As Constantly Furious points out here, Paul Clarke’s case hasn’t made the national MSM yet, even though it’s eminently newsworthy in all manner of ways.
Indeed, even though the Sun got first dibs at the story it hasn’t even made that rag so far.*
In fact, in the UK, it’s only made the Surrey paper local to Mr Clarke.
And…er…that seems to be it.
However, the foreign media seems to be making far more of this story. The four reports below all come from the US, apart from the last one which originates in the Republic of Ireland, and their source seems to be the local Surrey paper which first reported the story:
Turning gun in will cost man 5 years
Former British soldier Paul Clarke, 27, found a shotgun in his Surrey, U.K., garden, discarded in a garbage bag. Being a responsible sort, he took it to a police station and handed it over. At which point he was arrested, tried and convicted of possession of a firearm. The jury deliberated all of 20 minutes. “There is no dispute that Mr. Clarke has no defense to this charge,” Judge Christopher Critchlow told the Surrey Mirror. “The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant.” Clarke will be sentenced on Dec. 11 and will get at least five years. At least. According to police, if you find a gun in Surrey, you are supposed to call them. Don’t touch it. Try not to look directly at it. And whatever you do, don’t take it to police. Police admit that, as far as they know, the public has never been instructed as to how to deal with a found firearm. But Clarke is going away for five years. At least.
Veteran Faces Jail Time for Good Deed
A former soldier was convicted on Tuesday for illegal possession of a sawed off shotgun because he turned it in to the local authorities after finding it near his home. “I thought it was my duty to hand it in and get it off the streets,” said Paul Clarke, who was arrested at the police station where he turned over the weapon.
No evidence contradicted the defendant’s testimony that he intended to assist law enforcement officers, and much evidence supported the story. Nonetheless, jurors took only 20 minutes to find Clarke guilty. Why? Because jurors were told that the law under which Clarke was charged was a “strict liability” offense, meaning that Clarke was automatically guilty of illegal possession regardless of his intent. This case is another example of how the erosion of traditional mens rea requirements in the criminal law is leading to the conviction of ordinary citizens.
This Explains Why The British Don’t Carry Guns; Apparently It’s Illegal
Just when you thought that Americans had cornered the market on stupid behavior, a story like this comes along to make you do that pointing-fingers-as-guns gesture with a wink and say, “Nice one, England!” 27-year-old Paul Clarke, a former soldier in the British Army, discovered a discarded firearm in his back yard — a sawed-off shotgun with two cartridges to be exact. Thinking he was doing the right thing, he grabbed it and took it in to his local police station, whereupon he was arrested for possession of a firearm, and taken to trial. He currently awaits sentencing, facing a possibility of a minimum of five years in prison.
So, clear signal to all criminals: toss your weapons into other people’s backyards to get rid of them. Not only will you be disposing of evidence, there’s a chance that someone else might go to jail instead! Bonus!
Is this why the cops in England don’t carry guns? Because, according to the judge: “The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant.” As long as you have a gun on you, you’re guilty. This is Kafka-esque beyond words. This also makes me wonder what the proper way is to get rid of a firearm. Recycle? Compost? Can’t do it. If we’re going by this kind of logic, the proper way is to just kind of wish really hard that the whole thing never happened. I know Paul Clarke is. Good luck with that, buddy.
Soldier faces jail for handing in gun
A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years’ imprisonment for “doing his duty”.
Paul Clarke (27) was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court — after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.
The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five years’ imprisonment for handing in the weapon.
In fact, following a search on Google News for “Paul Clarke” only 6 stories show up – the Surrey ‘original’ and one UK news page, with the remaining three coming from the US and the ROI.
It seems that our national media isn’t at all interested in Mr Clarke.
I wonder why…
*UPDATE:
I got this tweet from Holly Thompson – the reporter who originally covered the Paul Clarke case – and she confirmed that the Sun did in fact publish the story:
h_thompson
@SteveShark Yes it was sourced to them exclusively. Was the page lead on p25 on Thursday – with interview with Paul Clarke
So, it did make the MSM here, but only on page 25 of the Sun and well past their popular ‘tit zone’.
Since then, nada.
