I'll tell you who is destroying our justice system

When you meet so many people inside who obviously are wrongly convicted, when like me you are serving a life sentence for killing your wife - a murder that some free person out there committed - it is encouraging to hear that Sean Hodgson has been freed by the appeal court.

But in another way it is most disturbing. What about the multitude in here who shouldn't be here?

I like the way that Helen, my wonderful sister, put it in a recent letter. 'It's a very interesting and a very sad case. It was sad to read that people are not generally given parole unless they admit guilt and say sorry,' Helen wrote.

'That scares me. So you would have to lie so you could be freed? You're being punished for being honest.

'Every time a miscarriage of justice is proved it must make people think, which can only help you and others. At least I hope it will.

'It is a rotten system.'

Thanks, Helen. It is.

And note that not one voice has been raised about that fellow's prosecutors. When a huge question mark hangs over cases, wouldn't it be interesting if prosecutors had to explain why they push so hard for convictions.

How could the prosecution have worked on the jury so tenaciously when they knew that they had the wrong man?

When my conviction is shown to be completely wrong, I am going to ask publically for the prosecution to explain themselves.

It's that attitude, that unconscionable twisting of the minds of the jury, that helps to keep the system rotten. I smile when I hear people going on about banker's fees. It's about time they started looking at prosecutors' rewards for utter deception.

Every time they cause a jury to convict an innocent person, they are destroying the system. And what do they get for these 'successful' prosecutions? Praise, and a fortune. If they were genuine humans, they would never be able to sleep.
- Roger Gordon

Links
Sean Hodgson
Roger Gordon's story

Doctor knows best

You may recall that your Blogger has been trying to see the prison doctor. Three years ago they discovered I had diabetes, but they only got around to telling me the other day. Well, they are very busy and one has to remember one's humble station (thanks to a deliberately misled jury).

So at last Prisoner Gordon has been invited to meet the good man. There he was seated at his smart table, a mountain of files at his right hand, glasses on nose, and occasionally quizzing me at the level of the well-bred bridge. Me, like a private before the commander, standing loosely in front of the desk.

'Ah, yes,' he says. 'Gordon, I presume. Look, Gordon, you're new to prison...'

'Not exactly, doctor.'

'Ah, been in before?'

'Never been in trouble before,' I say. 'But the jury was mistaken, not exactly accidentally. '

'When did you come in then?'

'October 2003. Almost six years ago.'

After a little silence, our man says, 'Why have you asked to see me?'

I mention the diabetes. Discovered three years ago. Told about it last month.

'You should have been put on cholesterol control pills,' he said. 'Not because your cholesterol is high...'

'No, it isn't.'

'... but because it is routine when diagnosed with diabetes.'

'So I should have been on the medication for the past three years?'

A prisoner mustn't complain. The poor old taxpayer is picking up all our bills - and presumably the undertaker's when this mob gets things wrong. Someone said it costs 50,000 a year for every prisoner. Makes us feel like bankers.

And thank you, Taxpayer, for another bonus. I now have a machine to monitor my blood sugar levels. I'm very grateful. I am grateful that it is for something I am actually suffering from.

The other day I was called to Healthcare and given new medication. This seemed an extra bonus and a surprise. But when I looked closely at the label, there was someone else's name, in bold 14 point Arial. Tyrone Gordon of this parish. The ingredients looked interesting. Anyway, despite the years in this crime college, I remain basically honest and let the chance to sell the medication pass me by.

'Not me, Guv',' I say in the lingo and hand it back. For a moment, it looks as if I might be put on a charge for insolence. Then, after a few days, I am summoned back for the self-same medication.

'Yours!' the geeza says or commands, and offers it with a defiant look that says hand this back and you're dead.

'Thanks, Guv',' I say again. 'But this is for one Tyrone Gordon. I'm Roger Gordon.'

He's not amused. 'Look, it's for Gordon. There, in black and white. Aren't you Mister Gordon?'

'I'm Roger. This is forTyrone. ' I say and stand back a bit when he looks almost outraged that this mysterious other Gordon and I have first names.

'Well, how do you spell it?'

I tried to think of a variant of 'Gordon.' But I couldn't.

The population of a city behind bars

Doctors know best, of course. I am a mere number among the numbers cramming full the dungeons of England and Wales. (We used to be a nation of shopkeepers. How interesting that we seem to have become a nation of 'criminals'?)

There's me and 82,486 others. The population of a city. Considering that diabetes is a serious condition, it'd be interesting if 82,487 of us suddenly died because of the, well, rather lacking medical organisation.

It just might become a bigger political issue than bankers' bonuses, the economic crisis, the developing situation in Afghanistan, those poor wretches trying to survive in the Iraq we destroyed, and even than the burgeoning new marijuana factories of England.

Roger Gordon
call-this-justice.com