Fast and Loose With Summary Justice In the UK

Police In Breach of the Law

UK to Review All Coronavirus Criminal Cases After Reports of Wrongful Convictions

Kurt Zindulka
Breitbart News

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) of the United Kingdom will begin reviewing every charge, conviction, and sentence that has been brought under emergency laws following reports that overzealous police have wrongfully charged people during the pandemic.

Police forces throughout the country have been using the powers granted to the (sic) under the act — specifically with the clause dealing with potentially infected people — to charge people that they felt were outdoors without a good excuse.

“These are exceptional powers. We need to make sure they are being applied consistently and lawfully,” a CPS spokesman told The Times.  We are working with all police forces and prosecutors to make sure the new Coronavirus Act and Regulations are being correctly applied. Unlawful charges are being withdrawn by prosecutors in court, and we are asking for any wrongful convictions to be overturned,” he added.

The decision by the CPS to review came shortly after civil liberties watchdog Big Brother Watch published a review of what it termed the “staggering incompetence” that has occurred during the national lockdown.

The group highlighted the case of Marie Dinou, who was arrested and fined £660 for refusing to tell British Transport Police her reason for travelling. Ms Dinou was charged under Schedule 21 of the act which criminalises “failing without reasonable excuse to comply with any direction, reasonable instruction, requirement or restriction”. This section of the law only grants the police to take such actions against “potentially infectious persons”.

The conviction against Dinou was later overturned, with police admitting: “We fully accept that this shouldn’t have happened and we apologise.”

Threatening the Monopoly of "Soft Justice"

Guess Who was Punished...


A judge told a career crook to slim down and get a job 

Peter Hitchens
The Mail On Sunday


Here is a perfect story of modern Britain. A judge has been publicly reprimanded by a Tory Cabinet Minister for advising a criminal to lose weight and get a job.

I do not know if the allegedly overweight offender took the well-meant advice, but I somehow doubt it. Having spotted the way power and morals are going in modern Britain, he made a formal complaint that the judge had used 'abusive language' – and it succeeded. I wonder if he is now also entitled to compensation?

The judge, Recorder Julian Malins QC, flatly refused to agree that he had done anything wrong. Partly because he stood up for himself in this way, he was given a formal warning by the then Justice Minister and Lord Chancellor, David Gauke. Mr Gauke has since left this post but is, I believe, still a member of the 'Conservative' Party.

The official public notice from the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office (JCIO), highly damaging to a judge's career, says that, in reaching their decision, Mr Gauke and the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett, 'took into consideration that the Recorder failed to acknowledge the inappropriateness of his conduct'.

The JCIO posted the reprimand on its website, but refuses to discuss the matter. I asked Mr Gauke to comment, asking him what was conservative about his action, and in what way he differed from the most politically correct wing of the Labour Party, but he has so far chosen not to do so. I do not know the identity of the criminal.

Mr Malins, 69, an experienced barrister, tells me he still has no regrets.

Encouraging Victory in the UK

Gay Marriage Cake

UK Supreme Court Rules in Favour of Christian Bakers

Victoria Friedman
Breitbart News

Bakery owners Amy and Daniel McArthur, who own 'Ashers' in Belfast, speak to the media outside the Supreme Court after winning their appeal against a gay rights campaigner who took the business to court after they refused to make a cake, promoting same-sex marriage.

The UK’s Supreme Court has ruled in favour of Northern Irish Christian bakers who declined to bake and decorate a cake with a pro-gay marriage message, with owners heralding the decision as a victory for free speech.

Britain’s highest court ruled Wednesday morning that it was not discriminatory for Ashers Bakery, run by Daniel and Amy McArthur, to refuse to produce the cake with the slogan “Support Gay Marriage” because it was the message of the case that they objected to, not the sexual orientation of the customer, the BBC reports.

President of the Supreme Court Lady Hale said of the decision arrived at by the five justices that the McArthurs “would have refused to make such a cake for any customer, irrespective of their sexual orientation”.

“Their objection was to the message on the cake, not to the personal characteristics of [customer, Gareth] Lee.  Accordingly, this court holds that there was no discrimination on the ground of the sexual orientation of Mr Lee,” Lady Hale ruled.

“We are grateful to the judges and especially to God. We are particularly pleased the Supreme Court judges emphatically accepted what we’ve said all along. We did not turn down the order because of the person who made it but because of the message itself,” Mr McArthur said outside of London’s High Court following the ruling.

Double Standard

Half A Million Sign #FreeTommy Petition

Liam Deacon

BreitbartLondon

More than half a million people have signed a petition calling for the right wing activist Tommy Robinson to be freed from jail, in just a few days.  Mr. Robinson was jailed for 13 months over the weekend after pleading guilty to breaching contempt of court laws whilst on a suspended sentence for the same charge.

 

He was given 10 months for the contempt of court charge and a further three months for breaching the suspended sentence, incurred after filming outside a gang rape trial in Canterbury last year.  The petition, however, claims he was “arrested and jailed for reporting on Muslim grooming gangs”, adding:

“A job that he chooses to do with no regard for his own safety, informing the public of all the wrongs committed in the name of Allah. Fighting against adversity and reporting on issues that our mainstream media are too afraid to speak of.”

Although found to be in breach of the letter of the law, supporters argue rules are selectively applied because of Mr. Robinson’s views and the nature of the case he was highlighting.

Gagging Orders and The Urki

Instant Incarceration

One begins to get the sense that the governing authorities in the UK are speaking and acting more and more like their equivalents in the Third Reich or Stalin's show trials.  Over recent days the scandal of the arrest and instant imprisonment of Tommy Robinson has raised all sorts of questions.

The first questions concern the universal gag order upon the press by the sentencing judge.   So, readers need to be aware that some of the information in this piece is officially verboten and that the "good judge" has forbidden them to know about it.

Bruce Bawer, writing in Gatestone has been covering the story.  [Being a US organization, Gatestone is exempt from the gag.]  Here are the bare details: