That Absolutely Amazing Woman

[MrsJackRackham]

I've just read about the woman who gave evidence against the killer of Olivia Pratt-Korbel. What a fucking brave and phenomenal woman. She will have to go into witness protection and leave her whole life behind but she knew it was the right thing to do. And she gave the defence lawyer a mouthful as well by the sounds of it.
I could actually cry thinking about her.

Posted too soon.
Sorted one way or another because any reprisals against this brave lady has the possibility of blowing up even more things in the criminal underworld, which none of them want.

At the end of the day Thomas Cashman was a stupid twat who bought it all on himself. He should have realised that his actions could & did end up killing someone innocent.
Hence him being done for murder due to transferred malice.

I also hope this shows dealing cannabis is never a victimless crime .

So many people think cops should be out there catching "real criminals "

We'll suck this up and get real .

People rarely want to associate their recreational drugs with criminality or acknowledge their own culpability in violent crime,safeguarding and exploitation. people esp the middle classes want to deny or ignore the obvious link between OC and drugs. They don’t want to think of the dirty stuff

Firstly, for all the people complaining about the thread being derailed, you do realise the OP disappeared immediately the thread was opened about 36 hours ago, right? Although I'm sure they may be lurking somewhere, copying and pasting comments for an article somewhere.

But i would like to say how fantastically proud and thankful we should be for a woman like the witness to come forward and risk her land totally change her life in order to secure a conviction. Can't imagine what her life will be like in the future, how frightened, alone and isolated she will feel. As a woman, I celebrate everything she stands for. Yes, she might not always have made good choices about who she shared her bed with or she associated it with but remember, she didn't care about bringing the police into the picture or how, with one phone call, her life would be disrupted forever. Sad we can't give these type of people medals instead of having to hide them away from threatening scumbags

Yes op posted once that was it,Subsequent post about responsibility & role barrister were actually pretty intersting
Brief interlude were we all got told off for woman baiting & woman bitching. Told we were all getting a bit too Queen B …
Then she flounced

thats how threads go, they’re maintained by those who post and read and respond. Like a real life conversation, digression occurs. It’s not necessarily wrong just depends on who is contributing

The ‘absolutely amazing woman’ here is this poor child’s mother, who had to drag herself into court to relive the horror of what that murdering scumbag did, just to get a bit of justice.

What she must have gone through, and be going through, is beyond horrific.
My thoughts to her, and her entire family.

This really.
I'm not sure she had much choice as the people who care about keeping quiet knew she knew and she was always going to be a risk to them.
Hideous situation for anyone to be in regardless.

I agree .

But this IS the reality. Just a cannabis dealer right ?

Leave them alone
It's only plants

That's what gets comments on our police fb pages. Go and catch some real criminals . Blah blah blah .

This is the reality of drug dealing and organised crime groups that deal those poor little plants .

Time people actually realised .
A 9 year old child was murdered for those innocent little plants . I do t suppose anyone is going to actually make that connection though .

I've worked in this area for almost 15 years. People do need to wake up .
Me ? I'd legalise it . It would wipe the black market out overnight . But the government is too chicken shit to act positively and always leans to the masses .

Well here is the reality . It's not nice is it ?

As a born and bred scouser, you're whole 'we don't grass' shit is a load of shit. You'll be saying stuff like snitches get stitches next. There are people all over the world who would 'grass' up a neighbour for a minor incident and just as many who wouldn't grass up a child murderer. So please don't tar liverpool with some stupid 'we're all gangsters' deep down crap. We get enough undeserved and unwarranted bad press already without people like you perpetuating it.
And pray tell, how did your first post sound, if not really reasonable, but at least like it came from a normal-ish person living in 2023 and then morph onto some kind of Dickensian badly worded script? Half of your words were not used in context and a lot of your sentences did not make sense. You have no grasp of the English language, of how the legal system works or how valuable both prosecution and defence barristers'work is.

That said, I am deeply sorry you went through what you went through and I'm glad the twat got convicted for what he did to you. I hope you're accessing all the support open to you to help with the aftermath of such an atrocity

Fair and robust representation is tye bedrock of a fair justice system. No matter how rotten. Not only to avoid endless appeals but also to avoid (more) innocent people going to prison. if we say they should not vigorously defend those that are guilty, how do we know who these are? where do we draw the line? if they are ineffective counsel for most evil and guilty they will be equally ineffective foe those that are truly innocent

Have to say I agree with this. The use of flowery language became bizarre. I do agree in a small way that sometimes the justice system leans a bit too far towards advantaging the charged person.
I am always sad to hear of women being asked about the length of their skirt, why they were out late , children being asked about their understanding of sexual things etc.
There really needs to be some kind of update of the law that forbids defence barristers asking these types of questions. Would be difficult though,

Yet you accuse me of using perjorative and prosaic terms and then say I "flounce".

