Firstly what “crime” is has changed radically.

And any defence of “but that just does not make sense” will be dismissed with the reply that “ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it” (even if it is impossible to find out what the law is in advance).

Also any alternative theory of events must be presented in a certain way.

Someone who stood up in court and tried to tell the truth (as a layman – unversed in the ways of the modern law) would be doomed, utterly doomed.

And rely on council?

This would be council that could not actually give a toss. They care about being paid – and that is it. They will go though the motions (so you have no formal grounds for complaint against them), but no more than that.

And, remember, what you are on trial for can change (in the middle of the trial), so if you think you are doing well (and the prosecution agrees that you are) you can suddenly find yourself on trial for something else.

For example, let us say that you have proved (beyond all reasonable doubt REVERSING the traditional burden of proof) that you were ordered by your employer to buy warrentees for a computer system.

Are you then innocent and walk?

Perhaps not.

You may find yourself on trial for filling in the wrong form or filling it in the wrong way.

That is “fraud by misaccounting”.

“Ah fraud – you mean your friend in Ulster pocketed some money”.

NO.

Under “fraud by misaccounting” you do not actually have to make a material gain of any kind. Just doing the paperwork wrong can be considered “fraud”.

“So do the paperwork right”.

What is the “right” way to do the paperwork is often very unclear, and the system may change its mind about what the “right” way of doing it is.

For example – “you did not do the paperwork this way – that is a crime”, “but I did – look I can prove it….”

“So you admit you did the paperwork that way – you criminal!”

To cut a long story short…..

Think of Alice in Wonderland (or the Looking Glass book) mixed with Kafka (specifically “The Trial”).

Then you have a good picture of the criminal justice system of England and Wales.

The short version is, a man decided to engage in armed drugged douchebaggery with regrettable but predictable consequences. His father then tried to use his corpse as a ghetto lottery ticket and grab some headlines.

The longer version would take more time than I have the heart to spend. This thread is going to go full retard and imho it’s time to pull the handle.

With our Great Leader using the bureaucracy to bypass Congress with enviro and gun laws (he is pushing to get the UN Small Arms Control treaty sent to the Senate which his partisans control) we seem to be embarking on the that path to unarmed and law bound serfdom.

‘In most states, she could have shot them and she’d have been ok.’

Not So!

However, in most states, if she’d have called the local police and said ‘there are men here trespassing, cutting down my trees, threatening me with knives and chainsaws, cussing me out and indecently-exposing themselves’, the response would have been ‘we’ll be right there!’, and they would be, and there would be some pretty-serious steps taken to apprehend the wrongdoers.

And if an older, wiser officer had been there to counsel here he would say something like ‘I don’t know whether you have firearms about you’ (he has no way to know that unless she tells him) ‘but if you do, if I were you, I’d keep one handy, and if you feel your life is in real and immediate danger, you have the right to defend yourself with force’.

Nothing that these jamokes did (that has been publically described) rises to the level of threat that would justify the use of deadly force in all but one or two of the most-backward of US states. It’s mostly property crime and extremely obnoxious behaviour. In no US state can you shoot someone solely for cussing you out or making rude and unpleasant gestures at you, and expect to get away with it.

later,

llamas

Maybe YOU aren’t !!

Russ is right !

Where I live ( Thank God ), somebody would’ve gotten shot, maybe several somebodies and a REAL good chance the bodies would not have been found because NO ONE would waste a lot of time looking for them !!

Someday I hope enough of you, in what I now consider ‘that pathetic country’, will grow at least ONE pair among you and start taking back some of the RIGHTS you have had STOLEN from you in the name of fairness, non-discrimination, and just plain old metrosexual-cowardice !!! ( why do you think the cops went after the lady and not the thugs ? Right. cowardice – nothing more )

My God

Apparently you can build one for under £100 and don’t need any specialist tools like a lathe or anything.

http://www.youtube.com/user/LibertyAirguns#p/u/0/FsY0b_CRWpg

What winds me up is the arrogance of the police when they say they don’t want people taking the law into their own hands.

Who’s law is it if not the peoples?

BTW, Paul, I’m a little confused. Do English courts no longer allow defendants to present alternate theories of the crime?

“What do you mean you want to report a crime? Can’t you see we are trying to watch television?”. This was on the Mediterranean very close to the Italian border, admittedly. It’s probably different in Strasbourg.