Not enough cash to charge suspects

Before a suspect is interviewed the police will usually disclose the basic facts of a case to the suspect's solicitor, which is one of the best reasons for having a solicitor by the way!

There are rumours flying about that the CPS are refusing to authorise charges of suspects because of budget constraints - I most recently heard this the weekend before last at a party from a Met police officer and again last Friday from a BTP police officer at a Chas and Dave concert (I have high musical tastes!)

Consider this piece of disclosure in a theft case, "LBH have produced CCTV evidence which shows the offence... The defendant is currently on bail for two like offences... [and] has 14 previous convictions for theft offences..."  The disclosure also makes the point that a CCTV operator witnessed the offence as it happened, which is how the police came to be called.

I cannot comment about whether the CPS are deliberately refusing to charge, but in this case the CPS refused to charge and the matter was "no further actioned".

Comments

  1. Anonymous17 March 2011 at 18:30

    I think the clue is in "currently on bail for two like offences".

    There seems to be a school of thought that here that there's no point throwing good money after bad when the scrote is in the middle of a prosecution for the same thing.

    On a seperate note....how is it that Human Rights lawyers have not jumped on the fact that justice is routinely denied to victims ? You would think there was some sort of conspiracy here.

    Ho hum...civil war is getting closer every day.

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  2. Defence Brief18 March 2011 at 08:51

    I didn't say but the bail was police bail, so no prosecution ongoing.

    Contrary to poplar belief, lawyers do not exist in a vacuum so for a lawyer to jump on anything they need a member of the public to instruct them to bring the action. There was a case brought in the late 80s by the family of one of the victims of the Yorkshire Ripper in which the family said the police had failed to protect the individual victims. The court effectively said that the police did not owe a duty of care to every individual against a particular offender. I suspect that if someone sued for the authorities failing to protect victims the outcome would be similar.

    ReplyDelete

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