Roy Greenslade in The Guardian lauds the Current Bun and its lampooning of the Police and the inconsistent, not to say perplexing, no to say asinine, approach it is taking to high profile cases currently.
The piece is quoted in full below.
Thoughts?
——————————————————————
The Sun has registered its outrage and incredulity at the decision by the Metropolitan police not to charge the peer it pictured and filmed appearing to take drugs.
In July, the Sun on Sunday ran photographs, plus footage on its website, that seemingly showed Lord Sewel using a rolled-up banknote to snort white powder, which the newspaper maintained was cocaine.
“Lord Coke”, as the paper termed him in a headline, was shown partying with two women who were said to be prostitutes and, following the exposure, Sewel resigned from the House of Lords, where he was deputy speaker and chair of its privileges and conduct committee.
Two days after the initial story was published, Metropolitan police officers raided Sewel’s flat in London’s Dolphin Square and launched an investigation into the matter.
But the Met issued a statement on Tuesday saying: “Following a review of all the material, including a forensic examination of an address in central London, there is insufficient evidence to proceed with this investigation and the matter is now closed.”
The Sun’s response was clear from its front page headline, “You must be coking”, a full page inside, “How much evidence do you need?” and a leading article, “Police farce”.
“We’ve heard it all now,” said the editorial. “Lord Sewel won’t be charged with drug offences due to a lack of evidence. Lack of evidence?
“He was pictured on our front page snorting cocaine through a rolled-up bank note. If that’s not incriminating, we are stumped as to what is.
“If the Metropolitan Police was uniformly reluctant to go after the rich and famous, we could vaguely understand it. At least it would be consistently useless.
“But the same force takes spectacular punts on other cases only to fall flat on its face and credulously pursues unprovable tales of child abuse and murder with no evidence whatsoever. What a laughing stock it has become under [commissioner] Bernard Hogan-Howe.”
I must say that it is a very surprising turn of events. Even though I thought Sewel suffered at the time from an over-the-top media hue and cry, I could not imagine that he would avoid prosecution.
As the Sun rightly said, just how much evidence did the police require? Or are there things we don’t know that, in such circumstances, we should? For example, what did the two women have to say?
Given the public nature of the incident, it is incumbent on the Met to be more transparent about its reasoning.
What do you think the charge should be, Fin?
How about “Poor colour coordination of feminine undergarments”?
@chiz
I have no opinion on that and would not seek to offer one.
Absurd though it may seem, being photographed with a rolled up banknote up your nose and crouching over a line of white powder is not itself evidence that any crime has been committed. Snorting stuff is not a criminal act until that stuff has been properly identified. Nobody knows whether what Lord Coke was so merrily tooting was cocaine, baking powder or the upended contents of a Barrett’s sherbet fountain. (When the police raided his flat after the Sun’s splash they found nothing illegal.)
The Sun and Guardian can bleat all they like about one law for the rich, but has anyone – rich or poor – ever been successfully prosecuted for possession of a controlled substance without that substance having been seized and analysed to prove that it was indeed what the police suspected it was? I doubt it.
Archie is spot on. Not enough evidence in that photo for a conviction. They investigated further, couldn’t get what they needed, and now they’re backing off.
I fully accept that he was dressed in a bra with semi-naked women friends discussing The Great British Bake Off. Of which, he and his companions are great fans.
Such is his predilection for certain cake stuff that he likes to ingest it nasally. Shouting “Take Me Ma Berry! Take me now!”
It certainly would have been fun to hear him try and explain it.
I bet he’d have maintained it was a Tony Montana role-play thing, a twist on the Max Mosley defence.
Evidence or no evidence, the other issue is whether the Police would ultimately want to devote even more resources to what they would ultimately view as a a trivial possession case. There are far more serious offences than this that they don’t pursue or try and deal by way of ‘advice’ or a caution. Ultimately, I would be more worried about that than whatever happens to Sewel.
“The currant bun”.
The use of such a cutesy phrase to describe this repelling rag makes me want to vomit.
Sorry to offend you
wait a minute. didn’t he just die? i’m so outside the loop.
oh, right.
so who put his pecker in a pig’s mouth?
Kermit?
Peter Piper picked a peer’s pecker;
A peer’s pecker Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peer’s pecker,
Where’s the pig’s head for the pecker Peter Piper picked?
have you seen the latest attempt at a muppet show reboot? jokes about miss piggys pubic hair. fozzie on grindr. really. i hate everything about this age in which we’re living in.
