Talk:Major crimes in Britain

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[edit] WikiProject British Crime

• For those interested, a WikiProject regarding crime in Great Britain has been proposed. MadMax 19:16, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] John Bodkin Adams

John Bodkin Adams, it seems to me, should not have been placed on this list. Given that he was acquitted in a court of law, and no evidence has ever been presented in any court, anywhere, of his having murdered 163+ people, to repeat such an accusation here, as though it were proven fact, is highly improper. I suggest his name be struck from the list, unless someone has decided that an accusation in a published account has the same weight as an acquittal at trial. Such a conclusion is highly dubious. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 21:35, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

• An acquittal would trump a book sure, unless there is real cause to think the acquittal was arrived at in a less than fair way. Cullen, 2006, gives a convincing argument for such a view (see Adams' page), Devlin, the trial judge, also says the prosecution's behaviour was highly improper, and then Hallworth says the prosecution chose the wrong case to prosecute. There is thus a scholarly consensus that the trial was badly handled, and Cullen, the only author to have had access to Scotland Yard's archives is quite adamant and eloquent in her presentation of the evidence that there were multiple murders committed by this man. For this reason the acquittal is highly dubious (and was thought so at the time by all the majority of the press) and Adams' place here is legitimate. Let's not forget that Adams was later fined 2,400 pounds, when the top fine was (I think I'm right in saying) just 500 for prescription fraud... The judge in this second case used discretionary powers to raise the fine limit. Also, Adams was banned for the rest of his life from prescribing dangerous drugs. All this taken together suggests we should see Cullen, 2006's conclusions to be reliable. Malick78 10:52, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

A consensus amongst scholars that his trial was mishandled or was an outright miscarriage of justice does not reverse the verdict. We have to err on the side of caution. He was acquitted, that is a fact, everything else, no matter how intellectually rigorous, is speculation. He is not a murderer, and by Wikipedia's standards, he cannot be called a murderer, no matter what anyone thinks. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 15:49, 13 November 2007 (UTC)