In the litigation arena permission to appeal/appeal cannot be obtained by publicity alone. Publicity though can influence-which is essentially our argument here. That would be the only reason to use publicity in the Henderson case - to act to influence. The Henderson campaign trial knows how to use its publicity. Money is one objective ie harvesting donations. The other objective is to influence - influencing the public, influencing the courts and blinding everyone with fragments of the truth. That is what the Henderson campaign offers us. It believes the public are unintelligent. It therefore feeds that public, half truths. If said enough, it becomes the fictional truth. The kind of truth that makes people reach deep into their pockets to donate. Of course, to my mind there are a million causes to donate to in the world.
At no time has the audience and the public been presented with ALL the court documentation so that we [ the public] can make up our minds. Of course, much like Labour Party spin, we aren't allowed to assess the evidence for ourselves. We have to be told what to believe and what is right. The Henderson campaign team does not present the medical expert reports for the prosecution on their website and infact we have no court documents at all. To date, no one has placed the entire transcripts online nor any court documentation. Do we conclude that the Henderson campaign trail have something to conceal?
We can though see that the majority of permissions/appeals to fail. The Henderson campaign trail will already have first hand evidence of this. There is nothing like a failed attempt to provide full proof appeal advice. Failure instills confidence in the public? Afterall, England always congratulates the loser and not the winner.
Anyway, we shall move onto other matters relating to appeals itself. This research was commissioned to inform the Committee about factors affecting the success of appeals against conviction. Crime and Criminal Justice Research Findings No. 12 (1996) applies to the Scottish Courts but is nevertheless interesting. "The Sutherland Committee on Appeals Criteria and Alleged Miscarriages of Justice was set up in 1994 by the then Secretary of State for Scotland to examine the criteria governing the consideration of criminal appeals against conviction and the procedures for dealing with alleged miscarriages of justice. This research was commissioned to inform the Committee about factors affecting the success of appeals against conviction and was carried out during 1995 by analysis of appeal records held by Crown Office and the Scottish Legal Aid Board (SLAB), as well as through discussions with lawyers involved in criminal appeals. Factors affecting appeals against sentence were not considered. Some of the main findings are summarised below".
The findings are listed below
Most appeals (65%) were abandoned before the Appeal Court passed judgement on their merits; of the remainder 25% were refused and 10% were allowed.
Most abandonments (85%) took place before the first Appeal Court hearing: 48% were abandoned through a Notice or Minute of Abandonment; 27% through failure (whether intentional or not) to comply with various procedural deadlines; and a further 10% were deemed abandoned owing to the appellant's failure to appear at the first hearing. The remaining 15% of abandonments occurred at or sometime after the first appeal court hearing.
Defence agents thought that several factors influenced the abandonment of appeals. Some were related to the quality of the appeal and were often interlinked (these were: a realisation by the appellant that the initial impulse to appeal was misconceived; an unhelpful stated case or charge to the jury; an unfavourable counsel opinion; and, closely related to the latter two factors, a refusal of legal aid.) Other factors not related to the quality of the appeal but which were thought to lead to abandonment were the refusal of interim liberation and a perceived greater propensity to appeal, regardless of the strength of the case, by people sentenced to custody.
The success rate for appeals ranged from 5% of all appeals lodged against decisions of the High Court to 15% of appeals lodged from district courts. In between were appeals from sheriff court solemn (11% allowed) and sheriff court summary procedures (10% allowed).
Around half of the appeals were based on multiple grounds and a total of 30 different grounds were identified. Many of these were used only occasionally but there was an extremely high use of a small number of grounds, with the five most popular accounting for 68% of all grounds cited. Most of these grounds raised questions about the quality of the evidence rather than being based upon technical points of procedure.
Although the more frequently cited grounds of appeal tended to have higher abandonment rates, they did not generally appear to have different success rates.
Applications for Legal Aid were more likely to be granted for appeals against decisions of the higher courts which reflects the fact that these were the most serious cases. Where legal aid was refused, the appeal was abandoned in three quarters of cases; where legal aid was granted, however, abandonments occurred in less than one-third of cases.
The refusal of interim liberation did not affect the rate of abandonment although it made an early abandonment more likely
To summarise the grounds of appeal more succinctly than the clear ramblings on a neighbouring website
1.misdirection of law;
2.non-direction on the law;
3,failure to refer to a defence;
4. misdirection on the facts;
5.inappropriate comment by the judge;
6. wrongful admission or exclusion of the evidence;
7. defects in the indictment;
8. rejection of no case to answer;
9. jury irregularities;
10. irregularity in relation to verdict;
11. prosecution responsibilities such as non-disclosure or late change in nature of the case.
Now this would be a much better aide memoire for the public.
As for the Sally Clark's case, it was run by the PR machine Quiller Consultants. Of course, it was a media spin machine. Of course, it got her the public sympathy vote. Of course,millions of women cried for her. I have the actual transcripts of the original trial though and its amazing what we find out about Mr Stephen Clark. You see much, like the Henderson case, if we dissect the factual evidence within the trial and the actual evidence, we come to a rather different conclusion. That is of course a matter for another day. One thing is for certain, Quillers controlled what the public heared and what the public read. Of course, much like the Henderson spin machine, only the partial truth is in the public domain. We are interested in facts. That is of course a matter for another sunny day.
Related Links
CPS material - Appeals to the Court of Appeal
Criminal appeal office - Advice for Relatives
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