a6 murder

[SteveS]

32 In May 2002, the Court of Appeal upheld Hanratty's conviction; it had been referred by the Criminal Cases Review Commission in the light of developments in DNA technology.

No it wasn't. In spite of the DNA, the case was referred because of the vast amount of nondisclosed evidence that was tantamount to a rigged case against Hanratty.
The CCRC would never have referred the case unless they felt that there would be a very good chance of the conviction being quashed.

[SteveS]

I trust the appeal judgment, you don't because they're part of "the establishment", what qualifies as independent and unbiased for you?

I don't trust the appeal court judgement because it's ruling over the DNA evidence is full of contradictions and counter to solid scientific thinking on the subject.
All views are biased and it is a shame that somebody need point that out to you.

You only have to read the comments about Foot in point 31 of Graham's post above to doubt Foot's reliability and integrity.

Why should I doubt Foot's reliability, integrity or anything else based on the opinion of one person.
I make up my own mind based on what I have read by Foot. What I have read by Foot is mightily impressive and for a man with extreme left wing views, his body of work is admired by a broad cross section of the public.
If you base your view of Foot squarely on what someone else has told you, well that smacks of a person who is easily led or a tad naive.

[SteveS]

31 Who Killed Hanratty? An Investigation Into the Notorious A6 Murder, by Paul Foot, published by Penguin, London, (1988), page 151. It should be noted that Foot, the Oxford-educated former editor of Socialist Worker, is not the most reliable of observers, due primarily to his ruthless subjugation of truth to ideology. Nevertheless, Langdale's lenient treatment by the authorities is curious, to say the least.

My emboldened passage shows that Mr Charles Earl has a strong personal view of Paul Foot.
Instead of presenting his own view of Foot with the subjective bias it deserves, Mr Earl states it as if it was a matter of objective empirical fact.
It is the sophistic trick of Ad hominem abusive and is typical of arguments based on some sort of fallicy.
Mr Earl dishes out the same treatment to Jean Justice at note 30 also kindly presented by Graham.

[SteveS]

The note # 30 which Graham posted verbatim earlier comes from this extract of Mr Earl's essay (http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/legan/legan039.htm)

She had though picked out the wrong man at an earlier identification parade held on September 24 when she was still very weak from her ordeal.30 Although her later identification of Hanratty was far from convincing, together with the other evidence, the case against him was quite strong. All the same, the prosecution felt it necessary to bolster the case with an alleged boast to another prisoner.

It is difficult to say how Mr Earl comes to a conclusion that even without Storie's identification the case against Hanratty is strong at all.

Strong? Far from it.

No scientific evidence, purely circumstantial evidence that could be explained by alternative scenarios and a rag tag band of bad character witnesses a few of whom were looking to wriggle out of getting convicted themselves, on various neferious charges.

[SteveS]

They could have been, but Blackhall and Skillett had the additional corroboration of the 3 stripes on the rear of the car, and were not involved in publicity-seeking events on Speaker's corner, &tc.

Morris Minor cars were not unknown to have 3 stripes on the the rear bumper.
Skillet played no part in identifying the car.
Blackhall was adamant that the driver of the car he saw in Redbridge was not Hanratty.
Mr Fogarty-Waul was adamant that the man he saw in the Dorney area on several occasions was Alphon and joined the A6 commitee to protest Hanratty's innocence.
Both biased no doubt, but hey that's life...eh?

[Victor]

I don't trust the appeal court judgement because it's ruling over the DNA evidence is full of contradictions and counter to solid scientific thinking on the subject.

Hi Steve,

"Full of contradictions", you can point out at least 2 then.

All views are biased and it is a shame that somebody need point that out to you.

What? Absolutely not all views are biased, some strive for objectivity, although some subjective opinions on how objective a view is will invariably conclude they're not.

Why should I doubt Foot's reliability, integrity or anything else based on the opinion of one person.

Because it's a view shared by many, including myself.

I make up my own mind based on what I have read by Foot. What I have read by Foot is mightily impressive and for a man with extreme left wing views, his body of work is admired by a broad cross section of the public.
If you base your view of Foot squarely on what someone else has told you, well that smacks of a person who is easily led or a tad naive.

I base my opinion of Foot on my assessment of his output, and for a man with obvious extreme left wing views, I agree that he undoubtedly bends the truth to suit his ideology, for example, his "one bushier eyebrow" and the whole eye-colour of the rapist debacle. At least Woffinden accepts the ridiculousness of those arguments.

KR,
Vic.

[Victor]

No it wasn't. In spite of the DNA, the case was referred because of the vast amount of nondisclosed evidence that was tantamount to a rigged case against Hanratty.

Try saying it was referred because of the perceived lack of objectivity due to the volume of undisclosed evidence, which was entirely within contemporary guidelines.

The CCRC would never have referred the case unless they felt that there would be a very good chance of the conviction being quashed.

Surely they referred the case because there was the real possibility that the conviction was unsafe. I recall a figure of 5% for the number of cases referred being quashed, although I may be mistaken.

KR,
Vic.

[Victor]

My emboldened passage shows that Mr Charles Earl has a strong personal view of Paul Foot.
Instead of presenting his own view of Foot with the subjective bias it deserves, Mr Earl states it as if it was a matter of objective empirical fact.

Isn't that a contradiction? If the emboldened passage [It should be noted that Foot, the Oxford-educated former editor of Socialist Worker, is not the most reliable of observers, due primarily to his ruthless subjugation of truth to ideology] indicates a strong personal (in other words subjective) opinion, then how can he state it objectively?

