Blogathon Day 18 - Joint Enterprise

So the Supreme Court has decided that the Joint Enterprise law interpretation was wrong. Well then they need to toughen up a series of other sentences. Because it looks to me that if you get the crazy notion to murder someone, and even better if I give you that crazy notion, I can egg you on and get you to murder someone. Then providing you don't admit it and I don't shop you, there won't be a conviction for murder. And the more of us in the group then it's even less likely.

Because this is British Justice. Where you can be murdered and as long as the Police are unable to identify the actual person in a group who gave the death blow, no-one will be convicted.

Ah, say the liberal lawyers and others, what if one of the group was looking the other way or perhaps wasn't aware that the person was going to be murdered? Well the answer to that is that everyone else in the group should name the killer. And if you don't that is why you have made it a joint enterprise! It's not rocket science. But no-one names the killer because he might come after them. Precisely, that's why he is a killer. But if he gets banged up for life you might well be ok. Although that means he'll probably be out in about a fortnight but that's another gripe.

If you don't name the killer then that has to be perverting the course of justice. Which has a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. So use it. Then people will start naming the culprit,

"But if they were looking the other way they wouldn't know who it was". Yeah, right, because none of them would talk about it amongst themselves afterwards.

"But that would be hearsay evidence and not relevant!". True, but if everyone named the killer you would have a probablitity that not everyone was ganging up on them. And to be honest, the people involved in this normlly haven't suddenly decided murdering someone might be a good idea for a Tuesday evening, they are usually known to the Police. And most of the group are a group all the time. It isn't a murderer who has convinced a bunch of innocent bystanders to come along and just throng about whilst he kills someone.

The age old argument is that it is better that someone guilty gets off than an innocent person goes to jail. But all that does is to make sure that if you can protect the guilty then society gets no justice let alone the family. Nobody wants an innocent person to go to prison, well unless you count criminals who would rather an innocent person went to jail in their place.

I'm sorry, but if you are in a group of people that murders someone, you should have legged it before it got that serious. And until people take responsibility for their own actions, and whilst some sections of society gives them the excuse to absolve themselves, there isn't going to be any great reduction in violent crime.