UKC

More and more cases of disclosure failings being covered by the BBC tonight. There's far more that's wrong with our justice system. If you haven't read The Secret Barrister book then I would recommend getting hold a of a copy. The state of our legal system is appalling.

This isn't just about Rape cases but they seem to feature a lot

From one of the cases being reviewed in the Panorama:

And the DPP doesn't think innocent people are in jail? or that this isn't ruining peoples lives

The whole concept of disclosure seems wrong to me.  How can the police and CPS, both of whom have vested interests in gaining convictions, ever be, or be seen to be, fair to defendants?  It's a blatant conflict of interest.

It's the police's job to investigate. CPS decision to charge.

You are right the police are seemingly targeted on clear up and conviction rates for political purposes, I'm not sure how they should be targeted really probably on crime reduction.

I think one of the biggest issues is the lack of funding of both the police and CPS, but also the lack of defence funding.

I also suspect our laws could do with tidying up and bringing in to the digital age - disclosure of social media should be standard, and defendants should have the ability to research their own corroborating evidence as clearly the police have barely enough money/time/boots on the ground/in the office to do the basics these days because suddenly there is so much more evidence to shift through

I'm not sure how this could be achieved (without suspects having to spend tons of money on investigators/lawyers etc)

Yes there are clearly a multitude of problems.  But why is it the prosecution get to decide what to reveal?  At the least surely both sides should have full access to all material the police/investigators unearth, rather than the defence relying of the prosecution  being "fair".? The principle just seems wrong.

Because they have the relationship with the police and the police are the ones with the rights to pry into the lives of suspects and witnesses.

The Police aren't (or shouldn't be) the prosecution.

I suspect this is all about target setting taking people away from doing the right thing. e.g a full social medial trawl takes time and money but we can get this case off the books (and for less money spent) if we don't so we don't

Would be good to hear from Offduty his thoughts

Lack of funding my arse - many of these are obviously either PC Plod couldn't be bothered to look further than obtaining CONVICTING evidence, or else a DELIBERATE omission of evidence to the contrary.

Even when the police get witnesses that can prove innocence, if it doesn't tie up with what the police are after they can choose to fail to record it, which means that it isn't available for the Defence.

It's about time Police Officers who were found to have done this got time in prison - preferably a sentence double that of whoever they've shafted received (or was thankfully able to avoid). Along with of course complete cancelling of their pension and a thorough investigation into ANY previous matters where the defendants want their "convictions" re-investigated by COMPETENT AND HONEST persons. (With a chance of further adding to PC Plod's incarceration).

These lazy and dishonest Officers should never have been employed, and it's about time the various Police Forces chucked them out on their ears, as they taint every other Officer in every other Force.

Cannot be repeated too often. 

Police in England and Wales have had only 30 years (one career length) of this culture. Police in Scotland and other European jurisdictions have had forever to get used to that distinction but it doesn't entirely prevent ... eh ... em ... errors.

The main problem with justice in all UK jurisdictions is too much law. Next to that there is stupid knee-jerk legislating and target-based administration. Basically, the country is not being competently governed at any level. We need to start with a proper constitution and work through the whole process anew. 

The only person that care about doing something about any of this was Nick Clegg but everybody wants to lynch him for some reason.

Be interesting to know exactly WHY you've got that chip on your shoulder.

Some might say that you are displaying the same inherent bias and lack of objectivity that you accuse the police of.

Police have a duty to investigate. That duty includes all reasonable lines of enquiry that might implicate or exonerate the defendant.

The difficulty in all investigations is that disclosing everything to a defendant offers them the opportunity to tailor their defence to what they discover.

I haven't watched the programme, but some of the previously highlighted failures of disclosure have included conversations from phones that attack the character of complainants, rather than the evidence.

  If I was given carte blanche to pry into everyone's personal information as far as I wanted, I'd probably find information that would undermine any complaint they wanted to make, if just by attacking character.

But are also the ones handing files to the CPS, presumably because they think there is something worth prosecuting. It’s hard to imagine evenhandedness here, however well meaning officers may be (and we know a  minority aren’t)

Isn’t that the whole point!!

Nor have but have followed other cases in the news.

