Talk:Miscarriage of justice

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Contents 1 Compensation in England and Wales 2 David Blunkett 3 Salem Witch trials 4 "strong claims" 5 People who were unjustly acquitted? 6 Jonathan Jones link 7 Stephen Craven 8 Oscar Slater 9 United Kingdom & Scotland 10 Lucia de Berk 11 someone pinched our page 12 What does wrongly convicted mean? 13 Cardiff 3 14 David Bain 15 Merge False allegation of child sexual abuse into this topic? 16 USA 17 Merge Exoneration 18 Sources and references 19 JusticeforKevin.org 20 NPOV 21 Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahis 22 NPOV Tag

[edit] Compensation in England and Wales

I have removed a much repeated, but much misunderstood, remark about the cost of food and lodging being deducted from compensation. The article gave the impression that, in some way, someone who was imprisoned wrongly would have to pay for their stay. That is an impression given by the media.

In fact, the rule that was established was this: where a prisoner is being compensated for loss of earnings they would have earned while in prison (assuming they would have found a job of course), a deduction may be made for the cost they would have paid for living (i.e. food and lodging etc) during that time, otherwise they would end up in a better position than they would have had they not been to prison. That is the logic. It is a rather cold logic, and one I don't like, but it is consistent with the rest of principle.

Note also that loss of earnings is not the only head of compensation, there is also supposed to be an element for compensating them for being in prison in the first place. Francis Davey 13:46, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Im afraid your wrong.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=505428&in_page_id=1770

Here is a specific example of this law in action. Despite being wrongfully convicted and then aquitted, and then winning substantial compensation for 3 years wrongful imprisonment, was forced to accept having £12,500 deducted for 'board and lodge'. The practice of charging "bed and breakfast" was challenged in 2007 by the Bridgewater Three, the men wrongly convicted of murdering newspaper boy Carl Bridgewater in 1978, but the principle was upheld by the House of Lords.

SO i suggest you reinstate the section your have wrongly convicted an restore the truth, Mr Davey.

82.21.206.85 (talk) 19:15, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I sat through the appeal in the Court of Appeal and I am quite sure of my facts from first-hand experience. The Daily Mail summary is precisely the misunderstanding of the law (for propaganda purposes) which I explained above. The House of Lords decision makes clear the point:

23. It is in my opinion inapt and understandably offensive to the appellants to regard or treat their imprisonment as a benefit conferred on them by the state. A Prison Service Instruction (09/1999) on which they relied forbids deductions for board and lodging from the wages of prisoners working on enhanced wages schemes in prison or on pre-release schemes outside prison, accepting that prisoners cannot be required to pay for their own imprisonment and cannot consent to do so. I have no doubt that this is a salutary principle. But recognition of that principle does not in my opinion resolve the issue in this appeal. The assessor's task, in relation to the appellants' loss of earnings claim, was to assess what they had really lost. That, and that only, was the loss for which they were to be compensated. The assessment has necessarily to be hypothetical, but must be as realistic as possible. If the appellants were awarded the full sum of their notional lost earnings with no deduction save tax, they would in reality be better off than if they had earned the money as free men since as free men they would have had to spend the minimum necessary to keep themselves alive. The deduction puts the appellants in the position in which they would in reality have been had they earned the money as free men and so compensates them for their actual loss. In my opinion, the assessor and the Court of Appeal reached the correct conclusion, and I would reject this ground of appeal.

One reason for the source of much confusion in this case is that the number of issues narrowed as the case worked its way up through the higher courts. You will see in the summary Lord Justice Auld gives in the Court of Appeal judgment that quite substantial awards were made for non-pecuniary suffering. Whether these were right or not is quite another matter - non-pecuniary awards have a way of feeling highly unsatisfactory, who would accept £250,000 to spend many years in prison accused of such a serious crime? Francis Davey (talk) 22:56, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] David Blunkett

The David Blunkett link IMHO seems out of place especially given the category states several home secretaries but only mentions one and the whole concept idea seems kind of stupid and just included some someone can include info on David Blunkett

Well, check out this link: http://www.sundayherald.com/40592 . David Blunkett is the one who, as of March 2004, was fighting for the right to charge the wrongfully convicted room and board for the time they spent in prison. This fact is mentioned in the section on the United Kingdom, but it is presented matter-of-factly, as simply a matter of government policy, which I suspect may not correspond to its actual status; since Blunkett was fighting for it in March 2004, it may have been either confirmed or overturned, and either result would of course be important to note. -- Antaeus Feldspar 15:14, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't see any argument in the above. The article is about concrete cases of miscarriages of justice, not about home secretaries. I delete the section. Otto 21:53, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Salem Witch trials

Didn't take place in the United States. It had yet to exist.

