Not that this is going to stop the Laurie Pennies and Dave Sparts from thinking they’re the real jury, eh?

Patel, Tomlinson – big organisations all have a quotient of such people.
Perhaps the price we must pay to protect workers rights are the sort of conditions, at least in the public sector, that make it very difficult to get rid of perennial under performers.

Looking at parallels in education it has been claimed ‘excessive red tape and the strength of teaching unions meant it was too hard to sack underperforming staff.
Instead many school leaders play “pass the parcel” with poor teachers, encouraging them to move to other schools ensuring they remain in the classroom “year after year”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8977360/One-in-five-incompetent-teachers-sacked.html

There are shit doctors and shit nurses and their combined effort will guarantee that somebody will be harmed yet doing something about it may lead to counter claims of harassment or bullying or prolonged periods when the onus is put on others to babysit them (which is fine as far as it goes, but in a pressurised environment it means those tasked with the babysitting are usually being pulled away from what it is they are really meant to be doing).

1, and other apologists: unlike the jury, we are now in possession of the full facts regarding both Harwood and Patel. If I were among the 10 jurors who acquitted, I’d be feeling both sick and angry to discover those pieces of evidence.

Remember, whether or not the state sends you to jail is beyond-reasonable-doubt; libel is balance-of-probabilities. Harwood scraped an acquittal on beyond-reasonable-doubt, but on balance of probabilities he’s a thuggish killer.

Not disagreeing with your last statement, John – though FYI balance of probabilities is the civil standard, not just for libel – but I do rather disagree with the contention that the evidence on Harwood’s character was actually relevant to whether or not he committed manslaughter, unless it turns out that we put people on trial for being wankers now.

I don’t know about this – please don’t shout at me, these are just off the cuff thoughts … If I punch somebody in the face and they hit their head when they fall and die, should I be given a different punishment from somebody else who punches somebody else in the face in the same circumstances, but they happen not to die? If I fire bullets at random into a crowd, but by chance happen not to hit anybody, shouldn’t I get an equal punishment to somebody doing the same but with less luck? I know in practise things don’t work out that way – obviously if you drive recklessly but don’t hit anybody, you get a different punishment than if you kill somebody by reckless driving. But I don’t know how the law deals with this – if you have no reason to expect punching somebody to kill them, what does the law say ought to happen to you?

Luis: that’s why there’s an offence of manslaughter. The following isn’t the legal wording, but it’s a reasonable approximation to the law.

If you kill somebody by committing a criminal offence that you could reasonably have foreseen would have caused harm, but that you could not reasonably foreseen would have caused grievous bodily harm or death, then you’re guilty of manslaughter. If you kill somebody while intending to do GBH or (obviously) to kill them, you’re guilty of murder.

So in this case, for a manslaughter conviction, the prosecution needed to show that Harwood assaulted Tomlinson, and that Tomlinson’s death was a consequence of the assault. Obviously we can’t know English juries’ reasons for reaching their verdicts, but it seems likely that the jury decided (following Patel’s evidence) that the prosecution had not proved BRD that there was a connection between Harwood’s assault and Tomlinson’s death. Harwood couldn’t be prosecuted for common assault, because there’s a six month statute of limitations and charges weren’t brought in time.

Agree that the moral luck aspect is weird. Gary Hart, who drove in a state that most drivers have driven in (ie sober and not on drugs, but not having had enough sleep) ended up in jail for several years for falling asleep and drifting off a country road, which in its own right would have earned him a fine, a ban and maybe a community penalty, because he had the breathtakingly bad luck to land on a railway line, cause a derailment, and then have the derailed train hit by a freight train coming the other way.

On the other hand, there has to be some element of justice for victims, and it would seem wrong to just give Harwood or Hart the penalty for common assault or careless driving respectively.

Tomothy: the Patel evidence is a lot more important, and I’m frankly baffled the judge decided to withhold it. The evidence of Tomlinson’s past conduct is relevant, in that it shows he’s a man with a habit of going on crazy violent rages whilst on duty, but on the other hand I doubt that the jury’s reasonable doubt was over whether Tomlinson committed the assault or not.

John

” that’s why there’s an offence of manslaughter.”

ah yes, I feel somewhat foolish now. Thanks for explanation.