So why do the prosecution get everything, and to decide what to hand over? Surely the same applies in reverse? And is t a judge there to control such attacks?

In a serious case the decision might be made by the CPS, in many cases the decision not to charge will be made by the police.  

There is a difference between having a defence and then trying to demonstrate it, and not having a defence but examining the disclosure material and them deciding "Ah, let's say that my defence is this..."

A judge is supposed to referee, but as has been seen in a few cases, the information on which a charge is based is then supplemented at trial by a large volume of disclosure (not available at time of charge) and the CPS fold.

The CPS/Police just do not "get" how disclosure works. Partly this is to due with confusion over Data Protection, and third party rights.

The admin who deal with CPS/Police disclosure are trained technicians/semi-skilled civilians, who are semi-skilled because it's not a well paid job, and carries little kudos. To advance in your career you need to be promoted away from a disclosure role. Given that it's not well paid or trained, it is hardly surprising that errors are made.

Cases then come to trial and the Defence will have a fully qualified lawyer. Not a surprise that at that moment everything is gone over with a fine toothcomb by someone with a decent degree capable of picking up mistakes. Part of the trouble is that the government has been trying to remove defendants lawyers over the last two decades by steadily eroding their pay, so no one wants to do crime.

I am a civil lawyer (I don't do crime cases). Once this year we nearly had a mis-trial because although the police/CPS told us they had given us full disclosure (they gave us everything that they had given the defence), after digging we found a document they hadn't given the defence from spring of 2017. It was not something they could rely on in a criminal case for legal reasons, but was admissible in the civil case. They just were completely unable to grasp the concept "give us everything and we will sort it out" (as directly ordered by the civil judge) as opposed to "we must protect third party interests, and obey Data Protection laws, and only give out what cannot bite us from those two".

Until the technicians are better trained, and better paid to attract a better quality of disclosure worker, these mistakes will continually happen. The police officers involved in cases are often deeply embarrassed by what happens as are CPS lawyers, but they know the techinicans dealing with disclosure are the clerical equivalent of shelf stackers or burger flippers with about the same level of training, and slightly more pay.

April 2018 was my second disclosure issue case this year, in 2017 I had three.

I wouldn't say I'm an expert on disclosure, but I've never heard of a disclosure 'technician'.

Disclosure officer is a statutory role, that can be carried out by a civilian member of staff.

Your example might well be correct, but I've never heard of disclosure issues restricted by DPA, although there are certain guidelines around 3rd party material.  The key test for disclosure is 'relevance'. This, of course, all applies to criminal rather than civil law.

It sounds as if there had been confusion between a civil case and a criminal case. Given the complexities of civil law Vs criminal law, I'm not entirely surprised. It's also a far from normal occurrence for a criminal case to end up in a civil court.

From a police point of view, I'd be concerned about a piece of material which was not disclosed to the defence for legal reasons in a criminal case, being disclosed to them in a civil case.

To clarify, criminal disclosure appears to be a very different fish to civil disclosure.  Police and CPS quite probably don't 'get' civil disclosure, but your initial criticism of not understanding how disclosure works is comparing apples and oranges.

There was one case of alleged rape where the complainant had provided texts to police, which cast the defendant in a bad light. He said that they weren’t complete, were out of context. Despite having his phone, they didn’t check. It was the defendant’s sister who accessed his messages where it was evident that the complainant had deleted messages that didn’t suit her case. The actual message trail pointed to his innocence. The one she provided could be construed as making him look guilty. Her deleting those messages, effectively providing a false account, casts severe doubt on her credibility which is vital in a “he said, she said” scenario.  I’m not sure why the police didn’t check his phone. 

Do you think they shouldn't disclose evidence that might clear someone of prosecution?

I wonder if you'd think that if it was you under investigation.

I'd be interested to know if the guy in the case you've described cooperate with the police.

Did he tell them that there were messages on his phone which would prove his innocence and allow them to close the investigation?

Or, did he provide a 'no comment' interview and hope that the Investigating Officer would recover the messages from his phone data?

