Protestors and Peers

Parliament Protest
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Parliament Protest promotes peaceful resistance to the curtailment of free assembly and free speech, in the SOCPA Designated Area around Parliament Square and beyond.
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Peers protest at curbs on protest

26th January 2007

Baroness Williams earlier led a Lib Dem protest outside Parliament calling for the end of restrictions on protests.
A controversial 2005 law created an "exclusion zone" around Parliament, within which police must be given notice before a protest is held.

Lib Dem peer Baroness Miller has brought forward a Bill to abolish the sections which impose the restrictions. During the demo outside the House of Lords the peers read out names of people arrested under the Act.

The protest came as peers prepared to debate repealing parts of the Serious and Organised Crime and Police Act. A Liberal Democrat spokesman confirmed they had registered with police to hold the demonstration. "It comes to something when Parliamentarians can't even protest outside their own House without say so from the police," he said.

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What is happening in Parliament Square?
January 2007

Brian & Co are still in the Square. Since the police's middle of the night raid on 23 May 2006 in which most of Brian's display and possessions were removed, the presence in Parliament Square is smaller but not diminished in spirit.

Brian and others have been in court on charges relating to the restrictions on protest around Parliament under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005.

On 23 November Brian's supporters gathered to mark his 2000th day and night for peace and justice. This is an historic achievement in the face of such opposition by the government but it is also of great sadness that such an action has been necessary at all.

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Near Deaths Scrutiny

Legislation Update: near death experiences in police custody
18th March 2008

It is all very well investigating deaths in custody, but in recent years the focus has moved also to investigating near misses as a way of identifying systemic improvements that might prevent deaths in the future.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has produced a report, Near Misses in Police Custody, based on a study in London in collaboration with forensic medical examiners.

The results, the IPCC says, underline the importance of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (Pace). Pace has come under attack in recent months for involving too much paperwork for police officers and the Government is undertaking a full-scale review of its provisions.

However, pursuant to Pace are produced codes of practice that provide detailed guidance to police officers. Code C is especially relevant in police stations because it deals with the treatment and care of prisoners in custody.

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INQUEST condemnation

INQUEST condemns Government proposals for "secret" death in custody inquests


INQUEST today condemned government proposals in the Counter-Terrorism Bill 2008 which give unprecedented powers to the Secretary of State to intervene in death in custody inquests where issues of state intelligence are involved.

Clause 64 of the Bill gives the Secretary of State extraordinary powers to issue certificates at his or her discretion to hold “secret” inquests, without juries, in any case in which the Secretary of State believes that material will be revealed contrary to the public interest.

The discretion given to the Secretary of State is broad and is to include reasons of national security, international relations or any other public interest. In these circumstances it is proposed inquests are to be conducted at least partly in private, with government vetted coroners and government vetted counsel overseeing the “sensitive material”. This would exclude bereaved families and their legal representatives - as well as the public at large - from the process.

INQUEST has written today to Bridget Prentice MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State responsible for coroners to express its extreme concern that this measure has been introduced without any consultation. This is despite the organisation and members of its Lawyers Group being in regular and ongoing dialogue with Ministers and officials about the operation of the inquest system and other proposed reforms.

The family of Azelle Rodney, shot seven times by police in a pre-planned surveillance operation in April 2005, have already been told that their case will be subject to the new measures.

Daniel Machover, solicitor for Susan Alexander, Azelle Rodney’s mother said: “These proposals mean that Ministers and those responsible for intelligence gathering will never be held properly to account for the validity of their tactics. It is a fiasco, bearing no resemblance to a fair system of justice. Presented with the problem of what to do with sensitive material that is relevant to the circumstances of how and why a person was killed by a state agent, the government proposes to remove the vital democratic accountable layer of a jury and hide away from the bereaved family crucial evidence about the death. My client, Susan Alexander, is very distressed that having expected a new law which would finally enable her to see and question the key evidence that led to the police shooting of her son, she will end up being worse off than before.”

Helen Shaw, co-director of INQUEST said: “We have serious concerns about these far reaching proposals which have been introduced without consultation and have wide reaching consequences. The public will find it difficult to have confidence that these coroner-only inquests, with key evidence being suppressed, can investigate contentious deaths involving state agents independently.”

Notes to editors:

The Counter Terrorism Bill 2008 received its first reading in the House of Commons on 24 January 2008.

The proposals contained in Clauses 64-67 of the Bill regarding inquests arose from legal challenges bought on behalf of the family of Azelle Rodney over admissibility of intelligence evidence.

INQUEST is the only non-governmental organisation in England and Wales that works directly with the families of those who die in custody. It provides an independent free legal and advice service to bereaved people on inquest procedures and their rights in the coroner’s courts.