[edit] "strong claims"

In these edits, 193.131.115.253 (talk · contribs) starts including not just cases where a documented miscarriage of justice has occurred, but where there are "strong claims" that one has taken place. First of all, whether a claim is "strong" strikes me as too POV a criterion, as opposed to the criterion that some legal authority has overturned the conviction or otherwise indicated a belief that a miscarriage of justice took place. Second, this is Miscarriage of justice, not List of miscarriages of justice, and the list of miscarriages or "strong cases" for miscarriage is, I roughly estimate, the size of all the non-list parts of the whole article put together. This strikes me as a bad case of "list creep".

I'm willing to accept that there may be cases where no legal acknowledgement was ever made that a miscarriage of justice occurred but nevertheless consensus is generally that it was an m.o.j. However, barring evidence presented to that effect (by someone other than the original nominator) I think we should remove the cases which are merely "strong" in someone's estimation. If no one else does so, and insufficient evidence for keeping these cases is presented, I will remove them. -- Antaeus Feldspar 01:30, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree with this. Otto 09:53, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

well, I disagree. There is nothing wrong with providing a comprehensive list of examples,and its nothing to do with 'strong'. Theres an exact definition of miscarriage of justice, in black and white - someone who has been convicted of an offence and then acquited because of serious errors in the original process. simple as that, and every cased listed fulfils that factual category. This isnt an article about opinion, its a factual article about such cases, all legally proven to be miscarriages.

Lincolnshire Poacher (talk) 14:16, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] People who were unjustly acquitted?

Perhaps it would help to balance this article by providing cases of people who were acquitted of a serious crime although the facts indicate that they were guilty of it. Especially interesting would be those cases where the formal procedure of the law lead to a patent injustice. Eric 19:30, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Not sure that an acuittal of a culpable person is a miscarriage. The verdicts available are guilty and not guilty - except in Scotland of course. Not guilty is not, and never should be, synonomous with innocence. Of course it includes the innocent, but also cases where the prosecution case is simply not proven. All verdicts are a result of the formal process of the law - that's what the law is. Bizarre as it sounds wrongful acquittals may represent the process of the law working at it's best - a wrongful conviction never does.

The acquittal of a culpable person may absolutely be a miscarriage of justice in certain circumstances. For example, the mob is famous for buying off judges and jurors, resulting in wrongful acquittals. That is absolutely a miscarriage of justice. A judge might wrongly exclude inculpatory evidence. A witness might lie on the stand to exculpate the defendant. Why are those situations not also miscarriages of justice? In any event, I don't believe "miscarriage of justice" is proper for the Wikipedia. The terms "miscarriage" and "justice" have set dictionary meanings. There is no need for an encyclopedia entry.

--- You have to be careful tho, you can only include cases where provable corruption has taken place. It would not be appropriate, for example, to include the recent case of Sean Jenkins. However you feel about the evidence and his previous conviction for the murder of his step daughter, he has been ruled innocent.

[edit] Jonathan Jones link

The hyperlink from Jonathan Jones links to a triple disambiguation, none of whom seem to be the right person. I've removed the link - it can go back as and when someone creates a page for the miscarriage victim. Jon Rob 13:15, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I have added an article for this. It is a classic of the dangers of circumstansial evidens and prosecutorial speculation! badtypist

[edit] Stephen Craven

I have removed item on Stephen Craven. I am aware of the case (it was featured on Rough Justice some 10 years ago), and it seems (in my view) to have merit as a miscarriage of justice, but unlike the other cases mentioned, his conviction has not been overturned (his appeal was dismissed in 2000 http://innocent.org.uk/cases/stephencraven/). I think to ensure NPOV then for a case to be listed here the conviction should have been overturned. This case might be acceptable (as long as it were better written) in a List of *Claimed/Alleged* Miscarriages of Justice would be acceptable. 87.113.70.192 11:23, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oscar Slater

No article or mention of Oscar Slater Jooler 01:19, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] United Kingdom & Scotland

The UK includes Scotland, but apparently not here. Therefore I change the heading UK in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Otto 10:15, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lucia de Berk

It is still controversial whether or not this case is a "misscarriage of justice". Personally, as a mathematical statistician who is increasingly involved in an important aspect of the case, I "believe" that she is innocent; I reached this belief after I came to "know" professionally that there is absolutely no case against her! --Gill110951 10:25, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] someone pinched our page

hey guys

http://wiki.lawguru.com/index.php/Miscarriage_of_justice

appears to have pinched our page wholesale. The fact all the hyperlinks are broken indicates this, and they havent even bothered to credit us

(

[edit] What does wrongly convicted mean?

