Innocence is No
Defence
For many
people, being questioned in relation to a serious crime is not,
initially, something to be afraid of. They proceed on the basis
of the old maxim “I’ve done nothing wrong, so I have nothing to
fear.” What these people don’t realise is that a police
investigation does not, necessarily, exist to clear the
innocent and find the guilty. It exists to allow the police
access to enough information to secure a conviction. There is a
big difference.
If the
police have decided, often quite arbitrarily, on a “suspect,”
they will systematically gather information which backs up
their decision, even if that person is innocent. Information,
for example, pointing to other suspects, will either be ignored
or discounted as “irrelevant” because it does not fit with the
picture the police are trying to piece together. Indeed, in
many cases, the “investigation” becomes an exercise in finding
“evidence” to back up only one line of “suspicion”, and other
areas are simply not investigated at
all.
Innocent
people try very hard to help the police by giving them as much
information, however small or seemingly innocuous, believing
that nothing they say can in any way incriminate them, because
they haven’t done anything wrong in the first place. They will
backtrack, remembering small details…. “I went from the house
to Joe’s, and then onto Billy’s at eight o’clock.” Later, they
might say, “No, wait, I’ve just remembered, after Joe’s, I had
to come back here because I’d left my phone at
home.”
The first
sense of unease may begin when the police start to question
this “change” in the story. Why did you tell us you went
straight to Billy’s? Why didn’t you tell us you’d gone home?
Was anybody in your house to confirm that you went there? The
only answer an innocent person can give is “I forgot,” but the
police won’t accept that. Still trying to explain themselves,
an innocent person may then go on to try to provide
explanations as to why they forgot, digging themselves into a
deeper hole from the police
perspective.
Still,
though, people believe that the system will, sooner or later,
highlight their innocence, and even if they have become a
little uneasy about the line the police questioning is taking,
they are still fairly confident that someone, somewhere will
realise the police are on the wrong track, and it’s all just a
big mistake.
Then they
are arrested. At this stage, the shock and
bewilderment are overwhelming. Many wrongfully convicted
people can’t wait for the trial. The police, they reason, have
got it all totally wrong, and a trial will show it. When the
evidence comes out in court, it will become clear that the
police constructed a case against the wrong
person.
What they
don’t realise is that the information the police have gathered
may very well “substantiate” the prosecution claims. That being
the case, questions will not be asked in court about other
possible areas of investigation, or other possible suspects,
because neither of those have anything to do with the case
being tried in court.
Only when
the foreman of the jury stands up and says “Guilty” do these
people realise that no-one is coming to rescue them. No-one
cares that the wrong person is in the dock, or that an innocent
person has just been convicted. All that matters is that a
conviction has been secured.
Innocence is no defence. In fact,
being innocent is one of the biggest handicaps to the defence
of an innocent person, because their ignorance of the system
and how it works is used against them, time and time
again.
by Sandra Lean - June
2008
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