If I punch somebody in the face and they hit their head when they fall and die, should I be given a different punishment from somebody else who punches somebody else in the face in the same circumstances, but they happen not to die?

Nope, you should be given a more sever punishment. Because you have killed someone.

Try this example.

If I punch YOUR MUM in the face and SHE hits HER head when SHE falls and dies, should I be given a different punishment from somebody else who punches YOUR MUM in the face in the same circumstances, but SHE happens not to die?

Am I the only person who has watched the footage of Ian Tomlinson wandering around for the minutes before he was pushed over and noticed he was staggering and in quite obviously in some distress?

What PC Harwood did was wrong but in no way could you say it caused Ian Tomlinson’s death. It most certainly didn’t help him but he was already on the way out unless the paramedics were at hand.

This should be a moment for everyone, police and protestors, to stand back and ask the question?: “Did my actions increase the likelihood that a person already in distress would be less likely to receive the care and medical attention they require?”

The answer to this question is obvious – yes.

I can’t but help feel that the organisers of the demonstrators who on that day wished to test the limits, tie up as many police as possible and act as provocatively as they could are accountable for Ian Tomlinson not being able to escape the area.

Surprise surprise they’ve been keeping quiet for the past couple of years. No guesses why.

What PC Harwood did was wrong but in no way could you say it caused Ian Tomlinson’s death.

It’s strange you say that, as the inquest jury concluded it did.

My feeling is that the verdict is less about the lack of evidence for causation, having read through much of the inquest transcripts, it was pretty clearly in favour of the fall having caused Ian Tomlinson’s death, which is presumably why the Inquest jury delivered a verdict of unlawful killing. I suspect it was more to do with the jury’s understandable reluctance to convict Simon Harwood of an offence which would almost certainly have resulted in a substantial custodial sentence, for a single push that the overwhelming majority of people would have walked away from.

Whilst technically the chain of events fell well within the definition of manslaughter, and the principle of “take your victim as you find them” offers no defence due to Tomlinson’s underlying condition, it’s another thing to be on the jury that has to deliver that verdict, and with four days deliberation, they obviously thought about the matter carefully.

“If I punch YOUR MUM in the face and SHE hits HER head when SHE falls and dies, should I be given a different punishment from somebody else who punches YOUR MUM in the face in the same circumstances, but SHE happens not to die?”

It’s funny how good liberal readers of LC and the Guardian suddenly morph into Sun readers when it comes to certain kinds of cases.

IIRC it was only Patel out of four forensic pathologists who concluded it didn’t.

[12] ‘I suspect it was more to do with the jury’s understandable reluctance to convict Simon Harwood of an offence which would almost certainly have resulted in a substantial custodial sentence, for a single push that the overwhelming majority of people would have walked away from’ – I think it goes much further than that, I do not think there is an appetite to convict any police officer if there is any way to avoid it.

The CPS sometimes drag their feet (an accusation made against them in this case) while the gruniard tell us, ‘more than 1,000 people have died in police custody since the 1960s and in only one case, in 1969, has a police officer been convicted’.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/19/simon-harwood-police-officer-not-guilty

Are these coppers bastards to begin with, or are they eventually driven mad by daily exposure to the sort of characters you would not want sitting close to you on the night bus home?

@a&ecn #15:

while the gruniard tell us, ‘more than 1,000 people have died in police custody since the 1960s and in only one case, in 1969, has a police officer been convicted’.

There is definitely an issue here; too many people die after having attempted to cause criminal damage to police station steps with their head. None is the only acceptable number.

BUT: I would be very happy if the Grauniad would stop trotting out this meaningless statistic every time this kind of story comes up; especially when they follow the quote with this kind of thing: “the families of those killed are forced to take on the state”

The vast majority of those deaths are from natural causes unrelated to (or indeed positively in spite of) any treatment they may have received from police officers, or from suicide. In only a very small minority of cases was there any evidence that the death resuted from the deliberate actions of the police, and those actions were largely some form of restraint.

The Grauniad knows all this; I’ve got it from the IPCC study from which they took the number of more than 300 deaths in custody since 1999 in its story.