A hypocrite and a bully, I'd say. Proud of yourself? Enjoy "maintaining" . . . . . or maybe "man-taining" the threads you're on.

So sad, the damage you do.

An understanding so rudimentary that's it doesn't include the "cab rank rule". I recommend not posting about things that you do not understand, you make yourself look ignorant and annoy everyone else.

www.mglegal.co.uk/legal-news/what-is-the-cab-rank-rule/

The worst possible outcome is an innocent person being convicted, not a victim seeing her perp walk free. Defence barristers exist to make sure that only the guilty are jailed. In doing so, they reduce the number of appeals. When a conviction is quashed on appeal, even in murder cases the investigation is rarely reopened because the length of time that has passed makes it too hard to investigate, meaning that the perp is never found. Defence barristers should be proud of their work keeping the innocent out of jail and making sure that guilt is properly proved of those in jail.

it's their literal job to defend their client and, if they did it badly, their client could appeal the verdict.

What a barrister may "strongly suspect" is irrelevant to how they do their job. Only the JURY can decide the guilt or non-guilt of a defendant. If a perp walks, it's because of lack of conclusive evidence (as happened in the case I was a juror on) or because the prosecution has failed to properly present the facts to the jury.

A defence barrister sabotaging their client's defence because they thought the client did it would be equivalent to a police officer planting or destroying evidence because they thought a suspect did it. Surely you can now see how that's not acceptable in our justice system?

The thread has been derailed to the point where you can barely see comments responding to the OP. How annoying

Is she brave though? Or is she saving her own skin?

even the most violent criminals for the most part think child murderers are abhorrent, and would think nothing of serving a bit of justice.

the fact she was sleeping with him makes her guilty by association in the eyes of those types. So what better way to ensure her safety than to give evidence in exchange for a new identity.

had he not killed that little girl she would have continued to sleep with him. And there’s no way she didn’t know.

She was dating a married, drug dealer and known hitman. She clearly wasn't bothered about his being married or that his drug dealing would have ruined other peoples lives and families. It was only that he bought the shit on her doorstep that she was bothered about. She put herself first and had some moral compass that a child being killed was her limit.

I'm not saying she wasn't brave to speak out, still many in her position wouldn't have but she's not the angel you are making her out to be. I hope she fares well in witness protection and builds a good life.

Thanks for clarifying! I e not kept up to date with the case, it's just too awful.

But the legal system doesn't work does it? Barristers in the UK do not merely cross examine. They often assassinate the character of defendants, rape victims in particular, because they want to win. Their professional identity and their lifestyle relies on winning. Most barristers know the system is not working and chose to be part of it because they benefit from it. That's a choice. As is the adversarial (bullying) tone of many of the formulaic arguments being trotted out on this thread. I'm sorry you went through what you did hotsince82.

💐

Massively brave. Having a no strings affair with someone who is a dealer is a million miles away from actively covering up for a child killer like his real partner did. She wasnt living day to day on the proceeds of his crime. Hard disagree that she would have been treated just the same as him. Let's face it, loads of people in that world knew what he had done and weren't forming an orderly queue to either report him to the police or deal with him themselves in some other way.

This woman had this horrific situation literally dropped on her in her sleep. It must have been terrifying for her her to hear what she did, then add the ramifications of knowing what shopping him would mean. And yet she did. Many, many wouldn't have, knowing she would literally have to give up her entire life as she knows it, and always live looking over her shoulder. What she has done is incredibly brave and I hope the new life she is given is a significantly better one.

Like it or not, the world is full of people who have had affairs. She wasn't the one in a relationship. He was. She wasn't picking a life partner so not her job to screen and police whatever he was up to outside of her bedroom.

If she ever sees this thread, and I hope she does, then she should know she is a hero in my eyes, and I've no doubt is made up of the stuff needed to start again and do great things in this world

I think it’s high time defence advocacy was renamed. The purpose of the defendant’s barrister is to test the prosecution case to ensure it’s sound and the conviction is safe. Part of that is relaying their client’s defence, which in very large part if not entirely will have been handed to them in their brief.

A large proportion are poachers as well as gamekeepers so if defence counsel aren’t treated fairly and with respect it attracts the dregs of the profession and results in a worse system for all of us. Lower quality prosecutions, longer trials, more appeals, more criminals back on the street at greater expenses.

They work within a wider system though. Instead of just getting angry at barristers that test evidence, get angry at police that fail to proactively investigate or gather evidence poorly, labs that delay or contaminate evidence gathering, a government that has brought the court service to its knees, and dare I say it, people that take a bizarre pride in not being “a grass”. According to @HotSince82 it’s fine if your neighbours kids have “a bit of green”. Where do they buy it from? Men like Thomas Cashman.

Are you broken? Have you landed from the 18th century? Are you delusional that you might perhaps be a character out of a Dickens novel?

You’re back! Yes you self evidently flounced.
The damage I do?yes I fear you will never recover from my diatribe