Oh heck, this is worrying:
Quote:
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All discoverable mistakes must be presented in this appeal--they cannot be brought up at a later step in the appeal process, even if they hadn’t been discovered at the time of the direct appeal. It’s a "now or never" situation.
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Y'know. I'm not sure which I find more worrying: the idea of a judge making the sentencing decisions, or the idea of a jury making the decision ( I realise the jury makes a recommendation, but it would appear the judge's decision is a formality based on that recommendation). Especially if the appeals proces is as difficult as it would appear from this page. I realise it's a partisan reading of the system, but the 'routine' dismissing of applications for appeal at each of the different stages that this describes has a horrible ring of truth to it. Fits with the attitudes my own system had towards the Birmingham Six for most of their sentence. It's all very well people saying they have many chances to appeal, but if it's not acually given much of a hearing, or is routinely dismissed then it's not much of a safeguard.
I know from my own country's use of an appeals process in asylum decisions how fraught that can be and hhow easily barriers can be placed on the process. For example: a second appeal on an asylum decision can only be brought if 'new' evidence is available. Which means that evidence that has been seen and summarily and unfairly/disingenuously dismissed cannot be reviewed. Prior to that law being passed, it was very common for asylum cases to fall at the first and second hearings and pass on the third, when it was heard at a higher level. Which suggests that the first and second hearings were often faulty decisions.
Actually I should fact check that. It may be that the first appeal now requires 'new evidence' I know that was in the pipeline. Particularly concerning after a parliamentary commission found that the Home Office asylum system (which deals with the initial hearings) had 'a kafkaesque culture of disbelief'. So when good evidence is routinely dismissed and has to go through two and three appeals to be taken seriously, our response was to make it virtually impossible to get to that second and third appeal and allow the initial poor reading of the evidence to stand.
Fuck. Now I've drifted into a topic I really feel angry about. I know so many people who've been unfairly denied asylum, and whose cases have been dismissed despite very clear physical evidence of torture and brutality. I know several (one of whom was a volunteer who worked with mum) who've been refused and deported back to their country of origin only to vanish suspected of being imprisoned or killed; two we actually know were killed.
So...I don't trust 'appeals systems' as a true safeguard against miscarriages of justice. I know only too well how they can be skewed against actual usefulness.