Talk:Fiona Jones

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An entry from Fiona Jones appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on February 8, 2007.
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Very important not to leave the impression that her conviction was justified and she succeeded in an appeal due to a technicality. The prosecution case collapsed and there was only one minor issue which was left to the Jury, which then reached a perverse verdict. To put it bluntly nothing that Fiona did was in any way different to thousands of other candidates in that election of all parties.

The Golux 11:24, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, saying that she did nothing worse than anyone else is hardly a defence, but her conviction was indeed quashed on appeal, and I accept what you say that we should not give the impression that she was guilty notwithstanding the quashing of her conviction - patently, she was found not guilty.
The Court of Appeal's judgment is linked, so people can read it for themselves and form their own judgement on the issues in her case. My reading is that most of the criticisms of her conduct that led to the case were answered by the defence, abandoned by the prosecution, or withdrawn by the judge, so only two (relatively minor) issues left to the jury, relating to the cost of a constituency office and the cost of creating a voter database; and the conviction was quashed because there were deficiencies in the summing up by the trial judge which rendered a conviction on either of those grounds unsafe. We will never know whether she would have been convicted if the jury had been given unimpeachable directions (nor, indeed, whether any other candidates in the election would have been convicted if they had been put under the microscope like she was).
It seems to me that it is a bit unfair for you to call the jury's decision "perverse" - they simply reached a verdict based on the case presented to them and the directions they were given by the judge. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:52, 12 February 2007 (UTC)