A typical, small-scale investigation, undertaken by a single detective, might involve two or three phones. So, five or six different messaging apps, text messages, pictures and all the rest of it (on top of the usual lines of enquiry) - so we're talking tens of thousands of messages to be downloaded, read, processed and disclosed. 

Thats several weeks of work if you were to do nothing more that read phone records for 10 hours each day. 

All this on top of the 30 or so similar investigations which each detective is expected to simultaneously investigate, and the 'drop everything' murders and missing persons, court appearances, file preparation etc.

The reason that no-one wants to be a detective is because their workloads are unmanageable. 

It's all well and good bad mouthing the police (again), but if they are drastically reduced in numbers, set an impossible task and (sometimes) pitted against uncooperative solicitors and suspects who want them to fail - don't be surprised if they do.

Interesting that no-one has had anything to say about the real criminals here, by the way, the people who make false allegations of rape.

I was suggesting precisely the opposite but questioning whether its in fact possible

I had an argument with one neighbour (basically I was being stitched up because I had evidence they didn't like regarding a boundary dispute between them and a second neighbour - the police interviewed (a third) neighbour the other side who basically said it was b*ll*cks, and neighbour one was the problem and started it. PC Plod (with probationer in tow !!) decided to ignore neighbour three who agreed I was in the right and went on to neighbour two's friend who wasn't anywhere around at the time to get something to help "conviction" whilst completely ignoring the neutral who was exonerating me. Took a lot of hassle to get it fixed. The probationer was evidently being educated in the way that that particular station (or at least older copper) works. Who knows how long such attitudes will continue to exist.

Unfortunately, talking to other people locally about this, it appears that my experience is by no means unique.

If you look carefully, and read ALL the evidence, unlike the plod I mention above, I did say that this small number of nasty little sh*ts are giving Police Officers everywhere a bad name and forces would be far better off if they got rid of them. Or are you also choosing which bits of evidence to listen to and which to ignore ?

I feel you should, it does rather seem to show that your fellow Officers are either NOT even-handed, or just plain lazy/incompetent. Obviously edited conversations were used to make cases with NO attempt at the few seconds it took the defence (when they were finally able to get THEIR OWN phones/PC's back) to prove how doctored the prosecution "evidence" had been.

I'm suspicious about the 'few seconds' it took the defence to undermine the case.

It strikes me that if you were to give a detective an opportunity to close an investigation in 'a few seconds', rather than spend a couple of weeks completing a prosecution file, he'd take it (particularly if he was 'plain lazy/incompetent').

As above. Did the suspect tell the police that there were messages on his phone that would prove his innocence?

Or did he provide a no-comment interview, refuse to cooperate with the investigation...and then alert their defence solicitors to the presence of evidence that would undermine the case?

Thus allowing his defence team to launch a lucrative liable case against the police. 

The police had his computer and had delayed on several occasions and told him the messages weren't recoverable - it took his sister 10 minutes once the laptop was released.

Aah, right. Sounds pretty indefensible. 

That said, in almost all cases, the police don't download the phones. Since 'austerity', this work has been sub-contracted to various private IT companies. If the IT company reported that they couldn't access the data on the computer, you can't really blame the detective for not acting on the emails that were never given to him. 

Doesn't sounds like there was much 'doctoring of prosecution evidence' or failure to disclose, either. After all, they gave the computer which contained the emails back to the defendant.

And you can't disclose information that you don't have.

Did the documentary cover the person who made the false report, and her motives, or just concentrate on bashing the police?

Why would you need a uniformed police officer to sort out a boundary dispute with neighbours  perhaps because the service is free ? Why not use a solicitor to sort out the civil matter, which you would have to pay for.

I would rather have the police focus on more serious matters than be distracted on such nonsense.

You suggesting that the police spend so much time sorting out drunkenness, pointless violence and disputes between brain-dead halfwits that they don't have time to properly deal with more complex matters, Albert?

I refer you to the response by balmybaldwin.

Did you read what I wrote ?

I said; "I had an argument with one neighbour (basically I was being stitched up because I had evidence they didn't like regarding a boundary dispute between them and a second neighbour)."

I HAD AN ARGUMENT. The reason the argument was started/invented by the neighbour was because I had original undoctored deeds which covered ALL 3 houses, and she was trying to claim ownership of land that was not hers.

