There must be only a few among us who do not know what is meant by the phrase ‘compassion fatigue”, the condition of near indifference that has come to supplant what should be outrage, grief, revulsion, even the most nominal of human reactions to each fresh horror of the world. The newspapers, the radio or television news bulletins brim with details of yet more bombings, more mass shootings, more rapings and murders, more major industrial accidents.
In response to all this carnage our souls are desperately seeking refuge. Everything we ought to feel about the misery of others, our fundamental emotions of sympathy, are being closed down in what can only be an act of self-defence. It’s simply too much to bear. So what if another mass grave is uncovered in Iraq? Who cares if Sudanese militia burn villages and slaughter children? Instead of tears or fury, all we now do is speculate on whether the latest genocidal rampage will be as bad as or worse than the last one. Statistics are far easier on the conscience.
Someone was saying on the radio last Sunday morning that violent crime has become so commonplace there has to be something special about a murder, rape or hijacking, that it has to have some novelty value before a newspaper will find space for it.
So, it was quite startling to be brought up short, to be stopped in the visceral tracks, by an item of news from England last week that pulverised every sense of fair play. Not at all physically violent, except by association, what happened showed to what ugly depths judicial corruption can sink in good old morally impeccable England.
Three men, who had spent 18 years in an English prison, wrongly convicted on what was proved later to have been manufactured police evidence, were released in 1997. After a seven-year delay, two of the men were awarded compensation by the crown but were then told that, as they had not had to support themselves during the 18 years in prison, they had to pay ‘board and lodgings”, actually reimburse the state which had wrongly imprisoned them. This amounted to a quarter of their compensations.
The original case was notorious, dubbed ‘The Bridgewater Four” after the name of a teenager who was killed by a shotgun blast during a robbery on a farm. Two cousins, Michael and Vincent Hickey, and their co-accused James Robinson, were sentenced to a minimum of 25 years each for murder. Their sentencing in 1979 was the result of a horrendous miscarriage of justice. The police investigating the case had fraudulently obtained a confession from Patrick Molloy, a small-time crook arrested for another robbery. Molloy signed a confession stating that he had been at the scene of the original robbery but had been upstairs in the farmhouse when the shooting took place. What was revealed finally was that Molloy had been severely brutalised by the police for several days and had been shown a ‘confession” by Vincent Hickey, which the police had fabricated and adorned with a forged signature. The crown’s case rested principally on Molloy’s and Vincent Hickey’s dubious confessions. As his reward, Molloy got charged with the lesser crime of manslaughter and received a 12-year sentence. He died in prison two years after conviction.
After 18 years in prison and after much protest, including a 144-day hunger strike by one of the cousins, the case was reassessed and the Court of Appeal quashed the original conviction as ‘unsafe”. The men were released and the Crown Prosecution Service, in a display of lofty arrogance, announced that none of the seven police officers alleged to have fabricated the evidence would be prosecuted.
During their imprisonment the Hickeys and Robinson were subjected to the abuse traditionally afforded to child-killers. They were beaten and intimidated by fellow prisoners, had glass and phlegm added to their food. No Home Office charges were levied for these additional services, but for the ‘saved living expenses” the two each had £60 000 deducted from their compensation — that’s £60 a week — a decision described as ‘the sickest of all sick jokes”.
Has a precedent been set? Will only those wrongly convicted be forced to pay for their upkeep during the years they should never have been locked up? Will genuine criminals not be charged for the free accommodation, medical care, clothing and entertainment they have earned by their crimes?
The whole thing has been in squalid conflict with natural justice, much like a recent case where a retired English Crown Court judge was found guilty of having downloaded child pornography onto his computer and also of having created some himself. A few dozen pictures of naked boys were found, fodder to the judge’s diseased pleasures. Charged and found guilty, this distinguished occupier of the bench was not sent to jail or fined but given, instead, a gentle tap on his judicial wrist by one of his fellow judges. He was told to attend some rehabilitation sessions. He probably had his legal costs returned to him as well.
Big or small, how very sick it all is.