Again, I wonder why…
Filed under: Bizarre, Blogs, Current affairs, Media | Tagged: Media, MSM, Paul Clarke, shotgun, Surrey
You found more than I managed. I somehow stumbled onto a thread (8 pages long at that point) on which people were bandying around things along the lines of ‘he shouldn’t have held onto it for a few days’ and suchlike. Obviously these people didn’t want the original story to get in the way of their conjecture.
This is starting to get like Chinese Whispers.
“Thinking he was doing the right thing, he grabbed it and took it in to his local police station ”
No he bloody did not. None of the above mention the delay, none of them mention the phone call. A very strange phone call – initially glossed over in the origianl article, but now Holly Thompson reveals that Mr Clarke merely told the police that he “had something for them” because apparently he did not know the law.
Well, you wouldn’t mention a sawn-off, would you?
Holly Thompson says she was in court for the “whole two days” – Mr Clarke did not give evidence, the jury took twenty minutes to reach a verdict, so what else was said during this time? As in the reports above, omission can completely distort what has happened, and whatever that was, we sure as shit are not being given the whole story.
h_thompson
“Why did they prosecute? This is my guess work but I’m guessing they took his statment as an admission of guilt due to strict liability”
Is she a regular court reporter?
You ask, on Twitter, “Why does the US care more about the #paulclarke case than the UK does?”
Simple: they have a Constitutional amendment (i.e. the 2nd) which guarantees them the ‘right to bear arms’ (own a firearm) – we, the UK, don’t – indeed, we don’t even a have written constitution in which we might wish to insert an amendment.
I was, mentally, composing a reply – but Mr Rob got here first and said exactly what I would have said, so I have just a couple of points to add:
A two day court case does NOT just consist of a presentation of facts by the prosecution, the reading out of Paul Clarke’s statement, a short summing up by the judge and 20 minutes jury time. That would take half a day at best. So what were the other day and a half taken up with?
An interesting comment from ‘Gwadlys Street, The North’ on 16-Nov-2009 15:23 at the bottom of the original press story http://bit.ly/1DiPwi
Scanned the Sun story here
Pam, I’m afraid that link no longer has any comments on it. Perhaps you could give us the gist of it?
Mr Rob, the Chinese Whispers comment is spot on. Although I think it’s fair to say the delay (overnight) could be due to any number of reasons – he may have been busy, drunk, whatever. There are so many plausible explanations.
And many people have queried that he didn’t just phone the police to collect it. I’ll give you a hypothetical scenario just for starters: he could be growing dope at home and may not wish to incriminate himself (in no way am I saying that this is the case, merely an extreme possibility). Whilst that would (again, I’m stressing the ‘would’ because I don’t any more made up stuff getting disseminated) be illegal, there is no reason why he should incriminate himself under such circumstances.
Of course he could also be suffering from some sort of depression and spent the night trying to decide whether or not to blow his brains out. Who knows?
The simple fact is that had he telephoned the police immediately he could still have been prosecuted under exactly the same law as it comes down strict liability.
Thank you Dick. As you say on your blog, the story was fed exclusively to The Sun, but I believe that after a paper has published an exclusive story it is not against press etiquette for others to carry it or follow it up – do correct me if I am wrong.
The article itself adds nothing of value. So, opinions on why the Sun did not run with it as a campaign? Seems right up their street…..
Also, who else would have done what Paul Clarke did? Find the weapon, do not take it in immediately but keep it for a while, do not take it in and hand it in at the desk but make an appointment by phone with a senior officer but not tell him about the weapon, then take it in and put in on a table in front of him.
I am not saying, and have not said, that the police were correct in arresting Paul Clarke, that the CPS were correct in prosecuting him, or that any form of custodial sentence is appropriate in this case.
But I do say most strongly that we are not being told the full story here, and am amazed that so many people seem to think that what is in the original article and the subsequent Sun piece is all there is to it.
BTS
Valid points, especially about not wanting Plod round his house. But don’t you think there is still a strange whiff of grandstanding here, something personal, points being made?
As you say, because of strict liability, a prosecution would always be an odds-on winner; which is precisely why the CPS has a duty to pay proper attention to the other criterion, that of a prosecution being in the public interest.
You’re doing that ‘for a while’ thing there Mr Rob. That was an unsubstantiated claim made by the CPS. It may or may not be true but the only one who will ever know is Mr Clarke.
