The King's 'Powers' are dead, long live the people.

Borrowed from 'Cynic.'

'Baroness Hale said in 2011:
"Innocence as such is not a concept known to our criminal justice system. We distinguish between the guilty and the not guilty. A person is only guilty if the state can prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt… if it can be conclusively shown that the state was not entitled to punish a person, it seems to me that he should be entitled to compensation for having been punished. He does not have to prove his innocence at his trial and it seems wrong in principle that he should be required to prove his innocence now."
"Now" being when being compensated for wrongful imprisonment.

That seems logical, fair and 'just'.
There is concern in the UK that people may be compensated when inadmissible evidence 'proves' their factual guilt despite a not guilty verdict. The machinations of Crown Law and the Minister on the Bain case suggests that not only do they agree with these reservations, but that they think that David Bain is guilty - possibly persuaded of that by the inadmissible evidence. However, Ian Binnie had all of that in front of him - all the inadmissible evidence and the rulings about it. Nonetheless he found Bain innocent.
So I'm with the Baroness on this one. If we allow politicians and Crown Law to 'know better' than the 'innocent until proven guilty' for any purpose, including the awarding of compensation, then we may as well do away with the concept altogether.

Judicial review is at the heart of the divide between the judiciary and the executive: the means of keeping the politicians from abusing their power. Those people who are questioning the purpose of this judicial review should think carefully about which of their basic rights they are happy to allow to be sacrificed to the whims of political manoeuvring.
If the Minister of Justice is allowed to manipulate a justice process for political ends, without any outcry from those who should be outraged, where will it go next? The Police already consider themselves above the law: this will merely strengthen that belief. If Crown law and crown prosecutors are asinvested in a belief in Bain's guilt as they clearly are, they are not meeting the basic requirement of their office - a dispassionate and unbiased presentation of truth. Thus the Crown cannot be trusted to act in our best interests. The judiciary need to compel them to manage their beliefs and stick to their jobs.'


I totally agree 'cynic.' Of course this wasteland where the 'not guilty' are  also 'the guilty' in the minds of the police, and in this case the Minister, sees a further an absolute punishment applied: the stripping of access to the Courts for Justice. I'm unaware of any other process by which rights to go to the Judiciary are removed. Surely it is every persons right to take a case for examination, particularly where a person has been punished by the Courts for offences that were unproven against him if one party had not abused the process and in fact struck at the heart of everything which marks New Zealand as a democracy. The police hid and destroyed evidence in a deliberate way to make a case against David Bain, but in their haste and contempt didn't realise the attending narrative was bizarre, inconsistent with facts and logic, and would one day be seen as clearly ridiculous. When Collins sat down with those representing this travesty of Justice, she also became a person representing the travesty, but with more contempt than the original perpetrators because she publicly declared that it was her decision, that she need not convince a Court, Judges or a Jury - simply decide because it was within her powers. In her arrogance she threw Justice aside and looked to rise above us all as a true tyrant. She also did it secretly, she was tidying things up 'for the boys.' Tidying things up for wasting 15 or more million dollars on a trial that could only have one result and victimising the same innocent person again.