KR,
Vic.

[Victor]

Blackhall was adamant that the driver of the car he saw in Redbridge was not Hanratty.
Mr Fogarty-Waul was adamant that the man he saw in the Dorney area on several occasions was Alphon and joined the A6 commitee to protest Hanratty's innocence.
Both biased no doubt, but hey that's life...eh?

Which way are you arguing this now? Identification witnesses are notoriously unreliable, or these two witnesses (along with the Rhyl group) were spot on but VS, Trower and Skillett were typically wrong.

KR,
vic.

[Graham]

Paul Foot

When I was somewhat less world-weary than I am now, back in the sixties, I was an avid reader of Private Eye (still buy it occasionally, but the modern version is too ****-scared of libel actions to be as rivetting as when Richard Ingrams and William Rushton were involved) and usually turned to Paul Foot's column first. He was, without any doubt, a genuinely committed supporter of minority causes, a fighter against injustice, and an outspoken critic of both the Establishment and the British legal system. But he was also, first and foremost, a dedicated and committed member of the SWP, an organisation which even back then I used to laugh at because it really was embarrassingly pathetic. I sometimes got the impression that Paul tried very hard to seperate his politics from his crusades, but he could never quite do it. Not that this means I would ever take anything away from him, because he had significant successes in his struggle against injustice - but the case of James Hanratty was not one of them.

Graham

[RonIpstone]

I sometimes got the impression that Paul tried very hard to seperate his politics from his crusades, but he could never quite do it. Not that this means I would ever take anything away from him, because he had significant successes in his struggle against injustice - but the case of James Hanratty was not one of them.

In that all right thinking people now think that James Hanratty was rightly convicted of murder it must follow that his case was not one of injustice, and Foot's crusade rightly failed to clear Hanratty's name. But even in failure we should acknowledge Foot's success in the Hanratty case in that for 30 years he managed to keep the case in the public eye. How many of us would now know anything of the case of Hanratty if Foot had not written Who Killed Hanratty?

That we are still discussing the case is a tribute to Foot's success. It was not Foot's fault that he backed the wrong horse, and that any doubt as to Hanratty's complicity in the crime was eventually removed at the end of Foot's campaign. I just wish that he would have had the grace to admit defeat, if only for the benefit of Valerie Storie, who for nearly 40 years had to live not only the crippling injury sustained in the attack, but also the uncomfortable fact that the man she sent to the gallows might have been innocent.

[Graham]

Ron,

I think in fairness that doubts about Hanratty's guilt were being raised before Foot published his book. However, these early doubts seemed to be centred upon legal argument regarding the conduct of the trial and its outcome, rather than the basic belief that Hanratty didn't do it. Foot was the first journalist to crystalise doubts that Hanratty had actually carried out the A6 Crime, and certainly when his book was first published he convinced a hell of a lot of people that there'd been a miscarriage of justice and, possibly, a conspiracy. But had Hanratty not been of 'working class stock', then in my opinion Foot wouldn't have wanted to know. One of the oddest unsolved murders of the early 1970's was that of John Cartland, who was killed when on holiday in France with his son Jeremy. Jeremy was persecuted by the French police, who had no other suspect, but because he and his father were comfortable middle-class, Foot didn't want to know.

I have the impression that towards the end of his life, and faced with the inarguable DNA evidence, Foot probably did re-think his attitude regarding the A6 Case, but I don't think he could ever have come round to the conclusion that he was totally wrong.

Still, I always liked the bloke.

Graham

[RonIpstone]

HI Graham,


I think that before Foot's book there were books by Blom-Cooper, Lord Russell and of course Jean Justice. The one by Blom-Cooper was really a legal essay on why things happened in the trial and why certain things did not happen. Of the other two, Lord Russell's book expressed disquiet as to the evidence used to convict Hanratty, and Justice's book asserted Hanratty's innocence and Alphon's guilt with his other conspirators named.

But it is my belief that it was Foot who brought to popular attention the alleged miscarriage of justice, both with his book and with the other campaigning and writing in the popular press that he did.

Foot might have been attracted to the case because of the working class family to which Hanratty belonged, but to describe Hanratty as 'working class' would be stretching it; Hanratty did not work, he was a criminal and belonged to the criminal classes. The other cause célèbre in which Footie got embroiled was the murder of Carl Bridgewater, he wrote Murder at the Farm: who killed Carl Bridgewater? The Bridgewater Four, as the convicted men came to be known, were also career criminals, which might explain why Foot championed their case.

Ron

[simon]

I always found Foot's extreme left-wing stance a bit hard to take, but, to be fair, he also wrote a book called Who Framed Colin Wallace, in which he fought the corner of a man (ex-MI5) who'd been accused of murder and whose political views, as Foot said, were the opposite of his own.

[Tony]

HI Graham,


The other cause célèbre in which Footie got embroiled was the murder of Carl Bridgewater, he wrote Murder at the Farm: who killed Carl Bridgewater? The Bridgewater Four, as the convicted men came to be known, were also career criminals, which might explain why Foot championed their case.

Ron

Ron,

You know full well that that was not the reason Foot wrote his book on the Bridgewater case.

The men were innocent and were eventually released.

Similarly to the A6 case another man was always suspected but when the police have nabbed someone and they have been given life sentences it is easier for the authorities to stick to the status quo.

The case only really became open once more when the foreman of the jury went on News at Ten claiming that he thought the men were indeed innocent.

Tony.