The police case against Greg Carvell, who shot a machete-wielding man in the Carvell's family gun shop, has been dismissed.
Great news! But why the hell did it take a year to come to this, with all the stress involved in the charges being laid and heard and talked up?
10 comments:
I know this doesn't sound very British--but I say POP THE CHAMPAGNE--this is fantastic news.
Some real set backs for the new and revised PC legal system. Good job.
First the Privvy Council shows that the NZ Court of Appeal committed a miscarriage of justice (The NZ CoA was guilty of acting as judge and jury hence operating well outside of its powers). This is a serious and basic error and denied justice to Mr Blain. The judges involved in that faulty Court of Appeal demonstrated that they should resign immediately, as their behaviour denies the possibility that they could be considered competant to apply the law to provide justice. Who can have confidence in them now?
Second the JPs throw out an obviouly faulty prosecution. The Police and the Prosecutor demonstrated a serious incompetance and an inability to use the legal system to provide justice by laying foolish charges in the first place. Those involved in laying the prosecution should resign. Further, the legislation itself is faulty. It is an example of badly written PC mumbo jumbo. It needs to be thrown out of the body of law. There is nothing wrong with self-defense. I would say even if the machete wielding intruder had died, no charges should have been considered at all.
Last comment. Always remember that if you are selected to serve on a jury you have the moral obligation to nullify faulty law even if the defendant did in fact break it.
Benn
"Always remember that if you are selected to serve on a jury you have the moral obligation to nullify faulty law even if the defendant did in fact break it."
Absolutely!
Great. As if legislation from the bench weren't bad enough, we'd have legislation from the jury box. What a shambles we'd have.
If you are on a jury, you do not have an obligation to dismiss the law if you think it is faulty. The obligation you have is to find out whether the accused is guilty under current law. If you know the defendant broke the law, you do not find him/her not guilty because you think the law is wrong. If that was the case, every guilty person could end up walking free even if they admit to the crime. That would be ridiculously stupid.
"If that was the case, every guilty person could end up walking free even if they admit to the crime. That would be ridiculously stupid."
if they admitted the crime then the jury would be highly unlikely to find them "not guilty" because they would simply be sentenced, surely?
The jury system is designed to prevent injustices being committed by unelected judges and bureaucrats.
If a jury decides that a law is unjust or being wrongly used they have the option of finding the defendant "not guilty" and I'd suggest that justice would in fact be served in such a case.
And the courts are supposed to be about justice, not the blind, stupid application of laws.
It seems to me that "Jane" has more faith in the sleazy, self-serving politicians who make laws and the often corrupt police who enforce them, than she does in a jury of our peers.
Odd.
Well said kg! That's exactly the point.
The jury is there to see that justice is done, not that the law is applied in the absence of justice or in the absence of reason. The jury is not a simple panel of incumbents whose presence is merely procedural or a matter of processing administratively (much as many interests would promote it to be). If the law or the application of it is unjust, then one of the jury's responsibilities is to reject it. They can nullify it.
One of the reasons the jury is supposed to be formed of the defendant's peers (and not the judge's peers or the legislator's peers or the enforcer's peers) is in order to throw out cases where the law is being applied in an unjust or vexatious manner. After all law is a man made. There are many instances where unjust laws are placed upon the books (possession of drugs, respurce management act, tax laws, laws against self-defense, laws against forearms ownership/use, laws against private gambling, laws aginst smacking etc. etc. etc.) and many cases where even laws that seem reasonable are applied in a high handed and malfeasant manner. Despite the resistance of politically appointed judges and other legal professionals the jury's power to nullify is the final safeguard against this type of systematic abuse.
Jane, you would do well to research some legal precedence. It is also recommend you study the history of the jury system and its empowerment. Judges have attempted to bully juries in the past, in some cases jailing juries that failed to convict as instructed. In the final analysis the principle of nullification was shown to be correct and juries do in fact have this power.
If parliament passes bad legislation then it is up to juries to reject its application.
Benn
Hurray, Greg was allowed to defend himself against a maniac. It is unfortunate he found it so much harder to defend himself from the state.
The system is still broken.
It looks increasingly likely that the state is going to have another go, Zen.
Bastards.
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