 16 or 17, in 1980′s) – 6 months, concurrent
Count 10 – (aged 16 or 17, in 1980′s) – 21 months, consecutive
Count 11 – (aged 18, in 1984/85) – 15 months, consecutive

The individual sentences are not far off what we had predicted, but the total is, as we said, double what we had predicted.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2618575/Victims-fury-stars-backed-untouchable-Clifford-predator-jailed-eight-years.html#ixzz30r5y8g3s

The judge also said he believed the accounts of six women whom Clifford was not charged over but who were prosecution supporting witnesses at his trial.

Their ‘compelling evidence’ included how Clifford sexually abused a 12-year-old girl in a Jacuzzi during a family holiday in Spain in 1983.

Note that Clifford has not been found guilty of sexually abusing the 12 year old girl.  Yet this "evidence" was deemed to be "compelling" enough to convict him of the other charges.

Surely shome mistake?  It really does sound like Judge Leonard has got his judicial knickers in a twist over that.

It is to be hoped that what I have said will furnish grounds for appeal for poor old Maxie, but if not I shall be happy to visit him in prison to cheer him up and give him opportunities of proposing to me.

http://thevoiceofreason-ann.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/some-views-on-conviction-of-max-clifford.html

He may want a new wife soon and I think I could deal with a husband who is mostly away with no danger of unreasonable sexual demands being made upon me.

http://thevoiceofreason-ann.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/why-would-any-englishman-want-to-marry.html

No comments:

When people hate their own so much they invite foreigners to rule them

https://t.co/1OsZGsh23R — Cyborg of Secular Koranism (@Book_of_Rules)  November 12, 2024 2:00  Space begins. I think sometimes, 40k is bad f...