Hannah:
At the inquest, the jury had the four experts’ testimony presented to them with equal weight, so they felt confident in ignoring Singh’s. At the criminal trial, the defence case centred on Singh’s testimony, so it was effectively granted the same prominence as the three prosecution expert witnesses put together. It’s the difference between an inquisitorial and an adversarial system.

(I’m not sure I agree with your conjecture, either. Most manslaughter trials are about cases where there was no intent to cause serious harm and a lot of bad luck. Many murder trials, even, when we’re talking about the unarmed or lightly armed young men fighting each other who account for most non-domestic murders).

ukliberty re comment 11,

Thanks for your message.

What about the fact that Ian Tomlinson was staggering around in obvious distress for minutes before he was shoved over? The guy was ill and needed medical care. Instead it was only after he was pushed over that he was assisted.

It’s a bit like saying that it is the force of the bottle of champagne smashing against the ship’s hull that forces it down the slipway into the water.

Had Ian Tomlinson just passed by PC Harwood without attracting attention and gone round the corner and collapsed and died ……would anyone have been blamed for his death?

If you don’t believe me about him staggering around just look at the footage for yourself.

[16] you may well be right that it is a lazy statistic – but the driver behind it (a sense that a different standard operates when police officers are accused) remains fairly prevalent.

In this case the original decision by the CPS not to prosecute Harwood raised a number of eyebrows – mind you Paul Mendelle QC, chair of the Criminal Bar Association says ” …… the decision (not to prosecute Harwood) as far as I can see so far from the statements of the director of public prosecutions is legally unimpeachable.”

On the other hand Sarah McSherry, a partner at Christian Khan Solicitors says, “The news (about the CPS) is as unsurprising as it is disappointing.” – She said: “I am not aware of any case involving an ordinary member of the public in which the CPS took over one year instructing numerous experts to test the evidence before deciding on whether or not to prosecute. The CPS appears to have conducted its own trial of this matter in private. The evidence they refer to ought to have been tested in open court in the context of a normal criminal prosecution as with any ordinary member of the public”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jul/22/ian-tomlinson-lawyers-cps

So is this case of flakey guardianistas throwing their toys out of the pram or are the police literally getting away scott free?

Kojak: Tomlinson was drunk. He was a drinker, and he was drunk. However, that doesn’t make him in imminent danger of death, as confirmed by the three forensic pathologists who spoke at his inquest and weren’t later struck off.

I do find it bizarre that the press seems to be focusing on Harwood’s past record, when it has so little to do with the case itself: it doesn’t make a jot of difference what he did before, as he clearly didn’t intend to seriously harm Tomlinson. What I would like to know is the legal arguments behind not allowing the jury to hear of Patel’s past record, especially when he was suspended last year by the GMC and did such a disastrous job on Sally White’s post-mortem. They still might have decided due to the new evidence from Alastair Wilson (see my full piece for more incidentally, as that part was edited out for brevity) that manslaughter wasn’t proven beyond reasonable doubt, but it could have made the difference, therefore I can fully understand why the Tomlinsons intend to pursue Harwood further through the civil courts.

[20] ‘However, that doesn’t make him in imminent danger of death’ – for a man of his age to die, after falling from standing (while walking slowly, and without a head injury) implies significant underlying pathology.

Those with drink dependence are more likely to bleed due to the effect of alcohol on platelets.
Cirrhosis results in scar tissue which presses on the many blood vessels in the liver. This interrupts flow of blood to liver cells, which then die.
A further cardiovascular affect arises from portal hypertension which may cause bleeding into the intestines and fluid accumulation throughout the body.

The sum of these processes can be a ticking time bomb in some cases – anybody who has ever witnessed an acute variceal bleed will understand how rapidly the entire blood supply can be lost.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eBRkA8B-HU

Kojak @18, that’s the first suggestion I’ve seen, having followed the case fairly closely I think, that Tomlinson was in “obvious distress” and “needed medical care” before being struck by a baton and pushed over. I’ve seen the video footage the media has made available. There is no dispute that Tomlinson was drunk and staggering about.

Had Ian Tomlinson just passed by PC Harwood without attracting attention and gone round the corner and collapsed and died ……would anyone have been blamed for his death?

But that isn’t what happened, is it?

