Karen Buckley
I have thought for a long time that it was unseemly, if not distasteful, for members of the police force to stand on the steps of a court following a conviction and congratulate themselves on having brought the accused person to justice. Furthermore, I cringe when they go on to comment about the personality of the person found guilty. They are usually described as evil or conniving or intrinsically bad. Police officers are not paid for their opinions.
Then the public, who usually have done most to put the accused person in the dock, are given a condescending pat on the back for their vigilance and co-operation and for helping the police to do their job. Most people guilty of a crime are arrested either after they give themselves up or if they are reported to the police by a member of the public.
The police seldom have to track down anyone sought in a murder case – or any other case for that matter. Even in the case of the widely publicised murder of Irish nurse Karen Buckley in Glasgow, the murderer was caught after the police were tipped off.
When is someone going to have the courage to stand up and tell the police that it is their job to catch criminals, the Crown’s job to prosecute, and the judge and jury’s job to convict and sentence or acquit the accused? It is not the role of the police to comment on the personalities of accused persons or the depth of depravity to which they have sunk in doing what they have been convicted of doing. They appear to think that it is, however, and they are encouraged by the salivating media who stand there with notebooks and pens at the ready and their microphones poised to record their every word.
If it is okay for the police to comment in lurid terms when they have a conviction then why is it not okay, when someone is found not guilty, for them to apologise to the accused and their relatives and to explain to us in detail how they got it all wrong? Let’s leave it to the judges to comment when they convict or acquit. Let’s leave it to the expert witnesses, the psychiatrists and medical people to comment on the personality of the person in the dock.
I am pleased to note that I was not the only person dismayed by the decision of the police officer in charge of the Karen Buckley murder to disclose intimate details of the relationship between this young woman and her attacker [the allegation being that they had had consensual sex]. I am now additionally astonished to discover that the information was ‘a tissue of lies’ which had come from the murderer himself – a man with a previous conviction for fraud and an acquittal against his name on a charge of rape. I am no criminologist but I cannot for a moment see any reason whatever for the police having made that statement to the media at the time they did.
The recently elevated judge, Lady Rae, who deferred sentence on Karen’s murderer until 8 September, told him: ‘This crime is a very shocking and disturbing case. You killed a young woman who was a stranger to you in what appears to be a motiveless, senseless, brutal attack’. She added: ‘What you did after her killing, including telling the police a tissue of lies – some of which went into the public domain – would I have no doubt have caused the family increased distress. All of that displays the actions of a man who is callous and calculated’. I am looking forward to Lady Rae expanding on her statement about the information that went into the public domain.
The police should in future leave it to the judges to do their job, which is to make comments such as this. They would be the first to complain if lawyers or journalists were to tread on their patch and make inquiries they believe should be left to them and them alone.
By Bill Heaney | September 2015