Seriously?
Just to clarify for everyone, it was Stephanie who asked me to make public announcements on the forums where Simon's case was discussed, that he had been found dead in his cell that morning.
Why don't you twist it some more? - Why don't you twist it to suggest I 'forced' you to make a public statement on the WAP forum for example where Billy Middleton had only a few months before blogged the following:
"What now for MOJs following Simon Hall’s confession?
Published August 11, 2013 | By admin
http://www.wronglyaccusedperson.org.uk/2013/08/mojs-simon-halls-confession/Unsurprisingly, the MOJ community has been damaged with many feeling bitter and betrayed as they stand up for those they believe are innocent. It’s understandable, particularly for those who played no part in the train crash that was the latter stages of his online presence or behind the scenes in some cases too, or the many who tried in vain to stop it. Many people put a lot of time and effort into researching the case, trying to help find the truth in any way they could, and who can blame any of them for feeling they should’ve spent the years on someone/something else instead – that it was a waste of time and effort? They are not to blame for their carefully considered opinions, and shouldn’t be condemned for having the courage and commitment to look beyond the trial verdict when it’s made so incredibly hard find support for doing so. Nor should any other potential MOJ victims be further vilified for their own plights or the people who support them, and the media shouldn’t be criticised for doing what a society with a free press requires that it should – to probe and question an otherwise effectively unaccountable system.
There is worry about other cases being taken seriously in future, and the many who know of someone who was investigated by SIO Roy Lambert they believe is innocent in particular are finding it hard to witness his gloating whether he’s right or not. Change is always disconcerting, and things will certainly be different now, though for some the effects will be deeper and longer lasting than for others.
Simon’s family have dealt with this remarkably well and people shouldn’t be too quick to condemn their continued belief in his innocence, after all it might very well be true. The Ministry of Justice said a confession by a person serving a life sentence would have “no impact” on the minimum tariff they would have to serve before being considered for release. But it knows perfectly well, as does anyone who knows anything about miscarriages of justice, that maintaining innocence does impact on how far beyond the minimum tariff a person would ultimately serve and others have confessed for that specific reason only to go on and challenge their convictions upon release. Simon might well have been progressing better than others through the prison system in that respect despite maintaining innocence, and it very much looked like he was about to join the exceptionally rare few who were released on or close to minimum tariff despite it,
but there is little doubt in my mind that someone sending the parole board an abusive letter over a dispute where he could be reintegrated into society upon release shortly before his confession will have done that progress absolutely no good whatsoever.So what do the MOJ community, the media and other related parties have to do now in the wake of this? In reality despite the damage it has caused far and wide, everyone needs to do the same thing they’ve always had to do –
consider the evidence separate from their emotions and judge it for what it is, present it as it is and not stop looking and questioning everything until the answers have been found as they should have been in the first place – beyond reasonable doubt.
People supporting someone incarcerated for something they believe they haven’t done need to look at how Simon was supported and learn from the mistakes, whether his confession is true or not, because while it’s easy to blame him in isolation for the harm done, if it’s a false confession your loved ones never ever ever need put in the position he was in to end up with and you can’t do that looking only at the 10 letter word confession
and his other perceived option may well have been suicide if he really just couldn’t take it anymore. You need to look at the evidence and all that went on before it and see how wrong it was. The media need do the same before dropping the evidence box and giving too much air space to irrational certainty, they still need to hold accountable the justice system which has a proven track record of getting it wrong and being openly willing to admit that in their view it’s better an innocent person is kept in prison than the system’s “integrity” is affected, otherwise they become no better than the pseudo press found in countries controlled by dictators and there will be nothing to prevent any authority in the country doing whatever it wants regardless of the evidence.
