It’s good that the Police have
said they will learn from the Bain case
if there is any thing they could have done better.
However, it shouldn’t just be admitting they did a few things wrong at the beginning.
The review needs to cover the whole of the last 15 years – since that tragic morning at Every Street.
In 2007 the Privy Council judged that
“a substantial miscarriage of justice has actually occurred”
and quashed the convictions.
Technically, the Privy Council had no other course but to order a retrial, because its mandate had been to consider part of the evidence, not the whole evidence. However, it said that this order
“does not of course restrict the duty of the Crown to decide whether a retrial now would be in the public interest.”
It was hardly in the “
public interest
” for the Police to recommend to the Solicitor General that there be a retrial.
The Privy Council had discredited much of the Police evidence against David Bain and a prosecution was hardly likely to succeed.
Also
why waste millions of taxpayers money
and not to mention the trauma caused to those involved in the re-trial not least of
all the jurors
.
We have a good Police force. It’s commendable that our cops ‘stick by their mates’, particularly in the many dangerous situations they put themselves in to protect us.
But it shouldn’t apply when their mates are going down the wrong track.
Over 15 years successive Police officers seemed unwilling to look beyond pinning the murders on David even
as other more fruitful leads came to light.