www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42012064

Former entertainer Rolf Harris has one of 12 indecent assault convictions overturned by Court of Appeal

I see that the overturned conviction is the ludicrous one about him molesting an eight year old at an event that never happened.

The thing is, this lorry driver who gave evidence might have never been in the army, and never left the country as he claimed, but if those things had been true, he STILL could have made it all up, and presumably the conviction have remained?

honey!oh sugar sugar. wrote:
The thing is, this lorry driver who gave evidence might have never been in the army, and never left the country as he claimed, but if those things had been true, he STILL could have made it all up, and presumably the conviction have remained?

Quite likely ... but as the Jury was convinced of his guilt on ALL the other charges, it was more than likely he was guilty of this one too.
Thats simply logic, isn't it?

Moral - Don't be dodgy (otherwise people will assume you are always dodgy).

In The Know wrote:
honey!oh sugar sugar. wrote:
The thing is, this lorry driver who gave evidence might have never been in the army, and never left the country as he claimed, but if those things had been true, he STILL could have made it all up, and presumably the conviction have remained?

Quite likely ... but as the Jury was convinced of his guilt on ALL the other charges, it was more than likely he was guilty of this one too.
Thats simply logic, isn't it?

Moral - Don't be dodgy (otherwise people will assume you are always dodgy).

But it wasn't more likely. It was never going to be more likely, because it was perfectly obvious that the concert in the crummy community centre couldn't have happened, let alone anything else.

But yes, his affair with his daughters friend, however old she was, isn't going to make him very popular. It seems to me that this made the trial unfair.

Jury verdicts depend much them being given the full evidence in a neutral, non prejudicial way. Where children (or former children) are involved, the usual prejudices kick in, based on popular presumption and ignorance. There have been many cases throughout the years where juries have got it wrong and members of a jury, given more time to reflect, have changed their minds. When confronted with the volume of media pressure, it's easier to go along with the crowd.

I have no idea whether Rolf Harris is innocent or guilty. If I was on a jury, my starting point would be that he was innocent, and the prosecution would have to convince me otherwise. Unfortunately, a lot of people think it should be the other way around. In practice, defendants have to prove their innocence. British Law is an oxymoron. The people who run often ignore it's major principals. Sometimes intentionally.

PaulB is correct and ITK is turning into the resident loony.
(I must add Electroconvulsive Therapy to his treatment at the re-education unit)

The fact the jury accepted such a ridiculous claim and the police failed to investigate impartially should worry everyone.

This is a classic result of the awful practice of 'lumping' charges together- it can't be done in Australia and in the US they can easily get separate charges tried separately for a very obvious reason: it's highly prejudicial.

Surprisingly readers of the Mail who usually want the judge hanged as well as the defendant have been quite supportive but some show extraordinary ignorance as they assume the 12 charges meant there were 12 "victims".

Several of the charges relate to his daughter's friend who Rolf had a long time affair with into her 30s - hardly an example of a "pedo" and the jury seemed to ignore the fact she demanded over 40 Grand from Rolf or she would go to police (she admitted it)..and look at the result.

Rolf is yet another victim of Trial By media.

Of course his dwindling "victims" launched a huge compensation claim via the dreaded $later & Gordon but if Rolf fought them in the courts it could well be another way of proving his innocence...and I'm not too sure that isn't why the infamous Ducks woman fled these sort of cases.

and let's not forget the prosecutor in Rolf's case is now under a serious cloud and could be struck off.

The judge in the case was also pretty prejudicial in his comments during the trial.

Particularly in this one charge on which he is found innocent: the judge specifically told the jury the claimant's "memory" of events were sure to be clouded because of the terrible trauma she went through- thus deeming Harris to be guilty already...while castigating Harris for similar loss of memory over the 100s of UK towns he had visited on tours.

hedda wrote:
PaulB is correct and ITK is turning into the resident loony.
(I must add Electroconvulsive Therapy to his treatment at the re-education unit)

The fact the jury accepted such a ridiculous claim and the police failed to investigate impartially should worry everyone.

This is a classic result of the awful practice of 'lumping' charges together- it can't be done in Australia and in the US they can easily get separate charges tried separately for a very obvious reason: it's highly prejudicial.

