The New York Times' Strange Obsession with English Criminal Law
Clearing up a few misconceptions about English Law courtesy of the New York Times
*TW: Murder, Modern Slavery - I discuss two quite disturbing cases in this piece. If you would rather not know, don’t read this piece*
In the last two weeks the New York Times have published two scathing reviews of two different areas of English criminal law - secondly liability and modern slavery. Both of these articles have been widely shared by people who have not studied English Law, and whilst not a criminal lawyer I think I can be of use in informing the public what these laws actually are, and why the New York Times are wrong about them.
Secondary Liability - The Accusation
The paper refers to what they call joint enterprise, but what they describe is known by lawyers as secondary liability. Effectively, this concept is what is commonly known as being an accessory to the crime: i.e. aiding or abetting it occurring. However, the source of controversy is a second type of secondary liability - parasitic secondary liability.
This occurs where two criminals, let’s call them Matthew and Mark, set out to commit a crime. In the course of committing the planned crime Mark commits another crime. Under this situation Matthew can be charged as an accessory to the second crime if he had foreseen the possibility that Mark may act as he did - even if Matthew did not intend for Mark to commit the second crime.
It is a matter of public policy whether this is a justifiable reason to charge Matthew. I suspect most people would agree it is.
However, the New York Times have reported that this Law no longer exists and was overruled in 2016. Are they right? If so, why are people still being charged with it? Is this just racist Police Officers not knowing the Law?
No, it’s not. The case they refer to did no such thing. It is true that the Law was, correctly (in my opinion at least) significantly narrowed in this case but it was not abolished altogether. Indeed, the judgement lists two occasions explicitly where it will still exist:
where parties agree to carry out a criminal venture, each is liable for acts to which they have expressly or impliedly given their assent
where people come together without agreement, often spontaneously, to commit an offence together, the giving of intentional support by words or deeds, including by supportive presence, is sufficient
So what happened to Giovanni Lawrence?
On the basis of their article it seems that Giovanni Lawrence was an innocent bystander with little to nothing to do with any crime, and unfairly locked up based on no logic. However, a brief read of the sentencing remarks reveals that is not the case.
The prosecution relates to the murder of Rhameo West. In this case, Giovanni Lawrence pursued West’s car. From the window of the car Lawrence was driving another man, Marquis Richards, tried to stab the window of the victims car whilst they were both driving. Once the victims car had stopped after crashing into another car and a tree Lawrence provided back-up by driving his car down side streets so that once his two passengers had stabbed and killed Rhameo West he could assist their escape. For this crime he was sentenced to 20 years and 8 months in prison.
Despite never touching the knife or having no apparent motive, there is overwhelming evidence of the intentions of Lawrence, and they were to aid and abet the murder of Rhameo West - a 16 year old boy killed in broad daylight.
I do not question whether this Law is abused on occassion, and there aren’t occassions when the Courts are over-zealous in their application of it. Nor do I argue that there is not racism in our judicial system - the results of the Lammy Report indicates that such a claim would be manifestly untrue.
However, the New York Times repeatedly mislead the reader in their piece and purposefully misrepresented the facts to present a misleading view of what this Law is. Thus failing in their most basic duties as journalists.
Modern Slavery
The second area of Law that the New York Times have chosen to attack is the Modern Slavery Act 2015. A much celebrated piece of legislation that aimed to specifically address how slavery operates today, as well as consolidating some older legislation. Sounds great, right? Wrong - if you ask the New York Times that is.
So, what is this? Under s1 of the Modern Slavery Act someone commits an offence is they hold another person in slavery or servitude, and knows, or ought to know, that they are in slavery or servitude. I can’’t see any obvious grounds for misinterpretation, but let’s see what they argue.
To the paper, the ,Law is disproportionately attacking low level drug dealers - and from this group, mostly young black men, who are otherwise harmless people doing nothing wrong. They evidence this with the example of Glodi Wabelua.
So, what did this “low-level drug dealer” do that constitutes modern slavery. He ran a drug gang that recruited children and vulnerable adults with diminished capacity to sell crack cocaine for him. All of these recruits were groomed, housed in unsafe housing owned by addicts in debt to him, and would forcibly have drugs stashed in his victims bodies to traffick them around the country without being detected.
When sent to Portsmouth to sell the crack cocaine they were not allowed to return until everything had been sold under threat of violence. When one victim aimed to leave the job, they were stripped naked had a gun put in their mouth. The facts do not present an image of a low level dealer. This was an extremely exploitative, and evil enterprise taking advantage of vulnerable people without providing them the liberty to leave.
If this is not slavery, then I do not know what is. For these crimes Wabelua only was sentenced to prison for 3.5 years. He is now out and complaining to the New York Times about the plight of having a parole officer. It is hard to sympathise with this person, and I find it strange that the New York Times is expecting us to (without describing the facts of his case at all).
So what’s going on here?
To be quite honest I’m not sure. The New York Times has a history of poor journalism but to produce two stories about violent criminals doing clearly heinous crimes and using that to try and allege fundamental racism in the British Courts is simply ludicrous and is taking their readers intelligence for granted.
I do not deny there are problems in our Court system. But as journalists they have a responsibility to correctly and honestly report the whole facts and any trade-offs that might be occurring. They have failed to do so in both of these pieces.