COULSON FOUND NOT GUILTY OF MATERIAL LYING UNDER OATH.
Suddenly, perjury is OK if it isn’t ‘germain’
The Slog suggests an answer to why our judiciary is no longer independent, no longer to be trusted -in fact, merely the stinking reflection of a culture floating along in the sewers.
Major top-hat-tip to Peter Jukes, one of the few diligent, creative and inspiring journos we have left. On Twitter today, he points out that almost every press title and news station covering Andy Coulson’s ‘acquittal’ has him found not guilty of lying under oath. This is quite wrong: the Scottish judge used a dodgy precedent, got it wrong, and acquitted the former Newscorp phone-hacker of materially lying under oath. But split infinitives are as nothing compared to the disgrace of divided Judicial loyalties.
Follow the link for a proper forensic account of this new travesty from Tommy Sheridan’s lawyer. It explains with logic a five-year-old could follow why Coulson’s lies at the original Sheridan trial indirectly sent him to prison.
Then try and answer these five questions:
1. A similar ‘selective choice’ MO to that used by the cps in acquitting Rebekah Brooks was employed by the Scottish cps to allow Coulson to answer a charge of telling ‘material’ lies under oath. Shooting off your toes once is unfortunate. Doing it twice suggests deliberate self-harm. Why did the two services do that?
2. Perjury is perjury: the precedent wilfully misread by the Judge allowed Coulson to leave Court acquitted of ‘material perjury’. There is no difference, and the precedent was never meant for cases like this one…even if it was applicable. Why did the Judge apply it?
3. Why has Andy Coulson been found guilty of mass phone-hacking, but been sentenced to just 18 months, eventually serving a mere four months in an open prison before being released?
4. Why just eighteen months, when 3,000 rioting looters in Croydon got banged up for an average of 3-5 years in just over six weeks of trials…but it took nearly fifteen months to bring Coulson and Brooks to trial?
5. Why was the media reporting of the verdict as “total acquittal” so perfectly aligned in its willful sloppiness?
It seems that in Camerlot Britain, stealing a pair of running shoes is a more heinous crime than illegally invading the privacy of thousands of citizens.
It seems that in Camerlot Britain, telling lies under oath is OK if they were ‘white lies’.
And it also appears that, the day after an Alton Towers ride severely injured several people, tweets appeared on Twitter from personal injury lawyers quoting the near-disaster and pitching for the business?
I think that there is an important link here between judicial verdicts and legal firm misbehaviours. It is this:
Sooner or later, amoral lawyers become bent judges
As with a bent designer bus-stop bench, it’s much easier to lean on a bent Judge.
I do not ask for trial by media here; I ask only that all those of good heart and sound mind finally wake up…and ask themselves whether the sequence of Newscorp events over the last four years really can be explained away and then forgotten.
I ask that a crowd-sourced appeal be launched to have this ridiculous verdict quashed, and a new trial begun.
I ask that British citizens with something between their ears read this direct answer from Benito Mussolini when asked to define fascism:
And finally, I leave you with this Slog limerick to consider:
Arise the brand-new rule of law:
innocent power and guilty poor
Earlier at The Slog: Britain’s new export to the EU – perversion of justice
The Slog 