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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Beyond Reasonable Doubt There was a White Rose relevant piece by Alasdair Palmer about the DC Stevens case in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph.
The more repulsive the crime, the greater the temptation to weaken the burden on the prosecution to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. Child abuse – and child pornography cannot be produced without child abuse – is a very repulsive crime. Yet the result of giving in to the temptation to lower the standard of evidence required to convict someone suspected of child abuse is inevitably that innocent people are convicted.
That’s good, but I recommend all of it.
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This is one reason why I am opposed to capital punishment. The more heinous the crime, the more likely people’s emotions are to get in the way of a fair trial. Thus a miscarriage of justice can become more likely for capital crimes where the punishment is irrevocable.
It is indeed a good article. However ther’s another insidious trend of Blunkettry that it ignores, and the latest Sexual Offenses Bill is full of it–though it is scarcely new. It is not lowering the standard of proof, but (at least as dangerous) stretching the definintion of the crime to the point where snogging teenagers are sexually assaulting one another, and someone scanning a Sun Page 3 girl or a holiday brochure is manufacturing child pornography.