Law -
Justice 2
For
the third time in a decade, one of the biggest
drugs barons Britain has produced, beats criminal
charges of the gravest severity, because a judge
rules that almost none of the Crown's case
against him can be put before a jury. Brian
Charrington, aged 45, a former Middlesbrough car
dealer, has allegedly been taped speaking by
telephone to Det Sgt Ian Weedon, a Cleveland
police officer. According to the prosecution, the
tapes show they had a corrupt relationship, or as
the charge sheet puts it, that they entered a
'conspiracy to cause misconduct in a public
office'.
Ten years earlier, a jury at Newcastle was
deprived of the chance of weighing evidence that
Charrington was one of the main organisers of a
500kg import of cocaine. On that occasion, the
prosecution withdrew the charges, because two
detectives from a squad dedicated to fighting
organised crime announced they would be appearing
as witnesses in Charrington's defence - one of
them Ian Weedon. In 1999, a judge at Bristol
threw out charges arising from the discovery of
four tonnes of cannabis on Charrington's yacht.
In the judge's view, the Customs and Excise men
who boarded the boat under heavy gunfire did so
illegally.
Now, at Leeds, Judge Kerry MacGill says he is
throwing out the taped conversations because of
changes to the law - made years after the
recordings. Five security - vetted detectives up
to the rank of superintendent have been working
on the case - codenamed Operation Teak - since
1996, joined for long periods by up to seven
colleagues. Arresting Charrington has required
many months of intelligence-gathering and costly
surveillance.
Like all the other British police and Customs
teams who have tracked Charrington as a 'target
criminal' for years, they have been wasting their
time. He has been convicted of drugs trafficking
in France, and will have to serve a sentence
there, he faces further charges in Germany. But
in the words of one source close to the
investigation, 'our criminal justice system just
doesn't seem very well-equipped to deal with
experienced, ruthless criminals of this kind'.
Due
to a legal loophole, two out of three cases where
parents or two carers are suspected of murder,
manslaughter or grievous bodily harm involving a
child under ten never go to trial because police
cannot prove which one carried out the crime.
Only 27% result in a successful prosecution,
compared to over 90% for any other form of
homicide. Cumbria police quoted a case where a
six-month-old boy was shaken to death but his
parents escaped prosecution after covering up for
each other, claiming it was a cot death.
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