Further Information
www.inquest.org.uk

Helen Shaw, Co-Director INQUEST
office 020 7263 1111
mobile 07976 787 840

Daniel Machover, Hickman and Rose Solicitors
office 020 7700 2211
mobile 07773 341 096

New Jersey to become first state in four decades to abolish death penalty

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Friday December 14, 2007
All credits: The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/

For the first time in more than 40 years a US state is to abolish the death penalty. A 44-36 vote in the New Jersey legislature to abolish executions in the state yesterday followed approval for the measure in the state senate on Monday.

The bill now goes to the desk of New Jersey governor, Jon Corzine, a Democrat who has spoken in favour of abolishing the death penalty. The measure will be replaced with a sentence of life without parole.

Article continues
It comes as the debate over the application of the death penalty intensifies in the US. While 1,099 people have been executed since the supreme court reauthorised the death penalty in 1976, the rate of executions has slowed in recent years as concerns have been raised about whether the procedure most frequently used, lethal injection, violates the constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment".

Executions have been on hold across the US while the supreme court considers the issue. New Jersey will become the 14th state without a death penalty; 36 states and the federal government and the US military retain it.

In 1999, 98 people were executed in the US. By last year, that number had fallen to 53, the lowest since 1996. In 2006, the US ranked sixth in the world for executions behind China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and Sudan.

A New Jersey state commission found in January that the death penalty was expensive to administer, had no deterrent effect and carried the risk of killing an innocent person. It was, said the commission, "inconsistent with evolving standards of decency".

"We would be better served as a society by having a clear and certain outcome for individuals that carry out heinous crimes," Corzine said. "That's what I think we're doing, making certain that individuals would be imprisoned without any possibility of parole."

No one has been executed in New Jersey since 1963. The state reinstated the measure in 1982, but since 2004 it has been barred from carrying out executions after a court ruling that it should review its procedures.

Eight men on death row will now be spared. Among them is Jesse Timmendequas, who was convicted of killing seven-year-old Megan Kanka in 1994. That case gave rise to Megan's law, which requires authorities to notify the public of sex offenders living in their communities.

News Digest (July 07)

Woman died after one police shot

A woman shot by a police marksman after a stand-off in a Kent market town died from a single gunshot wound to the chest, an inquest has been told. Ann Sanderson, 37, was shot after police received reports of a woman armed with a gun in Sevenoaks in the early hours of Monday.

DNA of under-10s on government database
The DNA fingerprints of more than 100 children aged under 10 are stored on a government database despite their being younger than the age of criminal responsibility, it emerged today.

Prison suicides up to two a week as jail numbers soar
Suicides in prisons have risen to two a week, with 43 so far this year as overcrowding in England and Wales bites more deeply, the chief inspector of prisons told MP's last night.

Family sues MoD over Iraq death
The family of an Iraqi man who was beaten to death while in British military custody are suing the Ministry of Defence. Lawyers for the children and father of Baha Mousa, say they are looking for "hundreds of thousands of pounds" in damages.

Ministers lose manslaughter vote
The government has been defeated in the Lords over plans to exclude prisons from its Corporate Manslaughter Bill. Peers voted by a majority of 91 to reinstate their amendment saying the offence of corporate manslaughter must apply to people who die in custody.

Yarl's Wood overhaul calls

Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, has published a report criticising the continued detention of children at Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre.

The report was based on an announced inspection from 13-16 February 2006 designed to ascertain whether recommendations made following the full inspection in the previous year had been adhered to.
Yet despite identifying areas of improvement, the report remains critical of the detention of children in the centre and labels this issue as the 'most important concern' facing Yarl's Wood.

Continuing to fail children

Following the full inspection of Yarl's Wood in 2005, Anne Owers emphasised the 'weaknesses in child protection and child welfare', which included alarm over the length that some children were remaining in detention.

This concern re-surfaces in the 2006 report, which concludes that at the time of inspection 'children were still being detained for too long', indicating that Yarl's Wood had failed to meet one of the main recommendations made by Owers in the previous year, which stated that: 'The detention of children should be exceptional and for no more than a few days.'

Indeed, the report highlights that 'High numbers of children were still being detained at the centre' and details that: 'between May and October 2005, 897 children had been admitted to Yarl's Wood. 165 of these children were held for between four and seven days, 120 for between eight and fourteen days, 55 for between 15 and 21 days, 24 for between 29 and 56 days, and three for over 57 days.'

At the time of the unannounced inspection, one child had remained in detention for 112 days. The report concludes that 'the detention of [these] children could not be considered an exceptional measure, used for only a few days'.

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New law to be run up the flagpole

Little did they realise it at the time, but the thousands of people who draped England flags from their homes during the World Cup were breaking the law, an anomaly the government has now pledged to address.

Under current planning regulations, it is illegal to fly any national flag without permission from the local council, unless it is hung on "a single vertical flagstaff".

As part of a shake-up of planning rules connected to advertising, the government is issuing new advice to councils allowing any national flag to be flown without permission, however it is displayed.

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