Now that Paul Chambers’ conviction has been rightly quashed by the court of appeal, the blame game is in full swing. Yesterday’s Observer claimed that the blame lay squarely with the DPP – Kier Starmer. He, on the other hand claims otherwise, that he did not specifically instruct the CPS to persecute prosecute Chambers in the wake of what as obviously to anyone with a modicum of common sense, a silly hyperbolic joke.
You have to wonder at the cretins who decided that the threat was real – yes, you people at Robin Hood Airport, we are looking at you, and yes, the original magistrates and judges who claimed that Chambers sent a “message of a menacing character”. It was patently nothing of the sort, yet in our thin-skinned reality of the early twenty-first century, these poltroons are ruining peoples’ lives with this nonsense.
So, we are told that someone, somewhere in the CPS had a fit of reason and decided that fighting Cambers’ appeal was not in the public interest (not least because no crime had been committed).
Crown Prosecution Service lawyers had been prepared to back away from one of the most controversial cases in years, telling Chambers that they no longer saw a public interest in opposing his appeal against conviction. Chambers had said he felt “immense relief” that the prosecution – which had seen him lose two jobs and gain a criminal record – appeared to be over and that the authorities seemed ready to restore his good name.
The CPS even sent Chambers and his solicitor, free-speech campaigner David Allen Green, papers stating that it now agreed that the case should end.
Clearly, common sense and reason could not be allowed to prevail, so Starmer, it is alleged stepped in and insisted that the appeal be fought. Starmer says not.
A CPS spokesperson denied Starmer was a decision-maker in the case and insisted he did not overrule his subordinates.
Well, somebody did and in so doing wasted taxpayers’ money on a case that should never have been brought in the first instance, let alone fight an appeal against an obvious miscarriage of justice.
Someone’s head should roll for this, but I’m not holding my breath.
Civil Servants and magistrates behaving like erm… self important idiots, liars and bullies – who-da thunk it?
Hubris is an appropriate word here – or one of them …
Well as I said over on Samizdata, someone went well out of their way to persecute Chambers…
The Crown Prosecution Service caused controversy by using a law aimed against nuisance calls – originally to protect “female telephonists at the Post Office” in the 1930s – rather than specific bomb hoax legislation, which requires stronger evidence of intent.
As anyone with a braincell would have realised there was no case to answer here, but they pressed ahead with the letter of the Law anyway. And that’s the way it’s going, Justice and common sense have gone out the window. The Process is now the Punishment.
If the perpetrators have moved from defending the indefencible to trying to blame each other, I suppose that is a step in the right direction.
Ah dangerous crimes like trying to cross a (olympic) tape-line stretched across the middle of SAINT PANCRAS STATION (Fucking torch relay) when I was trying to get on Eurostar to escape!
But it’s an “olympic” tape-line & sacrosanct.
Bastards