Monday 27 August 2012

A Letter To The Home Office (Part 1)

I could not have put most of it better, myself:
"Re: R v Wiles ruling - justice?
Today at 16:51:21

The fact is that different forces cannot lawfully apply the rule from a date they choose, so an authoritive decision will need to take place. If they choose the 1997 date, this will lead to hundreds who have completed their notification being required to re-start, and you can hear the costly legal challenges already.

The RvW ruling was on 4/3/04, and should have set a precedent, however it did not and judges continued to sentence under the interpretation of the 1997 act, upheld in R v Graham S 2001. In fact even as late as this year, judges were still not applying RvW in some cases I read.

The Home Office themselves did not become aware of the ruling until April 2005, and even though the ruling was in relation to being banned from working with children, they decided it was a useful tool to hit all those with a sexual offence, so it could be argued that it is being used beyond it's remit.

As more and more are now coming to the end of their 'given' sentence, the challenges will mount. The media will blow it up as 'paedophiles being released', but that is to be expected. But the truth is more than that, it is the police and government riding over a sentence that has been passed and declared in open court and not challenged at the time by the Crown. It was accepted as correct, and indeed in most cases was correct interpretation at the time.

the arguments must be put forward that retrospective increases cannot happen in any case, no matter how emotive you feel about the offence. For example, if you were caught speeding at 58mph in a 50 zone, you will receive due punishment. If 2 years later they changed the speed limit of that section of road to 30mph, would they retrospectively say you were now doing 28mph over the limit, almost twice the limit, and your penalty will now be increased?

No, because that was not the circumstances at the time. In my case, at the time I was sentenced, the correct notification period was 10 years, and you simply cannot get away from that fact.

The police and Home Office need to swallow their pride, stop pandering to the media and accept that the judge passed a sentence. If he made a mistake, it needed to be challenged at the time, not 7 years later."

http://theopinionsite.org/forum/case-law-new-law-court-of-appeal-decisions/r-v-wiles-ruling-justice/60/
Nigel

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