Peter Hitchens writes:
Amy Winehouse is the latest famous person to be acquitted without trial after claims of drug abuse.
I think this is quite wrong. It is bad for us all that these charges have not been aired in a proper court under the rules of evidence.
Miss Winehouse should have the right to speak in her own defence and to confront the witnesses against her.
The Crown Prosecution Service was not set up to conduct secret bureaucratic trials.
People will not willingly accept its verdicts if they don't know how they were reached. One of the purposes of a justice system is to give people the chance to dismiss, once and for all, persistent but unproven allegations against them.
Quite.
The CPS either acquits in secret or it convicts in secret, in which latter case the trial in open court is nothing more than a very expensive and time-consuming sentencing hearing.
Instead, give back the Police their powers of prosecution, and let firms of solicitors build prosecution work into their normal caseloads, as they always used to do.
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