She invents an argument, and PC Plod decides to side with her and completely ignore the neutral witness. Incidentally the friend of my accuser, the other "witness" not actually present at the time who they used, was already known to the Police for his drug habit !

If that doesn't underline why I'm less than 100% behind every one of our boys (and girls) in blue then I must presume you have another reason to assume they are all 100% perfect.

Aaah, right. The police didn't rule in my favour so they're incompetent, lazy, bent etc etc.

Unless the neighbours are chasing each other down the road, armed with kitchen knives, this has absolutely nothing to do with the police...and everything to do to with a local solicitor's firm.  

Despite them not having the resources to undertake their traditional 'criminal' duties, you want the police to take-on conveyancing and boundary law, too!

It's interesting how often the people who choke-up the public services with unreasonable demands tend to shout loudest when the wheel fall off.

Why should the police get involved with neighbours arguing?  It's not their job. 

Stitched up by the cops  for a civil dispute over a fence ?

That depends if one neighbour makes a criminal complaint against the other the Police have a duty to investigate.

Sometimes disclosure flags up things that weren't apparent to the accused (defendant), or provides support to what seemed an entirely incredible version of events. 

I used the word "technician" because I was aware that the person holding the role is a civilan with a limited amount of training, and a low salary. I could have used Clerical Officer as that is the old civil service term.

Having been asked to advise and been paid for advising a police force, as well as appearing for another force, and being involved with two other forces in civil cases, I base my broad assertion that they do not "get" disclosure on my own experience of four different forces. That and the undergraduate law degree, and two post graduate law degrees that I have. I do not believe I am comparing apples and oranges, having spoken to the "technicians", some senior officers, extensively to the head of the legal department of one particular force and various CPS lawyers. Admittedly as both a full time lawyer and part time law lecturer (with a climbing hobby to fit in) I might have a great depth and breadth of legal knowledge than many of the people making day to day disclosure decisions.

The bottom line for me is the people employed as "technicians" need (a) a better calibre of recruit, (b) more and better training, and (c) better pay to attract a better calibre of recruit and retain them.

Yes 

READ IT YOU D*CK.

I said an ARGUMENT was invented by a neighbour to get back at me for frustrating them in a boundary dispute with another neighbour.

It's no wonder threads go way off track when dingle brains such as you can't even read.

Learn to READ.

I said it was an INVENTED argument, dreamed up to get back at me for frustrating one (thieving and violent !) neighbour in a boundary dispute with another neighbour.

To come to Fred99’s defence...

This is not about a boundary dispute.

This is about a - presumably criminal (?) - allegation against Fred by party B.

Fred alleges that party B did this in an attempt to intimidate / prevent Fred from submitting evidence in support of Party C in a seperate boundary dispute between parties B and C.

So it is absolutely a policy matter, and it was party B who made it a police matter, not Fred.  The boundary dispute is the context, not the police matter.

Fred is coming in for a lot of unwarranted stick here over multiple misunderstandings of the nature of the dispute.

I take no view on the issue of the allegation itself against Fred.

Well he keeps saying its about an argument (sometimes in capitals, sometimes invented).  Arguments aren't police matters.  If it's about a criminal accusation, he should say that.

I agree.  

He hasn’t been very clear about what the police involvement actually was, but my understanding is that he was on the receiving end of it, not the one who called the police as wrongly interpreted on here.  

My (lying, thieving, violent - now done for assaulting the disabled neighbour she was trying to grab land from) former (thank god) neighbour claimed racial harassment by claiming I'd mouthed off in the "argument" (that never was) at her as being Polish (she's Russian).

Now apart from the fact that most Russians regard Poles as "untermenschen", and with what's going on now with Putin (turned out she was a great fan of his !), I never said such a thing.

However It did seem that PC Plod just wanted to "tick the box" and maybe prove what a non-racist he was - I was the victim of this.

Another of my neighbours across the road and 2 doors down has a similar opinion of this "Officer" and his cronies - and this neighbour is a retired Police Officer himself. Mind you, as he is Afro-Caribbean and with a white wife, the local station's racist attitudes may well have an influence here.