Saudi Arabia and Qisas

I imagine this press release from Amnesty International will shortly make the news. The Islamic idea of qisas (translates as 'retaliation') is quite literally eye-for-an-eye 'justice'.

I'm not one who's often heard praising the fairness of the UK or US legal systems, but at least we have moved on from this bronze age barbarism.

Blasphemy and Ireland

From yesterday it has been illegal to blaspheme in Ireland. Essentially, it is forbidded to be "grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion" given the fact you "intend, by the publication of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.”

This is a bad move. What happened to freedom of speech? Thankfully Atheist Ireland have responded by publishing 25 quotes that they believe break the new law.

Suing Scientology

Well I've been away and I have hundreds of e-mails to sort through and thousands of new posts filling my Google Reader.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things that I have heard about post Costa Rica however is the French taking the Church of Scientology to court. look forward to seeing how this case develops.

Nigerian Car Stealing Goat

Police in Nigeria held a goat after a vigilante group reported that an armed criminal used black magic to turn himself into the animal.

Rhys Murder?

I will admit to being disgusted by the fact that the innocent child, Rhys Jones, was killed by Sean Mercer. But I am appalled that he was found guilty of murder. I assume that this will require some explanation.

To be convicted of murder you must have committed 'Actus reus' (guilty act) with 'Mens rea' (guilty mind). In other words you must have killed somebody with the intent of doing so.

As it happens Sean Mercer had no intention of killing Rhys Jones. He had the intention of killing somebody else, but failed. Reading news accounts Mercer was guilty of numerous crimes, but this does not make him guilty of murder.

Is this an abuse of our legal system? I have commented before about how the incarceration of an innocent is worse than the freedom of a criminal. In this case, despite the absolute hideousness of what happened, has true justice been applied?

The lives of teenagers

A few stories have come to my attention recently about the antics of teenagers. Such as this girl from Newark, USA who sent photos of herself nude to some of her classmates. Fair enough, it's not the best plan in the world, but a criminal record?

The law exists to protect the rights and property of individuals. If somebody has their rights removed, or their property unlawfully damaged they are a victim. Where is the victim in this scenario? Who is the law protecting? And from who?

The fact that this girl may get a criminal record, and may have to sign the register is ludicrous. She has been forced into being the victim of a victimless crime.

The other story relates to a 15 year old boy streaking at a sports match. Again, not the best of plans, but why is he being held in a juvenile detention centre?

Teenagers need to make their own mistakes. They do not need to be criminalised for them. Experimenting, and even exhibiting, their new found sexuality is normal, and should not offend you. Unless, of course, you are scared by sexuality.

Cucumbers and Islam: Way Beyond Belief?

There are regions in the world where the prominence of Islam as the dominant power controlling peoples' lives is being challenged. This is a good thing, it is far better to be governed by a system that is modern, and designed is to operate in the modern world. Democracy has its problems, but give me democracy over religion any day.

The problem with creating a working, fair, democracy is the fine-tuning on the 'checks and balances', ensuring that no one individual or interest group has disproportionate control over any other. The US system is, in theory at least, a fine balance between the executive, legislative and judicial branches. In the Westminster system the executive is dependent on the support of the legislative branch, so the balance is effectively between the legislative and judicial branches, with the legislative process being steered by the executive.

Why all this discussion on legislative branches and whatever else? The answer is that it shows the flexibility of the systems to govern the people. To create a new law requires the approval of the legislature, it's enforcement depends on the judiciary. Without checks and balances the executive could take control of both the law making and the law enforcement.

Now if the executive also has a firm belief in a certain well known Bronze Age text the results can be one hand comical, but in the bright light of day 'ludicrously tragic'.

Hence we have Al Qa'eda in Iraq banning women from buying cucumbers. Perhaps the most ridiculous of religious laws I've heard in a long time.

Anonymous witnesses and 42 days

The British legal system is falling to pieces, and it worries me. Worse still, when talking to a close friend the other day, I realised that they didn't understand the purpose of having a legal system in the first place.

The legal system is not there to incarcerate or otherwise punish criminals, it is there to protect the freedom of the majority. It protects our freedom by punishing people who break rules that we, as a society, have, willingly and rightly, imposed on ourselves.

The legal system is there to ensure that we can retain as many freedoms as is feasibly possible while allowing large numbers of us to live together in something resembling order and harmony.

So we come to 42 days of detention without charge. You have to wonder if it takes 42 days to gather evidence to charge somebody what the quality of the evidence leading to their arrest was like. 42 days is a ridiculously large amount of time for this process. Canada has 24 hours. Even China, well known for being a bit over the top, 'only' has 37. Welcome to police state Britain.

Then we come to the decision of the Law Lords (those peers that are legally qualified) that evidence given by anonymous witnesses is to be disallowed as the prevention of cross-examination means that the trial is unfair. This is the right decision. It is the only sensible decision. Imagine you are incorrectly accused of a crime, and the majority of the weight of evidence against you comes from an anonymous witness. Shouldn't your lawyer be able to ask questions that would expose them as a fraud?

But the UK government wants to rush laws through making this kind of evidence acceptable.

Letting somebody get away with a crime is itself less of a crime than imprisoning an innocent person. It is time that people realised that the law is there to protect our freedoms, not make it easier for others to take them away.

Jeremy Kyle and the Lie Detector Test

I would like to make it perfectly clear that I hate, with a passion, talk shows. Why these people need to use television as a medium to air their laundry is beyond me. I know lots of people want to be on the TV, but I wouldn't want to share anything that personal, and generally anything that embarrassing/pathetic, with the world at large.

But that's not the aim of today's rant. No, today we focus on that Jeremy Kyle staple, the lie-detector (aka polygraph) test. There is much argument on the reliability of these tests, generally somewhere between 60% and 97% is quoted (however a great deal of this evidence is unreliable).

The physiological effects recorded by the polygraph are not unique to deception. Surely this should set off alarm bells?

Well no, these people on what seems to be a daily basis put major decisions in the hands of a machine which is at best 97% accurate. Kyle is guilty, as others are, of making this seem almost infallible.

What I do in a situation like this is turn the statistics around. 97% accurate means 3% inaccurate. For every 100 tests done, 3 (on average) will give the incorrect result (remember that this is the best case scenario!).

If you were a jury member would that be accurate enough for you to convict? If you were a judge would you accept that if the average accuracy of the evidence before you was 97% then for every 100 people you convicted 3 would have been denied their freedom for no reason at all. I hope not.

Innocent people will unfortunately be imprisoned under any system of law and order we have, as a species, yet envisioned. But for me the number of innocents convicted would have to be, as a minimum, somewhere around 1 in 10,000 (99.99% accuracy). If the evidence was any less convincing than that I would, personally, have to call that reasonable doubt.

But Kyle commits a worse sin. An inconclusive test is just that, it is impossible to draw a conclusion from it. Yet the daytime demigod, facing four possible thieves who had undergone the polygraph, three of which got an all clear and one of whom got an 'inconclusive', picked on that 'inconclusive' person as the culprit. An inconclusive result, even given the fact that the others pass the truth test, does not mean that person has failed to tell the truth, it means that the test has failed to discriminate.

Of course this would require Kyle, the juror/judge, the people on the show, etc. to have a sound basic knowledge of mathematics and scientific reasoning. Which given the fact we live in the Jeremy Kyle generation is sadly unlikely.