Our undue process

Some American states have a baseball-style law saying “three strikes and you are out”. That means a criminal with two convictions on his record gets a mandatory life sentence if he is convicted again.

I quite like that law, even though it’s hard not to feel sorry for a petty thief who nicks a wallet and gets a life sentence because he nicked two other wallets before. But the spirit of the law is clear: society doesn’t condone career criminals.

British law is different, suggesting that so is British society. We treat our career criminals with avuncular understanding if not sympathy. They may be convicted over and over again but, having served derisory sentences, they go back to pursuing their chosen careers with renewed gusto.

And when a victim, God forbid, harms a burglar, a robber or a car thief, then the tables are turned. The criminal becomes a victim; the victim, a criminal. And if a man defends his property with deadly force, then he is a murderer in the eyes of our law.

This brings me to Neil Charles, 47, described by his fiancée as: “loving, caring and kind and not at all aggressive”. A real prince among men, in other words. Shame about the 66 criminal convictions Charles amassed during his eventful career.

I’ll spell it out for my American readers who may think that’s a typo. Sixty-six. Criminal. Convictions. Not three, not even ten. Sixty-six.

If an American reader lives in one of those baseball states, he’ll cry out: “What the [EXPLETIVE DELETED] was he doing at large?” I must admit I, His Majesty’s loyal if not always uncritical subject, ask the same question.

Then I’d go a step further and say, with utmost conviction, that anything that happened to Mr Charles as he went searching for his 67^th conviction is society’s fault.

That mantra is usually used to exonerate a criminal in court, absolving him of individual responsibility for his actions. In this case, I’d use it to exonerate Charles’s potential victims who took the law in their own hands. After all, the hands of the law were idle.

David King and his son Edward lived in Bury St Edmonds, a quiet Suffolk town. They and their neighbours had been victims of numerous crimes against their homes, cars and other property. Or let me apologise for that cliché and rephrase more precisely.

There is no such thing as crime against property. A crime against property is one against the owner of property. So that new-build estate in Suffolk was inhabited by victims of multiple crimes that the law couldn’t – or dare I say it, wouldn’t – prevent.

And then one night Charles went on the prowl at that estate. It wasn’t a quick in and out job either. For three and a half hours (would you like me to repeat that too?) the career criminal was trying his luck with the door handles of cars and houses. Alas, they were all securely locked.

Mr Charles must have felt despondent. He couldn’t get paid for his night’s work, and not for any lack of trying. Unfair or what? Whatever next? He might have to whip out his trusted crowbar…

That line of thought was interrupted by the Kings who confronted the criminal and stabbed him to death in an ensuing scuffle. You see, according to Richard Kelly KC who prosecuted the Kings at the subsequent trial, they “had harboured for some time angry resentment against those who were thieving locally”.

You don’t say. Angry resentment? Just because their BMW’s wheels had been nicked once or twice? Or their neighbours’ cars stolen? Their houses broken into? Really, there’s no understanding some people, feeling resentful just because they were unsafe in their own homes.

The trial was all about the Kings’ obsession with exotic weapons. Their house was chock a block with knuckledusters, machetes, ninja swords, shotguns (which the father was licensed to own) and daggers, one of which was used to kill the criminal.

The prosecution pointed out the two were obsessed with Charles Bronson’s character in the Death Wish films and were on record saying things like “scum must die”. I’m not going to list all the details – you can look them up yourself if you are interested.

But the verdict was predetermined: life for both, with a 21-year tariff for the father, 19 for the son. Oh well, dura lex, sed lex, as the Romans used to say. The law is strict, but it is the law. If our law says we can’t kill someone committing a crime against us, or indeed harm him in any way, then we must bow our heads in filial obedience.

And yes, it’s quite possible that the Kings are indeed nasty bits of work who overreacted. But, defending David King, Kieran Vaughan KC encapsulated the essence of the whole case neatly: “The reality is that if Mr Charles had not been up to his activities that night, none of us would be here.” 

Civilised societies resort to vigilante justice when they can get no other. My friend, a prison doctor, will tell you that someone with 66 convictions must have committed hundreds of crimes. An average burglar, for example, perpetrates dozens of break-ins before he is convicted.

That means justice isn’t doing its job, but justice has to be done. An Englishman’s home is his castle, and castles must be defended against marauding hordes. One way of doing that is to make sure career criminals like Charles are locked up and the key is thrown away.

The other way is what got the Kings a life sentence. I can’t think of any other way. If the law won’t protect us, we’ll protect ourselves – or meekly submit our lives and property to any interloper who fancies his chances.

The upshot of this situation is ominous. If bad people no longer fear the law, good people will no longer respect it. Sooner or later this will turn a civilised society into a crime-ridden, blood-soaked jungle ruled by mob justice, not law.

This is how the Kings’ case ought to have been covered if journalism is to have any value. Instead, our papers savoured every piece of cold steel in the Kings’ arsenal, every threatening phrase they had ever uttered. As if their verdict would have been any different had they killed Charles with a kitchen knife or a meat mallet.

Whatever their guilt, it’s all society’s fault, M’lud, not Charles Bronson’s. Having judged the Kings, now let’s judge the judges and ultimately ourselves, for we are the society.