cps

[loopylou8]

What is it with the cps? in a case 2 weeks ago they dropped a sec 18 to a sec.20 all for this guy to plead guilty, the victim was reluctant to go into court because the statements him and his girlfriend made was full of errors. Of course this was made evident after the plea.
And last week they were quite happy for an innocent man to be sent down on crap statements

[paraffin]

Hi loopylou:

You've made a couple of vague and unsubstantiated statements yourself, if you don't mind me saying?

Without knowing anything about your allegations, I don't really know what you expect any of us to say?

The only certain thing which I would comment on is the fact that plea bargaining which you refer to in your mention of the S18/20 offences is an extremely common practice between prosecution and defence representatives and there are numerous reasons why it happens.

The second fact is that the CPS uses the public purse with which to bring prosecutions and, again, there are many factors to be taken into consideration by the CPS in order to bring justifiable actions to Court and at the same time, in a nutshell, giving best "value for money."

[New Judge]

If the statements were that crappy and error strewn, why did �this guy� plead guilty, regardless of the reduction in charge?

The evidence for both charges would have been the same and by pleading guilty the defendant has accepted the prosecution�s version of events. Presumably if he could have defended a Section 18 charge on the lack of credible evidence, the same line of defence could have been used to defend the Section 20 charge.

So perhaps he was not so innocent after all.

[Barmaid]

Sounds to me like the CPS got a bit of a result. if the victim was unwilling to go to Court (and didn't in fact turn up), there would be no evidence. No evidence = no conviction. Sounds as if both sides made a judgement based on the weaknesses in their own cases.