Robin Levett:
There is definitely an issue here; too many people die after having attempted to cause criminal damage to police station steps with their head. None is the only acceptable number.

Really? You mean that it would be reasonable that no one should die in police custody?

If you could achieve this, then obviously all emergency hospitals should be replaced by police stations because they would be providing a much better care than NHS in Britain or any hospital system in the world can.

The reality is: even people who seem perfectly healthy sometimes drop down dead on the spot. Humans are like that. It happens.

People who are arrested are very often intoxicated, out of control, sick mentally but not so visibly physically. It is sometimes very difficult to tell apart people who are seriously ill (and dying) and people who are just disorderly and drunk. However, 99.9942 % of time they are just disorderly and drunk. Given the huge volume of criminal, anti-social and disruptive behaviour, the remaining 0.0058 % is large enough to accumulate hundreds of people dying in custody over a decade, in Britain only, and much more globally.

(Or to be more precise “dying after being in police custody”, as I think these are counted in Britain – I presume the numbers you quote from Grauniad are built this way, i.e. they include not only people who actually died while in police custody, but they also include deaths after being in touch with the police, even if the death itself is in no way the fault of the police. People who are just so infuriated by someone telling them to stop beating others that a vein bursts in their head. This, along with the complex nature of illnesses, is a pretty good explanation why not very many policemen are prosecuted for these custody deaths.)

Finally, Kojak:
This should be a moment for everyone, police and protestors, to stand back and ask the question?: “Did my actions increase the likelihood that a person already in distress would be less likely to receive the care and medical attention they require?”

The answer to this question is obvious – yes.

So true.

Septicisle at 21 has it. Much as on Elm Street, Freddy is the key to this mystery.

PJT: you’ve utterly misinterpreted Robin here. He’s the one suggesting that the Grauniad data is misleading, because only a small minority of the people in it are people who’ve been unlawfully killed.

This is Robin, from the piece you quoted:

The vast majority of those deaths are from natural causes unrelated to (or indeed positively in spite of) any treatment they may have received from police officers, or from suicide

I’m in awe that someone could lie so blatantly and so insanely on a webpage where the source that they’re lying about is *directly above them*.

There’s so much more to this. Harwood is taking the flak but we should be asking why he was even there. He resigned a couple of years previously in order to avoid a disciplinary over a road rage incident but got back into the Met and the TSG by joining Surrey police and transfering. On the day in question he was supposed to be driving a van and not engaging tthe public. It’s almost as if his superiors didn’t trust him.

The public are becoming concerned at the apparent lack of consequences for police officers who break the law. There’s a long list of people who have died as a consequence of police misconduct and for whom there has been no justice: Joy Gardner, Christopher Alder, Blair Peach, Robin Goodenough…

For the sake of good policing and the majority of good coppers these cases should be resolved. For the sake of public confidence there should be more transparency in police disciplinary matters and cops who break the law should not be able to avoid the consequences by leaving the force. And the Met really does need to have a serious look at how it keeps getting into these situations.

John B and Robin Levett: apologies for not reading more than the starting lines which I interpreted to be a repetition of the Guardian drivel. It seems we very much agree.

“The vast majority of those deaths are from natural causes unrelated to (or indeed positively in spite of) any treatment they may have received from police officers, or from suicide.” And indeed, as PJT has said, I’d imagine that complications of substance abuse make up a significant proportion of that figure, as well.

“Duncan Campbell is right to lay the blame at the feet of those who authorised the completely counter-productive tactic…”

And we will see those people in court when?

Or will we be subjec to them being patted on the back, sorry hand by a panel of former colleagues first?

Harwood is indicative of how a thoroughly corrupt police force is being sanctioned by a Goverment to operate a police state.

It may not affect the likes of Mr. Campbell but to the disaffected, it isn’t something they will stand for for long, even if Whitehall tries to kettle them.

British jury’s just won’t convict thug police officers. It used to be one persons word against that of the police officer, and jury’s, and certainly judges gave the benefit of doubt to the police.

Now, quite often there is film showing what happened, and even that is not good enough to convict. Problem is it does encourage the police to believe they can do what they want and not be prosecuted. Look at number of deaths in police custody over the last 20 years.