Is there a legal implication to the term "wrongly convicted" or is it entirely POV? -- Kendrick7^talk 09:42, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, theres a difference between 'wrongly convicted' (implying an error in process) and illegally imprisoned :(implying faulty or absence of due process)

Lincolnshire Poacher 22:40, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cardiff 3

There are two cases referred to as the "Cardiff 3", I only knew of the Lynette White case, I think someone with more knowledge should change the name of one of the other. Pennywisepeter 14:34, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] David Bain

As of this point David Bain (NZ) is still guilty of murdering his family. Until the law and his appeal says otherwise i am removing it from this page as being "controversial" or the possibility he 'might not be guilty' does not warrant its inclusion. Please adjust if a turn over of conviction comes to light. Boomshanka 22:28, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge False allegation of child sexual abuse into this topic?

I created False allegation of child sexual abuse earlier this month and there is talk of moving it Child sexual abuse. I prefer to move it into an article that deals with false allegations in general. Miscarriage of justice seems to focus on wrongful convictions, ignoring the damage done by false allegations. I need some opinions on whether False allegation of child sexual abuse should remain, be merged into Child sexual abuse, be merged into Miscarriage of justice, or merged into another article. Dfpc 21:23, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

It should not merge with miscarriage of justice which is about wrongful convictions not false allegations. In case of false allegations recourse to the judiciary is in principle possible in countries with a working judiciary for compensation of a wrongful act. Otto 17:16, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

In the UK you would only prove 'false allegation' by successfully suing in a civil court for libel or slander. That is not at all the same as 'wrongful conviction' and nothing to do with 'miscarriage of justice'

Lincolnshire Poacher (talk) 15:09, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] USA

I find it hard to believe that the number of miscarriages of justice in the USA is on a par with that in the UK, as the tally of cases shown in this article might lead one to believe. Are there a whole host of such cases from the US missing from this article? Jooler 09:22, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the US is unfamous for its number of wrongful convictions both relatively to its population as in absolute numbers. This is partly caused by the practice of plea bargain. The list here is just an arbitrary number of examples. Otto 07:16, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge Exoneration

• See rationale at Talk:Exoneration, requesting that article be farmed for useful content to be merged into this article. Please contribute to discussion at the above Talk page. Thanks Dick G 02:02, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sources and references

The request to cite references for the list of cases is illogical, since most of the names mentioned are themselves subject to wikipedia pages, which contain such source references. Therefore, to state them again at the bottom of this page is pedantic and tautological Lincolnshire Poacher 22:30, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

• I disagree. Each page should have its own references directly available to the reader.Malick78 12:09, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] JusticeforKevin.org

I've tried several times to link to this page, and it keeps getting deleted. This is NOT SPAM. It is a legitimate site and Kevin Thornton's plight is being pursued by the California Innocence Project and other non-profit groups. In fact, many of the links ALREADY on this page link to justiceforkevin.org because of what happened to him. Now, can I PLEASE post this valid, non-spamming link without it being deleted?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.138.56.209 (talk) 23:49, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

The site does not meet WP:EL guidelines for an encyclopedic purpose... it is a mere advocacy site. The fact that other sites linked to here link to it means there is even less of a reason to link to it here. DreamGuy 18:52, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Great attitude. No wonder this site is a joke. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.138.56.209 (talk) 19:42, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Mere advocacy is not enough to refuse a simple link. In the WP:EL guidelines it's stated that links can be given to sites which contain interview transcripts. Interviews are rarely completely objective, sometimes highly arbitrary. So if it's about objectiveness, you got no point. Please state WHY it doesn't meet WP:EL guidelines. If you're gonna be lazy about those things, you gonna start edit wars every time, not sure that's what we need. Also, if you're so concerned about the subjectivity of that site, do the work and provide us with another link, to create a balanced view. -- Brian Tjoe-Nij (talk) 00:55, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Kevin Michael Thornton (the subject of "Justice for Kevin") has been included in the US listing of individuals who were wrongly convicted. As his conviction has not been overturned, I'm removing him. Also, very POV on my part, but I find the website's blame the victim language ("she drank straight out of the bottle" "she took every beer that was offered to her") appalling. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.189.169.190 (talk) 18:10, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

DreamGuy wrote on October 28th 2007: "NPOV examples section is extreme in its POV violations. Crimes should not be listed as miscarriages unless they are universally agreed to be. The article had several that most experts on the topic would disagree were miscarriages of justice. This is not a blog for people to add their own opinion, it needs to not take sides, and especially not minority views."

