Non-Subscriber Extract
Personal view: Seeking the truth
By James Kirk
19 December 2007
How much do we want to know the truth? It appears to be inherent in the human race to tell lies to avoid the truth or being found out. Anyone who disagrees with this is not telling the truth, as we all do it from time to time.
A person is deemed innocent until proven guilty in this country's legal system and it is the task of police officers with the help of witnesses, forensic science, hard work and long hours to obtain the evidence to arrest and charge a suspect and place him before a court. Police officers frequently know that the person under suspicion has committed the crime, but the case cannot proceed because of the lack of evidence or false alibis.
If officers do obtain the evidence and the suspect appears before a court, the evidence must be beyond all reasonable doubt to achieve a conviction. I have seen guilty people get off many times because the jury members could not agree following a very long trial at great expense. Sometimes this is because of a technicality, a clever advocate or the personalities on the jury. Thank goodness for our advances in DNA profiling, but in my opinion this potential for misjustice is still not good enough.
What about giving suspects, and if necessary witnesses, a truth serum under proper medical and legal jurisdiction to immediately obtain the truth and reasons for committing the crime? Obtaining the truth could also bring forth other suspects and help to detect unsolved crimes.
Once the truth has been established and the guilty person has been found, the trial process can proceed by giving the correct sentence. Advocates can still be involved in providing mitigation and family history, but the police do not have to look for anyone else. Millions of pounds of taxpayers' money would be saved each year.
We can expect to have some MPs, most of the legal profession, human rights activists, civil liberty groups and left-wing groups raising their arms in horror at these proposals, but what about the civil liberties, human rights and justice for the victim?
How should we deal with serial killers, terrorists that kill hostages or plant bombs, killers of police officers, members of the armed forces or prison officers? In this country we do not have the death penalty, which would be considered by most law-abiding citizens to be the correct punishment for these offenders. One of the main reasons for stopping capital punishment was the thought of hanging an innocent person. As this would not occur under these proposals, should we not look at capital punishment once again? Perhaps death by lethal injection could be the answer to exterminating these offenders from our society.
Other murderers, rapists, child molesters, mobsters, drug barons and all those committing serious crimes against humanity should also be removed permanently from our society. For this we must look back to the 19th century and transportation.
We could consider transporting these criminals to a very remote island or islands and leaving them there to fend for themselves. They would never be allowed to live in this country or see their relatives or friends again. They have to make the sacrifice for their crimes.
James Kirk is a retired superintendent from Surrey Police and a former commander of three police training colleges. He retired in 1983.