And I’d personally rather hand it in to someone senior who may at least have had some weapons training.
I appreciate that you haven’t said that the prosecution by the CPS was justified and so I’m not having a crack, I just can’t see that this should be possible in a supposedly enlightened society.
Sorry Mr Rob, you kind of covered my main thoughts whilst I was typing there.
Apologies – computer glitch – but I had meant to agree on the public interest angle. I’m just not sure as to whether that applies in the case of a strict liability charge. Anyone more enlightened than myself..?
BTS, re your request for gist of Gwadlys Street comments:
Essentially, it was a tongue-in-cheek piece, extolling the remarkable ability of Mr Clarke to be in the right place at the right time and do his civic duty; it cited both the gun incident and the previous incident, where he just happened to be sweeping the road to clear it of glass. [ http://bit.ly/rKpjb ] It also mentioned the curiosity of the fact that Mr Clarke took the bag inside his home without checking the contents first and that it was fortunate it didn’t contain a dead animal or chemical contaminants.
As far as the CPS and public interest is concerned, I think we could all cite cases where what appeared to us to be a rock solid case hasn’t reached court due to either it not being in the public interest or because it wasn’t estimated, by the CPS, to have the required % chance of a conviction being obtained. The CPS appear not to spend money for no good reason……….
The jury, made up of 12 Joe/Joanna Publics, sat through the 2 days and decided to convict; I know it’s an absolute offence, but juries HAVE been known to go against the judge previously, in absolute offence cases.
Finally – Merstham seems to be a VERY in interesting area, popular with ex-soldiers: http://bit.ly/vCIdt
BTS
There is a link to the CPS Code of Conduct in the comments section of Steve’s original thread on this. The CPS must consider
1 likelihood of a successful prosecution
2 whether that prosecution is in the public interest.
This is quite independent of whether the offence is subject to the doctrine of Strict Liability or not. In fact, in a case such as this where the offence is so subject, and also carries a minimum sentence, consideration of the public interest becomes even more important. As has been pointed out elsewhere, all people bringing weapons in to the police are technically committing offences – but they are not all prosecuted.
There is no doubt from the sparse reports that we have that the weapon was found and handed in on different days. If the CPS said in the Sun report that this delay was of several days, it would be easy for them to be proved to be lying from the court records, as I believe Mr Clarke’s statement was not contested by the Prosecution – so why would they lie?
Mr Calrke’s solicitor, Lionel Blackman, was on Radio 4 earlier this evening, he said the gun was taken in a day or so later; he also said that it was disclosed to the court that Mr Clarke was previously found in possession of a cattle prod. Overall, Blackman wasn’t foaming at the mouth, was quite restrained. Interesting.
Link to R4 programme, listen in pop-out player and fast forward to relevant part, 45.50 to 49.44 http://bit.ly/UdZoX
Thanks for putting up the link to that, Pam. I’ve just listened to it and it’s by no means made the case any easier to understand.
On reflection, his solicitor was SO restrained that I wonder if a deal has been done and that was the lesser evil. I was surprised from the beginning that he chose to have his statement read out rather than giving evidence in person – a deal would also explain the lack of any questioning of the statement by the prosecution. Or maybe I’m just cynical.
Thank you Pam.
The solicitor says that the court has indicated that prior to sentencing it wishes to test Mr Clarke’s evidence by examination under oath. For some reason this was not reported.
It is not unreasonable to assume that the Prosecution did not challenge Mr Clarke’s statement, as it did not need to do so in order to gain a guilty verdict.
We have yet to be supplied with an obvious reason why the CPS decided it was in the public interest to prosecute.
The solicitor had to be quite circumspect, given the actions of his own client. For example, when talking about handing in firearms, his voice drops a little when talking about the counter at a police station allocated for this purpose – because his client for some reason did not try to hand the gun in at the counter, as previously remarked upon.
That it had been disclosed to the court that Mr Clarke had previously been found in possession of a cattle prod was also for some reason not reported in either paper. Presumably he had been on his way to the police station with it, just as the top just fell off the broom handle he was using to sweep the road when he went to confront the DVLC inspector on another occasion, although this last point is not relevant to this case. The way his solicitor sought to use this as a reason for his interesting approach to handing in the weapon was quite amusing.