What has been revealed after the case about this officer is he should not have been a policeman anymore. If the police want to use the odd bad Apple excuse, they need to spend more effort getting rid of the bad apples. It always fascinates me in these cases is how little outrage there is from the so called libertarian right wing. Probably because they are all fake.

21. ” I do find it bizarre that the press seems to be focusing on Harwood’s past record, when it has so little to do with the case itself: it doesn’t make a jot of difference what he did before,”

Hogwash. It shows this officer is a loose canon who has got himself in trouble before and should have been let go years ago. The victim was able to pass other officers without getting a bash on the head. 45 years old and still a PC, rather suggest he is not the brightest of beings.

Sally re comment 31:

” 45 years old and still a PC, rather suggest he is not the brightest of beings.”

Whereas contributors to this Internet forum are enlightened and have something to brag about in the brains department?

At least Harwood was being paid for his time.

For those of you who wish to put money where mouth goes, this would be that.

no.10 (no11 done you here)

3 John b,regarding the Previous compaints against Harwood, 11 of the 12 were dismissed, the only one that the jury could have been told about was the fact he used the Met police computer to look up an adress for non work purposes, A jury can’t be told that someones been cleared of 11 other allegations, as a refernce on the character if he’d been found guilty of those other 1 ones that’d be different

26 joy gardner died after being tied up by immigration not police

Border patrol = immigration police = interchangeable.

It doesn’t matter, plenty of experiments have shown, and there are masses of real-life examples: it’s about power, and power corrupts. If that corruption means one police officer takes it into his head to over-zealously treat a passer-by and there are consequences to that action, then he must be punished “to the full extent of the law” for no one is above it.

But no, they park on red lines to get an ice cream; they turn the
lights on get through traffic; they hassle black people & other minorities because they can; they resort to violence at peaceful protests; and they get away with it, always, without fail.

It’s been going on for too long, and it is epidemic levels, moreso in London than I think anywhere else. They are sanctioned and given increasing powers by Government and lauded by the media. People who say its going to become a police state are behind the time: it already is.

@ Luis

“If I punch somebody in the face and they hit their head when they fall and die, should I be given a different punishment from somebody else who punches somebody else in the face in the same circumstances, but they happen not to die?”

I personally think that criminal penalties should reflect the offender’s actions, not outcomes that were from their point of view essentially random. So punching someone in the head and accidentally killing them should get the same penalty as punching someone and not killing them, but perhaps the penalty for punching people should be increased to reflect that it implies the attacker is prepared to take an X% risk of killing the victim (if it doesn’t already take that into account).

Obviously that’s assuming that all else is equal: if you punch someone KNOWING there is a strong risk of killing them, because they have a pre-existing medical condition or whatever, that should be taken into account in sentencing, regardless of whether they did actually die.

By the same logic, people guilty of attempted murder should be given the same sentence as murderers. You don’t somehow lose culpability just because you fired at the victim and happened to miss.

@ Chaise

“I only hit him to gain his attention…” intentions and consequences have to both be considered together if we want real justice. It’s that consequentialism / intentionism thing.

I’m pretty happy that the law is nuanced enough to find its way through these matters. This particular case was handicapped, perhaps intentionally, by the incompetence of the original pathologist. The coroner’s court managed to be clear enough. Sadly the case was such a mess that enough doubt remained to acquit Harwood of criminal intent.

I have no doubt that he was out for a rumble and wanted to attack members of the public. I hope his disciplinary and the civil case against him show this to be true and deal with him accordingly.

@ 38 Cherub

I really don’t see why consequences need to enter into it at all (to be clear, “consequences” here differs from “intended results”). I feel pretty strongly that people ought to be judged based on what they do with the information available to them at the time. However, I suspect this is one of those things where there’s little point debating it, as it seems to rest on fundamentally different concepts of what “justice” means.

11 of the 12 were dismissed, the only one that the jury could have been told about was the fact he used the Met police computer to look up an adress for non work purposes

A very misleading statement. 11 were dealt with without formal sanction. Of these, he dodged two of the most serious (Met first time round and Surrey) by changing jobs; and then two of the complaints when he was back at the Met were agreed by all parties to be justified and were labelled “resolved informally” rather than dismissed.

