At Large Tonight

David Lammy’s early release scheme has started. I have very recent experience of the elaborate system for transporting within the same prison, never mind outside, even non-violent and non-sexual offenders of whom no one had ever heard, and everything about this Hadush Kebatu incident baffles me. They have suspended, or possibly just reassigned, only one Officer. But that is not how these things work.

That footage of Kebatu on the streets of Chelmsford today shows him in prison issue clothing, which should make him easy enough to spot, but which you do have to hand in when you are let out. You are put back in whatever you were wearing when you came in. None of this stacks up.

Elsewhere in the criminal justice system, just as Sinn Féin is full of Planter surnames, so Soldier F’s is Gaelic Irish. It is a very complicated place. Despite having access to the vast resources of the Telegraph and Tufton Street types, he will not be suing anyone who called him a murderer, unlike Gerry Adams, who successfully sued the BBC for having accused him of having sanctioned a murder. But while we all know why not, and while Diplock courts are wrong in principle, that Soldier F was a murderer could not be proven to the criminal standard.

Questioning a conviction is always legitimate in principle, but questioning an acquittal is contrary to the presumption of innocence, which was why not even Doreen Lawrence or Ann Ming should have been able to convince us to permit double jeopardy. Some of us told people who questioned the acquittal of Ricky Jones, or even his right to plead not guilty at all, that they obviously had no idea what they thought that they were defending. We need to take our own advice.

After all, in the words of His Honour Judge Patrick Lynch KC (there you are again), “The evidence presented by the Crown falls well short of this standard and signally fails to reach the high standard of proof required in a criminal case: that of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore, I find the accused not guilty on all seven counts on the present bill of indictment.” Compare and contrast. Having pleaded not guilty, I have only ever been convicted expressly not beyond reasonable doubt, and even in accepting my guilty pleas this year, entered for the reasons given in that link, the judge described me as “exonerated”.

I have never met a Police Officer, Prison Officer, Probation Officer or Safeguarding Officer who missed an opportunity to profess confidence in my total innocence, and unless they said otherwise, then that also remains the view of every Member of Parliament for County Durham, of every member of Durham County Council, of every member of Lanchester Parish Council, and of every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle. Across those categories, again, enough of them have told me so in no uncertain terms. None has ever so much as hinted at the contrary. And no one has ever told me to my face that they thought that I was guilty. No one. At all. Ever.