Surprisingly readers of the Mail who usually want the judge hanged as well as the defendant have been quite supportive but some show extraordinary ignorance as they assume the 12 charges meant there were 12 "victims".

Several of the charges relate to his daughter's friend who Rolf had a long time affair with into her 30s - hardly an example of a "pedo" and the jury seemed to ignore the fact she demanded over 40 Grand from Rolf or she would go to police (she admitted it)..and look at the result.

Rolf is yet another victim of Trial By media.

Of course his dwindling "victims" launched a huge compensation claim via the dreaded $later & Gordon but if Rolf fought them in the courts it could well be another way of proving his innocence...and I'm not too sure that isn't why the infamous Ducks woman fled these sort of cases.


I bet he wishes he had just paid her the forty thousand.
No wonder there is so much blackmail. It was a win either way for the daughter's "friend".

5000 quid each to my 5 false accusers was the going rate 17 years ago; I turned it down without a pause. All statements would have been withdrawn and claims dropped. In the end my main (7 years) false accuser made 80,000 thanks to media. Sold his story to The People and The Sun for 50,000, bought a house, sold it for 80,000. Spent it all on heroin. Isn't British Justice grand?

Jo wrote:
'Youngest victim' of Rolf Harris may have to pay him back Ă‚Â£22,000 in compensation after his conviction for groping her is overturned on appeal

Ok now I'm confused. I thought the quashed conviction was the Cambridge one. How the tapdancing fuck... was that one allowed to stand, given the judges comments and the change in almost every element of the accusation???

JK2006 wrote:
5000 quid each to my 5 false accusers was the going rate 17 years ago

As a budget for... making sure witnesses are *ahem* indisposed due to an accident and can't attend trial (permanently), 25k is very generous. It compares well to what you're reported to have spent on your defence playing by the rules.

If men don't start getting a fair shake, more and more will make the rational choice and circumvent whatever it is that's masquerading as rule of law. If one of my loved ones were accused, I would certainly ensure that there could not be a trial.

In The Know wrote:
honey!oh sugar sugar. wrote:
The thing is, this lorry driver who gave evidence might have never been in the army, and never left the country as he claimed, but if those things had been true, he STILL could have made it all up, and presumably the conviction have remained?

Quite likely ... but as the Jury was convinced of his guilt on ALL the other charges, it was more than likely he was guilty of this one too.
Thats simply logic, isn't it?

Moral - Don't be dodgy (otherwise people will assume you are always dodgy).
Barrister Matthew Scott:

The jury system, indeed much of the legal system, is based on the – I was going to say “premise” but I think I’ll go instead with “comforting hooey,” that jurors (and judges and magistrates too) are able safely to determine who is telling the truth merely by looking and listening. Juries are assumed to be shrewd enough to pick up on an inconsistency here, a suspicious evasion there, a significant mistake somewhere else; they are even entitled, if they like, to take into account the “demeanour” of a witness, whatever that may be (“he looked thoroughly shifty .. her tears looked genuine”). In a multi-complainant case, the assumption is, they can stir up all the allegations to reach a safe conclusion: they are asked to return separate verdicts on each count, but are often entitled, as here, to consider the evidence from one complainant as supporting that of others.

Don’t worry about liars and fantasists, the British (or strictly English and Welsh) justice system is the best in the world and if you’re not telling the truth the jury will find you out.

Assuming that juries are generally able to sniff out a liar is a comforting myth, but even if it is true the fact is that this particular jury wasn’t much good at it. It was bamboozled by the evidence of WR and David James. Moreover, the standard of proof being what it is, we can say that the jury was not just inclined to believe them; it must have been “sure” that the pair were accurate. They may well have been fantasists or mistaken rather than liars, but the fact is that every member of the jury swallowed their untrue evidence without reservation. However good juries might generally be at teasing out fact from fiction, it is inescapable that this particular jury proved itself unable to do just that, at least on this part of the case.

Just as importantly, the jury must also have decided that when Harris said in evidence that he had never been to Leigh Park during the relevant years he was lying, even though we now know that he was telling the truth.
The entire blog post is worth a read: barristerblogger.com/2017/11/19/rolf-harris-given-retrial/