Sarahs Law

Now then; at this most festive of times the news has been pretty well dominated by war and murder. I don't really want to touch too much on the video of Bin Laden laughing and joking about the WTC atrocity except to say that A: The man is pig excrement given human form, and B: how long do you think it will be before some of the more extreme conspiracy kooks start saying that they know for a fact that the video was digitally created by the US Government in order to frame Bin Laden. Hey, if Hitler burned the Reichstag then Dubya must have been behind the WTC, right? Mm...

However the story that has set my mind racing has to be the shabby, sordid, and tragic death of Sarah Payne at the hands of Roy Whiting. It has emerged that Mr. Whiting had a previous conviction for kidnapping and indecently assaulting a young girl. He served 2 and half years for that and was released despite the grave misgivings of his parole officer. None of this was brought up at the trial. There is now a groundswell of public opinion behind a change in the law that would allow details of the accused's previous convictions to be given during a trial. There is also a strong body of support for Sarah's Law. Sarah's Law would be the British equivalent of Megan's Law in the US. In both cases, a young girl was abducted, raped, and murdered by a man with previous convictions for paedophilia that lived in the vicinity. No one in the area knew that the men were paedophiles. Megan's Law made the sex offender's register available for public inspection so that parents would know if a paedophile was moving into their area.

I've written before about the grotesque drama that is repeated year in year out whenever a child is abducted, and this is yet another breathtaking performance of that Danse Macabre. Yet it seems that perhaps we are not going to sit and accept it any more. There does seems to be a very real desire to do something concrete in order to put a stop to this. By the same token, there is an equal amount of opposition to some of the measures being called for. Why would anyone want to oppose something that could save lives and protect children from predatory throwbacks like Whiting? Well, they would oppose it for some very good reasons. Although they may not be enough to convince you that the 2 proposed changes to the law are a bad idea they are certainly enough to make one stop and think.

So firstly we must look at the proposed change to the laws of evidence; to allow details of previous convictions to be brought up at trial. Supporters of this measure say that there are numerous cases where someone has been acquitted by the jury who are then aghast to learn that the accused has a string of convictions for some remarkably similar offenses. "If the previous crimes are sufficiently similar to the ones they currently stand accused of" say supporters of this idea "then surely this is evidence that the person would commit the same crime again? A judge should have the discretion to allow these previous convictions and any relevant evidence from those cases to be presented to the jury in this case". This is a lucid and quite correct argument that falls down on only one small detail; we already have a law that allows this. The statute in question dates from 1898 and allows the use of "Similar Fact Evidence". The law states that if a previous crime or event bears a close similarity to the crime that the accused is currently charged with, then details of that previous crime or event can be put before the jury. Crucially, it is down to the judge's discretion whether or not to allow similar fact evidence (usually there is a pre-trial hearing to determine whether or not something is Similar Fact Evidence or just hearsay).

So if we already have the law, why has it never been used? Well, it has been used on a few fairly famous occasions. The Brides in the Bath case of the early 1900's saw George Smith accused of drowning his new bride in the bath of their honeymoon suite. Mr. Smith contended that his wife must have fallen asleep in the bath or suffered some other tragic mishap. 2 pieces of evidence secured his conviction; firstly there was a demonstration in the courtroom of just how Mr. Smith could have drowned his wife in the bath (the demonstration itself almost led to the death of the WPC sitting in the bath for the demonstration; the method Smith used, to hook one arm under her legs and another round her back and then whip her legs away from her so that she was flat on her back in the bath with her head underwater, was quite stunningly effective the rather embarrassed prosecution barrister explained as the semi conscious and spluttering WPC was carried from the court). The second was the admission of Similar Fact Evidence. The similar facts being that he had married twice before in the previous 2 years and both of his wives had drowned in the bath not long after their wedding.

There have been other cases where Similar fact evidence has been introduced (Rosemary West's trial for example), so if we have this law then why don't we make more use of it? I think partly because the judge has to rule on whether or not to allow the evidence to be admitted. Whilst it is extremely tempting to call them a bunch of bewigged and senile old farts who have a stuffy insistence on sticking to the letter of the law rather than to it's spirit, I don't think it's entirely their fault. Their hands are tied to a large extent by the law itself, which is very restrictive in what it will and will not allow as Similar Fact Evidence. And in all honesty, I really don't think that this is the best case to use as a justification for a change in the law. In the case of Roy Whiting I honestly don't think that I would have allowed his previous conviction to be raised had I been in the same position as the trial judge. Whilst it pointed to the undeniable fact that he is a vile and unpleasant pervert, it did not therefore prove that he was a murderer. The facts of the case did that.

Then of course we have the issue of Sarah's Law. I think everyone's gut feeling about this is pretty much the same; we have a right to know if there is a person in the area who could be a danger to our loved ones. You'll not get much of an argument out of me about the principle involved here. What you will get me arguing about is just how this law would be enacted. The worst case scenario is that we end up with the same level of frontier justice that reared it's ugly head when the News of the World ran their Paedophile naming and shaming campaign. A man who had the same name as one of the named paedophiles was hounded and threatened by his neighbours, a Welsh Paediatrician was driven from her home, and a man named Peter Phile was assaulted and set on fire by a group of residents (scarily enough, only one of those three examples was made up for the Brass Eye program satirising public and media reaction to paedophiles). The best case is that the public will not be whipped up into a frenzy by papers looking to boost their circulation and so access to the list will not lead to lynch mobs being formed.

Opponents of the law say that it will drive paedophiles underground and make it more difficult to track them. Why not just electronically tag them for the same length of time as they're on the sex offender’s register then? That way the authorities will know where they are at all times and a register can be lodged at police stations for inspection upon request. I suppose that Civil Libertarians will object to the principle, but I can't see them being able to sustain any call for the rights of a group of people than evoke such a strong reaction as paedophiles and sex offenders. Also, how come Roy Whiting was allowed to refuse any help or treatment to confront and perhaps help exorcise whatever demons drove him to kidnap and sexually assault that first young girl? Why wasn't it compulsory for him? And why do we release people who step forth into freedom still clinging to the notion that the child they abused was a willing partner? Surely it would be better for all concerned if sentencing for such crimes took the form of being sentenced to be detained at her majesty's pleasure (i.e. until a panel of psychiatrists, police officers, and members of the public are satisfied that he is no longer a danger)? I don't pretend that it will stop these crimes altogether but I think it would cut them down to a certain extent.

It seems to me that the media are portraying people who have any misgivings about the suggested changes in the law as loony lefties who put the rights of sex beasts above the rights of our children (if you have seen the episode of the Simpsons where the Reverend's wife repeatedly interjects with "But what about our children?!" in suitably distraught tones then you'll know what I'm driving at). This is toss. I would suggest that they are worried at the potential for people being convicted for a crime that they are innocent of purely on the basis that they had done something similar once before. They are also worried about people having their lives placed in danger because they are wrongly believed to be a paedophile. If those worries can be assuaged however then you'll find me cheering loudly as new laws to stop the never-ending stream of needless, meaningless deaths are introduced.