Peoples Law
| Author | David Kirk |
| DOI | 10.1350/jcla.2012.76.3.764 |
| Published date | 01 June 2012 |
| Date | 01 June 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Opinion |
OPINION
Peoples Law
David Kirk*
Chief Criminal Counsel, Enforcement and Financial Crime, Financial Services
Authority
Victims react in different ways to the effects of a crime. Where those
victims are the relatives and friends of someone who has been killed, an
obvious instinct is to see that justice is done. The most high-profile
recent example of this has been the parents of Stephen Lawrence, who
have pursued a just outcome for their son for over 18 years. Last year
they achieved partial success. During the long course of their desperate
search for justice there have been numerous changes and improvements
to the system of investigating and trying such cases. Prominent among
these changes has been the recognition that the police had a tendency to
treat the death of a black youth with scant attention. The McPherson
Report1trenchantly criticised the attitude of the police in general (refer-
ring to ‘institutional racism’), and their handling of the case in particu-
lar, and this led to a wholesale re-evaluation of police attitudes. Along
the way there were changes to the law (particularly on double jeopardy,
allowing Gary Dobson to be retried following an earlier acquittal) and to
forensic science techniques which made the 2011 trial possible. The
Lawrences were not directly responsible for all these advances, but their
campaign ensured that they were fully deployed.
Although the Lawrence family’s search for justice is not complete,
their courage and persistence has achieved remarkable results. I recall a
similar case from the time when I worked for the Attorney-General in
1985. A young man called John Williams had died of a drug overdose in
a ‘drug den’ in Luton. There was some evidence that the dose of heroin
that killed him was injected by someone else, but the Crown Prosecution
Service would not prosecute. John’s mother, Pauline, took up the cause.
She wrote to everyone, from the Queen downwards. This also included
the Attorney-General, and it was my task to correspond with her.
Having failed to get the CPS to prosecute, she mounted a very public
campaign, which succeeded in raising funds to get a private prosecution
for manslaughter off the ground. The CPS then took over the prosecu-
tion, and Gary Austin was eventually convicted of administering a
noxious substance.
My correspondence with Pauline (we were on first name terms) was
very lively. She was unfailingly polite and friendly, sending pages of
handwritten stream of consciousness which were alternately enter-
taining and exasperating, but also always rather endearing. She asked
* The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the Financial Services Authority or the Journal of Criminal Law.
1 Available at http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-00.htm,
accessed 3 April 2012.
187The Journal of Criminal Law (2012) 76 JCL 187–190
doi:10.1350/jcla.2012.76.3.764
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