The Stephen Lawrence case

For me, by far the worst aspect of the recent re-trial of the Stephen Lawrence murder case has been the fact that it demonstrates the dangers of the decision, by the former Labour government in the UK, to end the old double jeopardy rule. Some of the perpetrators of the crime may now be behind bars, but the wider issues worry me.

The writer Brendan O'Neill, a Marxist who writes at at the online journal Spiked, sees this in class terms:

"It is clear from the orgy of post-conviction self-congratulation amongst the chattering classes (Dacre says yesterday was 'a glorious day for British newspapers') that the trial of Norris and Dobson was a political trial. It was a showtrial, or at least a showy trial, which was relentlessly used to advertise and entrench the morality of the new political elites. Just because Norris and Dobson are lowlifes, whom no one will much miss when they are banged up, doesn't mean we should give the nod to this bending of the justice system to the whims of the cultural elite."

And another:

"It is fitting that the Lawrence case should end with a political trial, because this was the most cynically exploited and politicised murder in living memory. Lawrence was not the first young black man to have been murdered by racists, nor was he the first black murder victim to have been failed by a seriously botched police investigation. But he was the first black murder victim whose tragic demise was cynically milked by the cultural elite and used as the lynchpin of a moral crusade against Old Britain and its foul, backward inhabitants. In a triple whammy of murder-milking, Lawrence's death was used by the elites to demonise the white working classes as the new 'brutes within'; to redefine racism as a disease of the brain rather than as a relation of power; and to dismantle long-standing legal principles that were once seen as central to the justice system."

He's got a point, although I would add that, not being as het up about class as Mr O'Neill is, I don't see the disgust that many feel about race-related murders as some sort of ruling-class plot to stamp on lots of white proles. There is more than just a whiff of a new victimology here of the sort that far-right groups like to pander to.

There is real danger in ending the DJ principle, as it means the Crown Prosecution Service will not be under the same pressure in future to get all of its legal and evidential facts lined up as strongly as possible when bringing a case for trial, because it knows there will always be a chance that if it does not get a conviction on the first occasion, it can always have another crack at it later if something new turns up. It is a bit like European Union referendums: if the voters don't give the "right" answer the first time, they can always be polled again. (As argued by a commenter on Tim Worstall's own post on the issue).

A real concern for me is that the original case is over 18 years old. That is a long time and all kinds of issues about memory recall arise. Like I said, I don't doubt that the guilty persons are the scum that they are but there are broader issues of due process of law at stake.

Here is another look at double jeopardy. And there has even been a film made using the title, Double Jeopardy. The CATO Institute has written on how this issue plays out in the US legal system.