Tragic little Mikaeel Kular. It’s an awful tale of a beautiful little boy, a desperate search and, finally, the saddest of endings.
Along with the rest of the world, I watched the story unfold adding my hope to the groundswell of wishes to see him again. Safe.
Painfully, it was not to be.
Now his mother Rosdeep has been charged with his murder and attempting to defeat the ends of justice.
Now there’s a process to go through, a trial, evidence. It takes time.
However, already on social media sites it seems she’s guilty. People are calling for her life imprisonment or, even, the death penalty. One even suggests she should be tortured. They denounce her as “evil”, “disgusting” and “absolute scum”. They boom on about who should and shouldn’t be allowed to have children and what they’d like to do with her, given the opportunity. And that’s before you get to the racist nonsense…
This is trial by Twitter and it needs to stop.
If a jury finds that Rosdeep killed Mikaeel, then we can call her a murderer and the courts will decide on her punishment. And only then.
We live in a mature and civilised society that has a long-established and successful system that tests the evidence and forces a case to be proven. In the main, it means that criminals are punished and justice done.
What we don’t do is decide on someone’s guilt on the basis of a few news stories, some blurry photos and a bundle of prejudice. Neither do we kill or torture people.
But this isn’t just about the ignorant baying for blood, it’s worse than that. Tweets and posts could actually harm the case and derail the whole legal process. Bunging something up on Twitter isn’t the same has telling your mates in the pub or bending the ear of your hairdresser.
It’s also why the accused’s face is sometimes pixelated – in case you were wondering – not some arbitrary and sinister form of censorship.
Innocent until proven guilty – it’s an important principle and one that must be supported, whatever you feel about what happened here… or what you think happened.
The best thing we can do for Mikaeel now is protect the system that will bring him justice.
So very well said, I totally agree. It's a proven fact that individuals that are mostly passive people put in a crowd can all encourage each other into hysteria. Social media is today's crowd which seems to give everyone a voice for opinions that are not always based on facts or expertise and often so damaging to the actual case in hand as you say. Thank you for using your voice wisely!
Couldn't agree more, Ellen,
As ever you've nailed what any decent-minded person will be thinking.
However, what's the solution?
When I wrote this blog (https://scottdouglas.wordpress.com/2007/11/18/) and this follow up (http://scottdouglas.wordpress.com/tag/contempt-of-court-act/) in 2007 the Contempt of Court act was already looking less than fit for purpose.
Indeed, Twitter was a tiny network of tech geeks and less than 18 months old. It was a full year before I even joined Twitter.
People are now free to express their opinions on social media. That includes their thoughts on the guilt or otherwise of any accused person.
That freedom is a good thing and I believe that our mature society should be able to find jurors who can filter out that noise without having to pretend they've never previously heard or read anything vaguely prejudicial about the case.
On the other hand, the racist bile, hate-filled invecitive and other horrible nonsense we see across social netowrks has little to do with the court case or the right to a fair trial.
Indeed, ex footballer Stan Collymore is being widely reported across the media today calling for legal changes to see criminal action taken against Twitter trolls and abusers.
What we need isn't some heavy-handed law to preserve and outdated notion of what's required for a fair trial (we could easily ditch juries for that).
We actually need a much better and clearer system of preventing and punishing the kind of online abuse that wouldn't be tolerated on any street in the country.
Finding that balance is about as easy as me condensing this into a 140 character tweet 🙂
Thanks for your kind comment. You're totally right about the mob leading to hysteria.
Scott you're right. The Contempt of Court Act really isn't up to the job and is in dire need of an overhaul. I don't see how it's possible to protect potential jurors from seeing something that would sway their decision in high profile cases. Is it enough that they start the case with an open mind? Agree – some other system of ensuring an unbiased decision might be needed.
And, yes, you and Collymore are right, trolls and abusers need the book thrown at them (and for that we need a better book).