General Chat

Merlin - equally trial by media is against all the laws of justice, until guilt is proven in a court of law an individual is presumed innocent, trial by the media demolishes that presumption and punishes individuals who may have done no wrong, that is neither fair or just.

A sad case.

For hundreds of years those accused had the right to have the case against them put in open court. Witnesses supporting the accusations also had to be prepared to appear in open court and be prepared to be cross examined without any shield of anonymity.

There are some obvious exceptions - child witnesses, terrorism (maybe) but justice wholly or partly in camera has gone much too far and all of us are not far from being dragged into one of these modern star chambers with scant warning.

That said I was a principal witness at a serious criminal trial at the assizes when I was 14. I just had to cope with hostile cross examination as best as I could. I suffered no trauma from it.

Sadly Yewtree is just one of several politically motivated "investigations". Such cases do nothing to suggest that the image on top of the Old Bailey has anything to do with modern British justice.

I hope that there will not be a retrial.

Interesting reading here:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/13/prosecution-case-dave-lee-travis-fell-apart

As I said before,Its a Witch Hunt as to who can bag the Highest Profile Star Etc.Probably got aLeague Score for each,It stinks to High Heaven.The trouble is that the people who have genuine reason to complain of these crimes against them will be reluctant to bring charges thinking they will be held up to ridicule about it.Which is very very sad and against all laws of justice.**M**. :-(

The CPS has a lot to answer for.

I see that Freddie Starr has been arrested and released on bail for a 4th time. He is now seeking a Judicial Review.

I feel sorry for him has well, and I think a lot of these cases have been brought to court because they could not throw the book at Jimmy Saville

Poor man! :-(

Some of the accusations relate to alleged incidents in very recent times. What is the cut off point whereby you say "oh it was ok then, it was a long time ago"?
2008?
1998?
1988?
1978?

Interesting comments, Magpie.

Only the lawyers win, it seems he has sold his house to pay for his defence....
Bob

I do too. The thing is that when these guys were young they were persistently followed about by 'groupies' who were for the most part very young girls hanging around stage doors hoping that their idol would look in their direction. No doubt he did put his arm round one or two of them, even give them a squeeze, but in those days no one would have thought tuppence about it, in fact they'd have been disappointed if he hadn't!! OK it's unacceptable now, but in those days if a chap hadn't wolf whistled at me I would have thought that there was something wrong with the way I was looking and been really miffed!!! This poor man's been through hell for things that were totally unimportant and forgotten about years ago. Witch hunt come to mind - hope Rolf Harris is acquitted too.

Well i feel sorry for the guy . :-|

In respect of the two charges on which the jury failed to reach a verdict, it will be interesting to see if the Crown Prosecution Service will make them the subject of a re-trial or whether they will drop them.

Interesting....!!


jude

The jury in the trial of the DJ Dave Lee Travis (real name David Patrick Griffin) after taking 4 days to consider their verdict have found him not guilty on all but two counts on which they could not decide to agree on a verdict.