I really don’t see why consequences need to enter into it at all

I think you’re right about fundamentally different concepts of justice, and I have some sympathy for your viewpoint, but taking it to that extreme seems bizarre. Under your logic, everyone who’s ever drink-driven warrants ten years inside (well, either that or the drink driver who runs down your mum doesn’t).

[41] ‘Under your logic, everyone who’s ever drink-driven warrants ten years inside’ – and if the crime is hitting somebody on the back of the leg with a stick then until recently it would have meant a fair proportion of the teaching profession could have been accused of acting like criminals?

@ john b

“but taking it to that extreme seems bizarre. Under your logic, everyone who’s ever drink-driven warrants ten years inside (well, either that or the drink driver who runs down your mum doesn’t).”

Well, it wouldn’t be as simple as that. Driving on 10 beers is worse than driving on 2, a genuine emergency might be a mitigating circumstance, and so on.

I agree it *seems* bizarre to give the same penalty regardless of whether they harmed anyone else. But if Alice and Bob both drink-drive, Alice runs someone as a result and Bob doesn’t (simply because nobody was crossing the road at the time), Alice and Bob have both made exactly the same choice. And people should be punished for their choices, not for events beyond their control. I think it’s even weirder to give Bob a slap on the wrist and put Alice in jail for 10 years for identical actions when Alice just got unlucky.

Drink-driving’s actually a great example because, while people get behind the wheel knowing they’re drunk, they don’t drink-drive with the intention of running someone over. So slap-on-the-wrist penalties seem a bit of a minor deterrant for an action that might kill someone.

I think at the moment we base sentencing on what *sounds* right and therefore get something that looks like justice on the surface, but actually isn’t.

@ 42 a&e

“and if the crime is hitting somebody on the back of the leg with a stick then until recently it would have meant a fair proportion of the teaching profession could have been accused of acting like criminals?”

Possibly, but they weren’t actually acting like criminals because they were legally entitled to hit pupils. And hitting them is illegal now anyway so by the same logic you could make that accusation now. I don’t see how this is relevant to my proposal at all, as a) it seems a non-issue and b) even if not it applies regardless of whether you use the present system or my preferred one. If anything it seems a blanket complaint about illegalising ANYTHING.

@43

Drink-driving’s actually a great example because, while people get behind the wheel knowing they’re drunk, they don’t drink-drive with the intention of running someone over.

I think the reasoning behind it is that you shouldn’t be committing crime X anyway in the first place (and thus face a minor punishment if caught doing so), but if you also cause tragedy Y while undertaking X then that gets heavily factored into your punishment.
A sort of “You knew it was wrong yet you did it anyway, now look what you’ve wrought” foot-up-the-arse response.

[44] until fairly recently stick vs leg was both commonplace and legally sanctioned, even when it was adults hitting children – in this respect there is little difference in Harwood’s actions although our response to the act may have changed (providing you are not a pro-corporal punishment advocate).

I did find one report of a child who died after caning.
http://bonjourplanetearth.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/malaysian-school-boy-dies-after-being.html

I do not know if the female teacher who was responsible was charged with murder.

I disagree that it is a non-issue since an important element in this story is the public’s reaction to violence when many still advocate physical punishment for children – put another way a violent act is not necessarily wrong (in some people’s minds) providing it occurs in a certain context.

Perhaps that’s why the likes of Gregory Bateson say everything is determined by context, or more precisely, ‘without context, words and actions have no meaning at all. This is true not only of human communication in words but also of all communication whatsoever, of all mental process, of all mind, including that which tells the sea anemone how to grow and the amoeba what he should do next’.

@ 45 Cylux

I agree that’s how it works. I just don’t think it should.

@ a&e

Yes, but how is this relevant to the specific issue of whether or not people should be punished for outcomes of actions?

[47] ‘Yes, but how is this relevant to the specific issue of whether or not people should be punished for outcomes of actions?’ – because the level of violence used by Harwood while wrong, was unexceptional if we look at our recent history of widespread and state sanctioned physical punishment – so at some level framing similar actions as murder may have created an intellectual dissonance amongst the jurors (purely speculation, of course).

@ 48

That argues for my system, then, surely, as someone might get off with a murder that doesn’t look like a normal murder, but convicted of “reckless assault” or whatever?