How many articles (or concepts in general, for that matter) can truly be said to be universally agreed upon? If that were a requirement, there could be no articles on evolution, psychology, war, poverty, religion, government, philosophy, et cetera, ad infinitum. For every issue, there will always be supporters and detractors, "yes men" and naysayers, no matter how clear it may seem to anyone else. I believe the Wikipedia collective would be foolish to think that it can spell out any single issue in black and white absolutism, much less a global compendium of knowledge. --Deimos1313 (talk) 18:11, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Can you list those "several articles" so that we, if necessary, can correct this article? You just give a general comment which is not concrete enough to call the whole article NPOV. I therefore propose to delete the tag. Otto (talk) 10:01, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean "several articles" -- I never said such a thing. Have you even looked at the examples section? It's filled with people coming through just claiming a long list of "miscarriages of justice" without any sort of rhyme or reason. It just is a place for people to drop whatever POV they want and to ignore the fact that lots of sources (and in many cases the majority of them) disagree. It needs to be massively cleared out, and I think whole section needs to only contain those that are most uncontroversial and thoroughly proven. It also should be in standard paragraph form and not list form so it doesn't encourage people to come by and add more willy nilly. DreamGuy (talk) 15:03, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

You ignored my request to substantiate your NPOV-claims. Therefore I remove the tag since it appears to reflect just your POV about the article. Otto (talk) 18:54, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

My claims are self-evident from the nature of the section and the items in it. I put the tag back. You need to fix the problem before the tag is removed. I gave you the chance to do so. If you'd rather the tag not be there at all I can remove all of the examples completely. WP:NPOV is one of the core policies of this encyclopedia and must be followed. DreamGuy (talk) 19:44, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

What you call retorically "self evident" is seen different by the numerous editors who wrote the examples of what they see as miscarriages of justice. We have a dispute about the NPOV-tag. Wikipedia:Resolving_disputes step 1 says: focus on content. By not willing to substantiate your NPOV-claims you are evading a discussion about content. In the contrary you are provoking an edit war. Wikipedia is no play ground for war gaming. I value your behaviour as disruptive. The same step 1 says: if "you disagree completely with a point of view expressed in an article, think twice before simply deleting it. Rather, balance it with your side of the story.". That is not what you do if you just "remove all of the examples completely". Otto (talk) 20:12, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

It would seem to me that in order to resolve this, citations for the examples would clarify its POV status. There are scores of examples with no citation, in fact, there are only 8 citations given for somewhere around 80 examples. This would tend to eliminate the need to establish universal agreement on these issues, which is most likely never going to happen on anything controversial. Just throwing in an opinion. Wildhartlivie (talk) 21:25, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Every item that does not have an in-text citation links to its own article within wikipedia. You can get your citations there. Like usual, this is just merely a case of an editor inserting an npov tag because he/she doesn't like the layout of the page.Primium mobile (talk) 14:44, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

This is cobblers. A miscarriage of justice is where someone has been prosecuted and convicted of an offence and then subsequently the conviction overturned, and the reason the conviction was over turned was that there had demonstrably been a serious flaw in the original conviction. This is absolute. It doesnt need us to provide a proof - its a simply observation of what actually happened, therefore it already has a NPOV. Miscarriage of justice is a legally defined term, and not an opinion. I think its more likely this NPOV issue has been raised as a red herring by someone with a vested interest in trying to hush such miscarriages up. I will revert ANY edit that removes an incontrovertible case of a miscarriage.

Further more, removing the unreferenced examples is stupid, because most of them were heavily featured in the UK newspapers. They are well enough known not to have to hunt down a newspaper article about them. Removing them is just vandalism - some of these cases are household names because of the media coverage, you'd have had to have live don Mars for the last 20 years not to have known about them. It is not necessary to provide a reference to, for example , Colin Stagg and the Rachel Nicoll murder- just google it, you'll get about 100,000 hits. It IS safe to assume anyone reading wikipedia is capable of doing that, we don't need to hold there hand all the way. The bottom line is that every single one of these cases is true, and deleting them just reduces the usefulness of wikipedia as a source, and just panders to some sort of covert effort to hush the truth up. (talk) 13:54, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahis

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahis is not a miscarriage of justice because he has not yet been shown to be innocent. Having two failed appeals does not prove innocence.

When the Scottish Courts say hes innocent and wrongly convicted, it then becomes a Miscarriage of Justice and can be included.

I have therefore until that day removed the entry .

Lincolnshire Poacher (talk) 15:01, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV Tag

I intend to remove npov tag, since the neutrality of this article has not been sucessfully challenged. Lincolnshire Poacher (talk) 15:12, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Go ahead. The tag has been placed by an edit-warrior. See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/DreamGuy 2. Otto (talk) 22:28, 17 January 2008 (UTC)