BTW I would hate to criticise a solicitor, but when he stated that we should be worried that “Strict Liability can lead to a prosecution” he was not being accurate, unless he has proof that the CPS only decided to prosecute because of the likelihood of a conviction, and had ignored the question of public interest. Otherwise, the fact that Strict Liability applies or does not apply to an offence does not lead to prosecution.
@BTS
BTW the solicitor confirmed that Mr Clarke had waited until the next day to make an appoinment with the senior officer, and that that was scheduled for the following day – so by Mr Clarke’s own admission he did not hand in the gun for two days.
For no reason in particular, can anyone inform us how exactly this case was first “tweeted” by Holly Thompson, and when?
Does anyone know the relationship between the journalists on the Surrey paper and the popular Mr Clarke?
@Pam – that article from January – it would make everything a lot more understandable wouldn’t it?
Mr Rob, Holly Thompson first Tweeted about this case at roughly 10 this morning (16th Nov). Unless she has another Twitter account she’s been quiet before that for nearly 2 months.
Holly’s tweet in full:
I’m the journalist who wrote the #paulclarke story. Wow. What a response. Anyone have any questions just tweet me.
web • 16/11/2009 09:30
Compare and contrast:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23760609-police-told-man-to-walk-two-miles-with-a-loaded-gun.do
ES reports “Police told man to walk two miles with a loaded gun…A man who found a loaded gun linked to a gangland shooting was told by Scotland Yard to carry it across south London to a police station.”
I keep seeing comments that maybe there’s more to this than meets the eye etc, regarding the decision to prosecute and subsequent verdict. All I can say is, “Bollocks.” The prosecution did not submit Bad Character evidence. Any relevant information should have been presented in court, and you can bet your bottom dollar that if it existed, they would have presented it.
Steve, do you know how this story first made it onto the blogosphere – did someone come across the report while reading the Surrey Whateveritis by chance?
On CF’s blog Holly Thompson is quoted as saying
“I’m sorry to disappoint anyone but all the facts are there. We wouldn’t have printed it unless we knew that for certain”
which is bollocks.
That the court (the judge) wishes to examine Mr Clarke’s evidence under oath could mean he wishes to find a reason to call this an exceptional case and avoid the minimum sentence, or it could mean that he, like some of us, finds Mr Clarke’s behaviour very strange and wishes to probe the reasons behind it. Either way, it’s a pretty important fact.
As was something else that was omitted…….it could just be that the MSM journos have had words with their contacts in Plod, the CPS and the court officials, and decided not to touch this one with a …cattle prod?
If Holly Thompson genuinely believes that her report gives the full picture, I rather think that she is nowhere near as good a journalist as Pam Nash would be – and the relevant material has been printed by her own paper…all very strange.
It might still turn out that this is a massive miscarriage of justice, the result of a police vendetta, that Mr Clarke is the victim of an officious and stupid CPS; but perhaps it is time for certain bloggers to stop giving blind credence to a reporter because “she was actually there in court”.
@kiddr
“The prosecution did not submit Bad Character evidence”
How do you know this?
I have been pondering further on this,………..
Suppose, if you would, that the reason that the case lasted for 2 days was due to ‘in camera’ legal arguments (i.e. without the jury present); this would then preclude, one would suppose, a court reporter from reporting on those arguments and presentations.
I’m unable to satisfy myself as to why Holly Thompson didn’t mention the cattle prod in her report, but, conversely, Mr Clarke’s solicitor felt able to mention in it in his R4 interview last night; Holly Thompson passed an NCTJ exam in shorthand at 100wpm in January this year, so it cannot be that she was unable to record her court notes at sufficient speed to keep up with events in the courtroom. The mention of cattle prods can’t, surely, be so common in Surrey courtrooms so as not to merit any allusion in the newspaper article.
Curiouser and curiouser………
I an becoming increasingly interested in the accuracy of the reporting by Holly Thompson, who still seems to be the subject of much praise around the web.
In addition to other omissions and inconsistencies already noted, she replied on Twitter to Jack of Kent that she had been in the court “for the full two days” of the case.
Yet Jack’s lengthy blog follow-up states:
“The court case did not last long. It started late one afternoon, and the verdict was given by the following lunchtime.”
I just would not have described that using the phrase “two full days” – would you? Jack is still full of praise for her though….
