In the case of Winston Silcott, the expected response has been far from
forthcoming.Winston Silcott was found guilty of killing Police Constable Keith Blakelock
during the Broadwater Farm Riot, in Tottenham, North London, in 1985. This
verdict was later overturned on appeal.
It is now abundantly clear that neither Silcott nor the other two men charged
with PC Blakelock's horrific murder had been involved at all.
Silcott, serving a life sentence for Blakelock's murder, was awarded 17,000 GBP
after serving four years in prison.
Following further attempts to secure compensation, Silcott was awarded another
50,000 GBP in the summer of 1999.
That would, most imagined, have been the end of the matter, bar the apology
which the police force involved owed him above the financial compensation.
However, Silcott's situation is a little more complicated; he is still serving
time for a separate murder.
This fact has caused a tremendous amount of ill feeling as it became clear that
compensation would be paid to a man convicted of murder.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said that the decision had been taken reluctantly;
the decision to pay had averted costly legal action. The Metropolitan Police
admitted its decision would cause, "Disappointment and distress", to many
people, it would upset the officers involved on the night of the riot and,
most of all, PC Blakelock's widow.
Bob Felder, head of the Metropolitan Police Federation, echoed those sentiments
and said that police officers across the country would feel let down. The Home
Secretary, Jack Straw, speaking from an EU summit in Finland, said he could
understand concerns about the payout.
PC Blakelock's widow, now remarried, Elizabeth Johnson, called the compensation,
"A disgrace", and added that, "It's obscene that he even gets a penny,
let alone 50,000 pounds".
Mrs Johnson and her two sons have decided to sue Silcott. When asked,
"Why ?", their intention appears to be to find who the killer of Keith
Blakelock was as well as to make sure that a convicted murderer didn't receive
his compensation.
And so we find ourselves in a bizarre and incredibly surreal situation.
Silcott is, on the count of murdering Blakelock, entirely innocent. He is
rightly compensated for his false imprisonment and the malicious prosecution
which misleadingly placed the death on his hands, yet the police are doing
their damnedest to judge the man guilty none-the-less.
How can the overturning of a wrongful conviction cause disappointment to
the police officers of this country, or for that matter to anyone else ?
Are they really suggesting that his conviction shouldn't have been overturned ?
That the conviction should have stood because it would upset those officers, and
others, who were determined to get a man falsely imprisoned in the first place
if it is overturned ?
I can understand how many people would, at first, think, "We're paying a
convicted criminal compensation ? Why ?", but the answer is obvious; if a man
is guilty of one crime it does not mean that he is guilty of another, and if
an innocent man is wronged then he should be compensated for that wrong, no
matter what other wrongs he has done.
This is a fundamental aspect of our legal heritage; and it is an important
one which protects us all.
Apparently, it would seem, that the police believe Silcott was, and still is,
guilty of Blakelock's murder and they begrudge the fact that he has escaped
conviction and, to top it all, has now had the audacity to ask for
compensation.
The police do not have the final say in this matter and a much higher authority
has judged Silcott to be innocent in the Blakelock case. The police have no
alternative but to bow down to this higher authority and to act in the way
they have done, and to say what they have, shows how contemptuous they are of
the legal process in this land.
A legal process, which if, by all accounts, they'd followed correctly in the
first place would not have made them guilty of malicious prosecution.
If Silcott, as some saw it, got off on a technicality, because the police
were over zealous in prosecuting Silcott, and were determined that he
was going down for Blakelock's murder no matter what, then the police
themselves have a lot to answer for when it comes to seeing Silcott freed.
If Silcott is, as the Appeal Court decreed, not guilty of Blakelock's murder
then the police are guilty of allowing the true killer to roam the streets
as a free man.
No matter which view one takes, it is the police who have let PC Blakelock, his
widow and all of us down. That they have started a review of who killed
Blakelock, a decade and a half after the crime, does nothing to inspire any
confidence that his killer will be tracked down and brought to justice.
So one would expect PC Blakelock's widow, Mrs Johnson, and her sons to be
upset at the current situation; they are still none the wiser as to who killed
him so violently in a hail of machete slashes.
I can also understand Mrs Johnson, as a victim of a serious crime, being
unhappy that a criminal is about to receive an awful lot of money but I don't
see that there is much that she can do about it; the price of crime is
imprisonment and the price of wrongful imprisonment is compensation.
I find it very hard therefore to understand why Mrs Johnson and her two sons
are now planning on suing Silcott.
For what ?
Silcott has not wronged them in any way; the Appeal Court has clearly stated
that ( by overturning his conviction for PC Blakelock's death ), in simple
terms, they said, "Silcott did not murder PC Blakelock".
Silcott owes nothing to the remaining family although he perhaps has some
sympathy for their position, but such feelings will evaporate away or,
undoubtedly, diminish as they vocalise their intent to pursue him through
the courts.
Nothing will be gained by suing Silcott beyond highlighting that Silcott is
entirely innocent in this affair. Nothing they do or say will affect that
fact.
Suing Silcott will not reveal who killed PC Blakelock.
It is inevitable that an attempt to sue Silcott will fail, the case
being thrown out if it even gets that far. All that will be generated is more
ill feeling and perhaps an award of costs towards Silcott's defence.
If the family wish to vent their anger and frustration, it should be towards
those responsible for the brutal murder of PC Blakelock and they may wish
to vent some anger towards the police who were so intent on securing the
conviction of Silcott, and were so complacent once they had done so, that they
let the real criminals off the hook entirely.
Whilst justice has not been forthcoming for Mrs Johnson and family, it has for
Winston Silcott.
Just because it is an unsatisfactory conclusion from the family's and police's
point of view, it doesn't make it wrong.
What is wrong is the police's continuing inferences, in its reluctance to just
quietly hand over the compensation and also apologise, that Silcott is in
some way responsible for Blakelock's murder.
Leaving the impression that the police are above the law, and have no respect
for the higher legal authorities, even when they have been shown to be guilty
of false imprisonment and malicious prosecution, does nothing to inspire
confidence in their means of pursuing crime.
The lack of an apology to Silcott for their treatment of him, although it may
well grieve them to have to make it shows, some would say, that they have a
complete lack of dignity and does nothing to shake off continued allegations of
racism against them.
