Posted 1:02 PM by Paul
Evolutionary Justice


" On the count of racially aggravated assault causing actual bodily harm. How do you find the defendant? Guilt of Not Guilty ?

Paul Bower - jury foreman was on his feet and completely speechless. My fellow jurors were muttering, "That's not guilty…" The problem was that the Clerk of the Court had read out entirely the wrong charge. Half way through the trial, the Defence and Prosecution counsels had agreed to split the charges allowing us to find the defendant guilty of Assault but with no element of racial harassment if we so chose.

I kept my mouth shut - unusual for me - knowing that any mistake could blow the entire trial. Another jury would have to start again. I just stared helplessly at both prosecution and defence counsels, begging them wordlessly for help. Thankfully, counsel for the defence cleared up the confusion. The prosecution just looked blank. The aging Clerk of the Court apologised. Apparently no one had bothered to tell him that the charges had been split. A trial costing maybe £100,000 lasting 5 days was nearly blown for lack of a 2 minute conversation and a bit of photocopying.

He then read out the new charges. It was good news and bad news for the defendant, an athletic black Londoner of Nigerian parentage. He was a thug. But not a racially motivated thug.

I know what you are thinking. We did not have the guts to charge a black man for a racial attack on a white man. But that would be wrong. The victim was a small black bus driver from Ghana who had been given a nasty beating for not letting the bigger man on in between stops. The assailant had lain in wait for him in the upstairs deck of the bus and then attacked him when all other passengers had left at the bus garage.

It was news to me that a black man could be charged with a racial attack on another black man. However, when you think about it makes sense. You cannot easily legally define ethnic background in a world where millions of people are a mixture of various races. The bloodiest racial war of the last 50 years was fought between the Hutu and the Tutsi in Rwanda. Back in Europe in the 90s white Croats and Serbs were killing their old school pals. Racial hatred is not just about colour. The reason we did not find him guilty of a racially aggravated assault was that there was not enough evidence and no witnesses to the alleged racial insults.

It is commonplace for people to complain that British trial by jury is now a farce. Half of the jury, we are told, spends their time filing their nails or reading the tabloids. Some even claim, that more trails should be decided by the judge alone. In our case that would have been tricky as it became pretty clear that our judge had only rarely been on a bus in her life. Fare zones were pretty much beyond her, although I am sure she could have given a precis of the importance of The Crown versus McKellen 1867 case on British jurisprudence.

I served on two juries and found the opposite to be true. Most of us took reams of notes and paid close attention to what was going on. In the second trial we even compared notes on where the judge had made an error of fact. People were keen to see a fair trail for the defendant, but always kept the victim at the forefront of their considerations. On the first trial we send a young man down for a minimum of four years for a knife attack which put a young Australian tourist in hospital. On the second, the beating up of the bus driver, the young man will probably get 6 months plus community service, because it was his first offence.

Where Justice was at times farcical was in the basic administration of the court rather than the composition and intelligence of the jury. Not enough photocopies of statements. How could they possibly predict that there might be 12 of us? Court staff complaining that we had taken away too many pencils. No food left in the canteen, broken vending machines and pitiful compensation for people who had lost earnings to serve on a jury. I was fine because the company I work for paid my wages in full.
In the first case the police had even managed to destroy one of the weapons used to attack the Aussie student. Luckily, DNA evidence and eyewitness accounts made it possible to convict. Barristers can earn around £300,000 a year. Court staff are often paid around £10,000.

The victims suffered different fates.

The Ghanaian bus driver is back at work and after a few weeks rest seemed no worse for his ordeal. The Aussie had to undergo two operations on his bowel (one in London and one in Sydney) and seemed nervous and gaunt. Very unlike the happy young man with a beautiful girlfriend who has made the mistake of walking the wrong way trough the East End on a summer night in 2001. But at least they saw justice done when they were brought back to the UK by the Crown Prosecution Service.

The young man who joined in the vicious knife attack is now serving a minimum of 4 years in jail and won't be holding his new born son for some time. His mate was sent down a couple of years earlier and a third assailant has got of Scott free. If you were asked to think of a stereotypical white skinhead thug with blank staring eyes you would have a pretty accurate picture of the man in the dock. His family was in court, but were not the East End firm of soap operas and crime shows. They were well turned out but not brash. During part of the trial and old man, probably the defendants grandfather spend hours in the public gallery with his head in his hands. "Where did we go wrong?" He seemed to be saying. There was no gasp or cry when the judge pronounced sentence. Just resignation.

The defendant spent time at a residential school for kids with special needs. Apparently his parents splitting up had hit him hard. But that is no excuse for sticking a knife in someone's guts and slashing their face. Drugs and shoplifting maybe. But not that. He also skipped bail for two years and then resisted arrest cleaning to be someone else when the police found him at his mothers place in Kent. He didn't do himself any favours and to put it plainly he was very very thick and could have got away with it had he disposed of the knife down a drain and gone straight to his girlfriends

The older smarter (in both senses) black man who had beaten up the bus driver will hopefully be out sooner and have leant to control his temper. He had finished schools with good passes in Science but dropped out of University. He didn't seem too concerned when the verdict came in.

Both offences were about male violence. In the first a group of better-dressed, better educated Aussies had made the mistake of straying on to the territory of a group of young East End males. It was all about territory; "They're on our manor.. Who the fuck do they think they are?" They picked off the weakest looking straggler at the back of a long line of revelers trying to find a night bus. The Aussie could easily have died that night in the gutter just off the Mile End Road far from home.

The second crime was about trying to instill respect through violence. The driver had not let him on the bus. He was not going to be bettered by authority and decided to teach the driver a lesson. He was on the way to the Gym and wasn't going to be pushed around by a bus driver. Maybe he was on steroids.

It's a deep and intransigent question as to why men act this. I don't have any easy answers. But I do know that you should be able to drive a bus or walk home at 3.00 a.m. without fear of your life.