@Mr Rob
I, too, was suprised at the fullsome praise accorded to HT on Jack’s blog; he mentioned that she ‘kept a detailed shorthand note’ of the proceedings – but they are of little consequence if the story you write from them has glaring omissions, such as the cattle prod. The two day issue is also interesting.
The sentencing is on, I believe, the 11th December – I have half a mind to go along and watch the proceedings.
One can easily spend a day hanging around at court, waiting for a particular hearing to start, and then again doing follow-up once a case has finished. Court attendance simply does not equate to the length of a hearing when you are there.
If I had actually attended court to follow this case, I probably would have spent two days there too.
Anyone with experience of everyday criminal litigation in our magistrates’ and crown would be likely to concur with my sentiment on this one.
I am skeptical of newspaper reporting of court cases, but in this case I am satisfied that Holly Thompson’s report of what occured in the court room is plausible and it accords with what Mr Clarke’s solicitor also said, independently.
There is no reason why the cattle prod would have been mentioned in this case, and so it was hardly an omission, glaring or otherwise.
One really should not be harsh at all on Holly Thompson. There may be dozens – hundreds – of injustices every working day in the magistrates and crown courts, all of which we are completely unaware.
The only reason we are even chatting about this is because she went along ,rather than do desk-based churnalism, and the only reason we know it is her is because she volunteered to answer questions to the likes of us on Twitter.
Criticising her original story is, for me, the least interesting response to this seeming injustice.
CF and Dick Puddlecote are breaking a new development on this story, btw.
http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.com/2009/11/paulclarke-ramblings.html
http://constantlyfurious.blogspot.com/2009/11/paulclarke-now-thats-interesting.html
Jack, I simply don’t understand why she omitted any mention of the cattle prod; even Clarke’s own solicitor thought it worthy of mention in a short interview on Radio 4. I would have thought that in a local newspaper it would, at the very least, have added some ‘colour’; something that most local newspaper hacks would give their right arm for.
Jack
Holly Thompson has helpfully stated on Twitter that “all the facts” are in her article. Do you agree with this?
Do you feel that the fact that the court expressed the wish to test Mr Clarke’s evidence under oath before sentencing, as stated by his solicitor, should have been included in the artilce?
Is it the case that Mr Clarke “now faces a minimum of five years’ imprisonment” as stated in the article?
You wrote above
“There is no reason why the cattle prod would have been mentioned in this case,”
but Mr Clarke’s own solicitor chose in the interview to mention that the court had been told of Mr Clarke’s previously having been found in posession of a cattle prod. This was not mentioned in the article, or in subsequent tweets by Holly Thompson – do you think that this omission is consistent with reporting the full relevant facts of the case?
If you constructed the time line of events based on the article, would it coincide with that given by Mr Clarke’s solicitor?
Do you believe that a newspaper reporter would only announce themselves on Twitter in order to disseminate the facts of the case to interested inquirers?
Your interpretation of the phrase “the two full days” is something we will have to disagree upon. However, as you yourself wrote that “the verdict was given by the following lunchtime” I don’t think you are in a position to claim that “Anyone with experience of everyday criminal litigation in our magistrates’ and crown would be likely to concur with my sentiment on this one” – do you?
Who is being “harsh” on Holly Thompson? Do you believe that it is “harsh” is expect a journalist to report a case fully, if not in the original article then at least in subsequent comments?
@Pam Nash
I see that CF has now blogged the vigilante story that you linked to on Monday. The “army” connection has not been made yet.
You know, the way people, especially various bloggers, react, their default positions and what they do and do not notice as this unfolds is becoming more interesting than the case itself…
I saw that, too. Dick Puddlecote put a comment on his blog…….and I replied. http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.com/2009/11/paulclarke-ramblings.html
Yes, I saw that too
DP’s scenario just isn’t that logical is it?
On the other hand, if you had been the ex-army leader of a vigilante mob who’d had the riot act read to him by a senior police officer and been told to bring in your idiot mate’s machete and then disband, you might think it a bit of a wheeze to surprise said senior officer by plonking a sawn-off down on his desk as evidence of how effective you were at cleaning up the community – and giving him an unpleasant trouser-moment at the same time. How you came to be in possession of the sawn-off in the first place is a moot point, probably best not probed too deeply in a subsequent court appearance…..
Just saying…