I’d be interested to know what you learned from my bad experience? The same applies to the case I was once involved with.
How is it unfair and irresponsible? And for the record and to make it abundantly clear, you have no idea of my experience - just an opinion of what you think my experience was/is!
Nicholas, please don't think we're trying to have a go at you. We're all fighting for the same thing here, so we say this out of solidarity with you as a fellow campaigner. We chose our words carefully before. We know that you had
a bad experience with Simon, but we don't pretend to have insight into
the experience itself. What matters is that a bad experience, whatever the experience may be, is going to leave a lasting effect on someone. Different people react differently to bad experiences. Some try to draw positives from it and move on. Others are consumed by the negatives and become stuck in the past. If you allow bad experiences and all the negative emotions that come with that to become a controlling influence in your life then you will never truly be able to put this awful experience behind you. That mindset will only ever lead to bitterness, anger, and resentment which will be projected onto everything and everyone around you. Forget about this case for a minute and just think about yourself and your own future. Where do you want to be in a year or two? You deserve a second chance. Don't allow yourself to be held down, or held back, by the ghosts of the past.
Now, we know we'll be shot down for going off topic here, but we can't go on without addressing the elephant in the Forum: Simon Hall. This case sent shock-waves throughout the miscarriage of justice community that are still felt today. It shook campaigners, it shook investigators, and it shook the prisoners who really are innocent. Two big questions come out of this moving forward. How do innocent prisoners make themselves heard without being compared to Simon Hall? And how do campaigners identify who is really innocent? These are not easy questions, but several academics have had a good go at laying down a few basic principles. Dr Michael Naughton for example came up with his 'Typology of Prisoners Maintaining Innocence'. He categorises prisoners who maintain innocence into five groups:
1) Those who have suffered an abuse of process, what you might call a 'technical' or 'formal' breach. For example, a burglar who wasn't caught for the burglary he actually committed, but has been convicted of another burglary that he wasn't involved in. This raises interesting ethical issues, because if we expect our justice system to uphold the law then we have to hold it to the highest standards. Allowing criminal justice professionals to 'fit' someone up shouldn't be acceptable, because it involves the state acting criminally. If they don't follow procedure then they should be held accountable for that so that they do their jobs properly in future without cutting corners.
2) Those who do not know or see their behaviour as criminal because they 'misunderstand' the law. Dr Naughton includes joint enterprise cases in this group.
3) Those who know they have committed an offense but think that the law is wrong / that the offense should be criminalised, for example, a cannabis dealer.
4) Those who maintain their innocence to protect loved ones from the truth.
5) Those who are telling the truth. They are completely innocent, legally and factually.
In his view, people say they are innocent for many different reasons. We need to be aware of this, but also careful not to rush to judgement. Comparing every prisoner to Simon Hall is unfair because everyone is different. By looking for what we think are similarities between cases we run the risk of wrongly categorising prisoners as guilty when they are in fact innocent. This will only perpetuate injustice. We also run the risk of seeing what we want to see, or looking for what we want to look for. This is a risk we can ill afford to take. We should be critical, we should test the evidence, and we should question everything. But we should also try to be impartial and treat every case and every individual on their own merits, without allowing our preconceptions about what a miscarriage of justice
ought to look like affect how we treat new cases. This is a challenge for all of us in the field, but one we can all rise to.