Judge axes trial as victim is 'too honest' to give evidence

A robbery victim saw one of her alleged attackers cleared on Tuesday because the judge said she was too honest to give evidence.

Her evidence had been so impressive the jury would believe her rather than def­endant, Liam Perks, the judge said.

Source - Metro UK

I fail to see how a person can be "too honest" to give evidence. It seems that because it was the victims word against the accused's that the jury would believe her over him and that was not fair.

Erm ......

Right.

Anybody well versed in law that can comment on this and how it can be acquitted like this?
Anybody like to comment on what this might mean in terms of NWO, freedom of speech etc?

edit: to remove title

[edit on 14-1-2009 by george_gaz]

Is this the new Saudi Arabia? As if she needed more than one witness. It does say that she was giving another woman a test drive. So that person should have come forward to help.

Insanity!? "Too honest" to give evidence? Are they out of their mind? The woman was robbed and now get's no justice because she's honest? Sounds like one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situations to me. That's got to be the strangest thing I'd ever heard. Would the judge rather her be a chronic liar?

This kind of thing goes against logic. It seems that judges in this country have no commonsense.
How can you question her evidence when the judge claims that she is an honest person.
Do you have to be slightly shady just so the jury can give a fair verdict?

I am not familiar with the law of the UK but that sounds insane. That judge should be tied to a chair and beaten repeatedly. Never have I heard the excuse of being too honest.

Here in the U.S. though the prosecuting attorney has to share evidence or information for or against the defendant prior to trial so they can ready themselves. The defense on the other hand does not have to share any evidence or information until it comes out in the trial.

Raist

reply to post by george_gaz


This is in Britain?

So how do the basic rights of the accused come into play here?

How strange.

[edit on 14-1-2009 by whiteraven]

No doubt it is simply because the whole legal system has become so endemically corrupted like everything else that the poor judge didn't know what to do.

No lying or twisting the facts, no under the counter pay-offs, no smart*ss lawyers getting hard core crims off the hook. The judge was obviously in uncharted waters so he paniced and threw the case out...

At Tuesday's trial, Judge Tabor said: 'Denise Dawson was a partic­ularly impressive witness because she showed courage, clarity of thought and was undoubtedly honest.'

But he told Bristol Crown Court it was her word against Perks' and that was not enough to support a conviction.

He added: 'The jury may lend more weight to her evidence than her facts allow. You cannot be sure she got it right.'

I have heard it all now.
This just blows my mind. Sounds like Judges in the UK are just as screwed up as many of the judges here in the US.

Ridiculous (my word of the day). And clearly insanity at its best.

[edit on 1/14/2009 by greeneyedleo]

The message here is obviously: do whatever you want to honest people because they are simply too honest to give an account of the events. But stay away from those liars man, oh how you will suffer if you do anything to a liar!

But he told Bristol Crown Court it was her word against Perks' and that was not enough to support a conviction.

He added: 'The jury may lend more weight to her evidence than her facts allow. You cannot be sure she got it right.'

So the accused is "innocent until proven guilty", fine.
The victim, having picked the man out of a line up and testified against him was too convincing for a jury and would definitely have gotten a conviction.
There was not enough evidence, other than the testimony, to convict him and the testimony on its own would be "her word against his".
The victim was under so much stress during the ordeal that she may not have correctly remembered the attacked and thus, picked the wrong man in the line up.

I can see their point and I assume that this adhere's to the standards of law in Britain. However, there must be other cases of convictions based solely on eye-witness testimony?

[edit on 14-1-2009 by george_gaz]

reply to post by george_gaz


Huuuuuuu?!?!

im completly bamboozled .. i thought it was the law to be super honest in court, and thats the whole point..

unless, theirs a really dumb situation and she has accused someone of stealing but really it was her own fault and not really a theft.. We would have to know the whole story first as atm its all speculation.

Eyewitness testimony has come under increasing scrutiny in the past several years because of its unreliability. Studies have shown that eyewitness identification is wrong almost 50% of the time. This is not because the witnesses are lying or being deceptive. Rather, more often than not, they are simply mistaken. Usually, they are good citizens trying to help the police. In order to understand why eyewitnesses so frequently are inaccurate in their identifications of crime suspects, it is important to know a few things about human memory.

Source

Eyewitness testimony is a powerful tool within any field, particularly that of justice, as it is a readily accepted form of evidence that allows for convictions. Tests conducted in 1979 (Loftus) have shown an enormous 54% swing from a non-guilty verdict, to that of guilty within the same case simply through the introduction of an eyewitness. This alone displays the potency of eyewitness testimony, and asserts the theory that jurors tend to over believe, or at least weigh heavily on such evidence (Kennedy & Haygood, 1992).