Is that a wind-up, HP?
In homage to NTNOCN, Sewel should have been charged with ‘wearing a loud bra in a built up area’.
Roy Greenslade? He never did anything better than Bedside Manners Are Extra in my book
I’m with Jim on ‘currant bun’. The other, totally inappropriate, simpering, faux-cuddly phrase that makes me shudder is ‘Aunty BBC’. I prefer Orwell’s characterisation- ‘Ministry of Truth’
Equating the BBC with The Scum is so wrong it’s off the scale.
no wind-up. muppet show goes edgy and adult.
Just to clarify, I am not endorsing The Sun’s point of view or Greenslade’s commentary on their view.
I once managed to persuade someone to plead guilty to smuggling heroin between two countries, when we never recovered the drugs. No idea how I managed that.
Sewel could never have been prosecuted for this. Prosecution for a drugs offence requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the drug in question was a specific drug i.e. it isn’t enough to prove that was taking “drugs”. It could have been coke, or speed, or anything else that’s snorted.
The search on his property was ridiculously over the top as well. To break into someone’s home in search of evidence involves some kind of proportionality. You don’t kick down a door to look for evidence of simple possession.
That’s can’t be right. If what you’re saying is correct that would make the person who wrote The Sun’s editorial a card carrying cretin…
I seem to remember Kate Moss being photographed next to white lines of a suspicious-looking substance – she was never convicted of anything. As the law stands, even a semi-competent lawyer could talk their way out of a photograph, as they can claim it was sherbet, a legal high, baking soda, etc.
I agree that it seems bizarre; how many white powders are ingested nasally? What is the likelihood that it isn’t a drug? Where does ‘reasonable doubt’ come into play? The law is strange, but I guess in drug cases physical evidence trumps sensationalist stories.
Just a quick addition for the lawyers amongst us: if the now ex-Lord in question decided to take legal action against the Sun, what chance would he have of winning? If he said, ” how dare you – it was baking powder! You have ruined my reputation!” I’m genuinely interested, as surely the way the law stands, he’d have a decent shot? Or not?
For a criminal case, you need to prove it was a specific drug.
In a libel case, the issue is the subject’s reputation. Clearly he was taking a drug, you just can’t prove which one. So, if he sued, it could only be on the basis that he wasn’t actually taking any drug – he can’t sue on the basis that it wasn’t coke, it was actually speed, as the precise drug doesn’t make any difference to the reputational damage. And alleging that it was just baking powder isn’t going to stand up in court.
There are other drugs that could help him *stand up* in court and other places he seems to frequent.
I’m not a libel lawyer, but my understanding is that if Sewel claimed, the Sun would have to prove the substance was, as they’ve claimed, cocaine. That would be the good news for Sewel.
The bad news would be that the claim would be a veritable invitation to a tabloid newspaper to prove his private life in an attempt to demonstrate cocaine usage. Also, if I recall correctly, the bar for evidence in a libel claim is “balance of probabilities”, rather than “beyond reasonable doubt” – so it’s easier to prove coke use than under criminal charge.
I think escaping prosecution is a “win” here. A libel claim would just be greedy, and the risk/benefit calculation doesn’t stack up. Basically, you’d be very bold to make a defamation claim on something that’s likely to be true.
Sorry, that should have been “investigate his private life”.
My broader point was not whether Sewel is some sort of coke crazed hooker banger masquerading as a sober sided and sensible servant of the public good but how the boys in blue (sorry, another cutesy aphorism) are handling “things” in this and other high profile cases.
Are their eyes fixed firmly on pursuing misdeeds and miscreants or is that steely gaze all too readily diverted to Twitter and Facebook bushfires stoked by media with acres of print and lagoons of broadcast hours to fill?
On the evidence presented here, they are doing a pretty good job of interpreting the law.
and elsewhere?
I dunno… this is the example you gave of inconsistent, perplexing and asinine policing. Do you have others?
yes
The UK news media have already demonstrated that they own our political system. Now they wish to establish ownership of our legal system.
I’m not sure they have demonstrated anything of the sort Mr H.
Looked at another way, it suggests that the UK news media – whatever that may be – has the power to hold the powerful to account.
Cheers Bingo and ratbiter. That’s what I love about this site: you can ask a question and genuinely clever people answer! Thanks for the legal expertise, fellas:
in pub-based conversations I will claim this knowledge as my own (does winking emoticon thingy)!