Source

It seems that eyewitness testimony is something that some agree with and others don't but if the emboldened quote above is true then this should have led to a conviction!

Disclaimer: I'm a theist but not of the Abrahamic faiths. I have minor biblical scholar and scriptural skills. Also I am not a scientific/legal or medical expert in any field. Beware of my Contagious Memes! & watch out that you don't get cut on my Occams razor.All of this is my personal conjecture and should not be considered the absolute or most definitive state of things as they really are. Use this information at your own risk! I accept no liability if your ideology comes crashing down around you with accompanying consequences!

Explanation: :bnghd: thats :bash: crazy justice and makes me both and want to / . What kind of judge makes a fubar ruling like that? What was he on :w: ? I He needs his head and his authority and then he needs to be and all the little pieces publicly . That judge is a cake loony :shk: and I would too if I was that poor woman.

Personal disclosure: Damn state sanctioned revenge via the worst state sanctioned protection racket/scam scheme devised (Justice has now become a like concept....its everywhere but none of it can be truly believed!),
I'll take care of my problems myself from now on thank you very much!

Starred and Flagged

Edited to add the above line and fix a single misspelled word.

[edit on 14-1-2009 by OmegaLogos]

ok, so take away the shock you feel at the emotive title and consider the actual case. The judge HAD to throw the case out, thats how it works.

Back in the days of the old bailly, London (long before america was a nation) people used to stand outside the court with a strand of straw sticking from their shoe, a lawyer would then know that these people would sell their 'witness testimony' for a small fee.

In court the man would swear blind that he had seen the defendant commit the crime, thus we get the phrase 'straw man' i.e. an argument with no proof.

The legal system adapted and so now you can't be convicted on witness testamony alone, a case needs REAL evidence.

hehe now most of you UFO, Big Foot, Jesus, etc people don't care about real evidence but the courts do.

'Better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man in jailed'

The woman was shocked, confused and is likely to be confused, even really honest people get confused -maybe she's convinced herself it was him because he looks a bit like the guy, there are millions of case studies in which people have been tricked into thinking they saw something they didn't -anyone that's been to a magic show knows just how easy it is to tick the human brain into being #SURE# it saw something it didn't.

Just picture yourself in the dock while the jury swallow every word of some crazy old ladys story, you're looking at 6to9 for a crime you didn't commit just because some sweet little ol' dear thinks you look like someone else.

There are plenty of cases that have been taken purely on witness accounts and circumstantial evidence. There are plenty of cases that are taken as one person's word against another. This is just silly.

reply to post by TasteTheMagick


oh, do you have the case studies to hand? hehe or did you witness this happen?

a witness is not able to secure a conviction without other evidence, even if the witness is a police man! yes -they lie and get confused too.

reply to post by NatureBoy


On hand? No. I watch a lot of court/tru TV and have seen a lot of situations where all they had was witness testimony. They PREFER to have more evidence, but in something like a robbery eyewitness testimony is typically accepted with no other evidence or only circumstantial evidence.

Also, the thing here is that the judge said that the jury might give the woman's testimony more weight than the man's because she was 'too honest'. It wasn't a question of other evidence.

Wrongful convictions

Faulty eyewitness testimony is one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions in the US. On the basis of mounting evidence, psychologists have argued that a major contributing factor to these wrongful convictions is one of the seven sins of memory: suggestibility (Schacter, 1999).

Source

The freeing of James Calvin Tillman after 18 years of wrongful imprisonment contains a lesson that has been told and retold thousands of times: Eyewitness identification of strangers is unreliable.

Source

I guess that in hindsight, from a law perspective, this was probably the right thing to do. I just think that the victim is very hard done by and it does not help with the way that the judge and the media have labeled this.

reply to post by george_gaz


Now see, I can understand that a case would not be taken because there is not enough evidence, but to make the excuse of someone being too honest is the thing that's really bothering me.

OK, this gets worse.

Just digging up some dirt on the judge and found this:

Last year Judge Tabor, 57, handed a suspended sentence to a wife who gave her cheating husband rat poison.

The dad of three also freed a pervert choirmaster, saying his 11-year-old victim seemed to “enjoy” being abused.

This judge really does not know how to "filter" the words that come out of his mouth.

This lady had her nose broken and basically they are saying to criminals:

Labour MP Dan Norris said: “It’s bonkers. The message to criminals is if it’s your word against theirs, no matter how trustworthy they are you are likely to get away with it.”

Source's