William Roach cleared of charges

VTech

Sky news, just been cleared.

I guess to people here who had convicted him without knowing the facts we can stick the legal finger up at them.

Law is there for a reason, society says we need to allow justice to take place and not condemn people before trial.

Garry H

Amen.

zanelad

When one of the accusers said that she had no actual memory of the assault, but felt it had taken place that her case ever made it to court.

Another changed her story as her accusation were found to be wrong.

MartinGT

Zanelad wrote:

When one of the accusers said that she had no actual memory of the assault, but felt it had taken place that her case ever made it to court.

Another changed her story as her accusation were found to be wrong.

Seriously?

OMG

And this went to court? Jaysus!

Pross

It does make you wonder how much checking is getting done by the CPS before going to court in these 'celebrity' cases. I get the feeling they are reluctant to be accused of having not acted following on from the Saville case.

slowmart

William Roach who believes the sexually abused are paying for crimes of a previous life and sells his story of how many women he has had sex with. Classy and a wonderful human being according to his fellow actors mmmmmmmmmmm :roll:


Having sat through a brief presentation of who was who in a jury trial I found it incredulous and deeply disappointing of the bone questions being asked by my fellow jurors. I found it hard to understand how these people could sit through a trial and provide an informed and unbiased verdict.

Now I consider myself unbiased, no chips on shoulders and broad minded but even I was shocked by my behaviour and thought process during selection.

So you get ushered into the court room, everything formal and serious and in the dock was the accused who I immediately thought looked an evil git. Yep convicted before I was even selected. Being rather disappointed with my perception I told myself to tighten the nut and crack on.

However when the charges were read out I had to stifle a laugh as the accused was a serving copper and involved a police dog called ##### biting someone/ The someone was a car thief. But the pompous way it was stated and the police dogs name made it sound so funny. The trial attracted the tv people and made the local news and I said to my wife, knowing some the jurors the guy would get off even though the event was filmed and it seemed cut and dried. He was found not guilty.

I wasn't selected and haven't been asked back.


Personally I found the whole process depressingly flawed but fascinating. And heres the pinch point for me. In that situation I could not find a copper guilty if the toe rag had sustained injuries during his arrest as I couldn't do the role and I have respect of the individual who does. Which no doubt happens in jury trials, personal perception shaping verdicts rather than the facts.

arran77

This is exactly why allegations like this should never be allowed into the media circus before cases go before the courts because unfortunately Mr Roach will always be tared with these allegations even though they are now proved to be false :roll:

zanelad

Pross wrote:

It does make you wonder how much checking is getting done by the CPS before going to court in these 'celebrity' cases. I get the feeling they are reluctant to be accused of having not acted following on from the Saville case.

The problem is how can you effectively check accusations made such a long time ago. I doubt that if there was anyone else there to acct as a witness.

It's a no win situation as far as I can see. If you were the victim you'd want justice to be done, but if I was the accused I'd be very unhappy to be convicted on such flimsy evidence.

You're damned whatever you do. If you read Jim Davidson's account (and I know many will want Davidson convicted purely because it's him ) his lawyers told him to give every piece of information he had to refute the allegations. When a charge was found to be untrue, such as it happened in the upstairs bar of a theatre which had no bar, then the accuser changed their story and it started all over again. I doubt that such an unreliable witness would be used in other cases.

Paulie W

Dont most rape cases come down to one person's word against another's? It comes down to the coherence of the stories, I guess, and how the jury perceives the accused and the 'victim(s)'.

MartinGT

Paulie W wrote:

Dont most rape cases come down to one person's word against another's? It comes down to the coherence of the stories, I guess, and how the jury perceives the accused and the 'victim(s)'.

and how good your defence is.

Pross

Zanelad wrote:

It's a no win situation as far as I can see. If you were the victim you'd want justice to be done, but if I was the accused I'd be very unhappy to be convicted on such flimsy evidence.

But if (as stated above) the 'victim' can't even recall being assaulted there doesn't seem to be anything on which justice needs to be done.

Pross

Slowmart, I'm not quite sure what your post is getting at. You seem to be suggesting the police officer was on trial because his dog bit a car thief (presumably in the line of duty) and that the jury were somehow incompetent in finding him not guilty? If so, and without hearing any of the evidence, that doesn't seem to be a necessarily unreasonable verdict unless the thief had surrendered and the copper deliberately set the dog on him. What was the charge?

mamba80

VTech wrote:

Sky news, just been cleared.

I guess to people here who had convicted him without knowing the facts we can stick the legal finger up at them.

Law is there for a reason, society says we need to allow justice to take place and not condemn people before trial.

yes jimmy savile had this didn't he? hung drawn and quartered and he was already dead

RideOnTime

Is he 'Bill' with an 'e'. Little 'e'.

antfly

No, he's Roache with an e.

slowmart

Pross wrote:

Slowmart, I'm not quite sure what your post is getting at. You seem to be suggesting the police officer was on trial because his dog bit a car thief (presumably in the line of duty) and that the jury were somehow incompetent in finding him not guilty? If so, and without hearing any of the evidence, that doesn't seem to be a necessarily unreasonable verdict unless the thief had surrendered and the copper deliberately set the dog on him. What was the charge?

The officer was a dog handler who joined a vehicle chase which he had no legal authority to do ( Seriously!!). The van driver crashed the van and the copper allegedly ran the suspect over and then set the police dog on the suspect. This was filmed from the police helicopter and the film made it onto the news after the conclusion of the case. The officer was charged with dangerous driving, two assaults resulting in ABH and attempting to pervert the course of Justice. Not guilty on the charges however the officer was found guilty of careless driving and given nine points and a fine.

As I had spent some time with the jurors I felt there was no way a conviction would be won in this case and that view wasn't based on the evidence before the court. Which is my point.

That said I could be totally wrong and all jurors are all 100% unbiased pillars of the community with no social or political hang ups and weigh the evidence before them in a reasonable and thorough way..........but given some of them can't process a simple 3 minute power point presentation without asking the most bone questions which were quite clearly covered in the presentation does make you wonder.

Coach H

VTech wrote:

Sky news, just been cleared.

I guess to people here who had convicted him without knowing the facts we can stick the legal finger up at them.

Law is there for a reason, society says we need to allow justice to take place and not condemn people before trial.

arran77 wrote:

This is exactly why allegations like this should never be allowed into the media circus before cases go before the courts because unfortunately Mr Roach will always be tared with these allegations even though they are now proved to be false :roll:

Fairly sure he has been found 'Not Guilty' at Law, which (being pedantic) I am also fairly sure does not mean he has been 'cleared', the allegations have not been 'proved to be false', nor has he been proved innocent.

Remember to be found 'Guilty' the jourers had to believe 'beyond a reasonable doubt' that the charges had been proven. Generally I am all for hanging shoplifters but when the testomony is all from events years old, there seems to be a lack of physical evidence and no contemporary investigation seems to have been done even I would be hard pushed to not have a 'reasonable doubt.

Normally if people are really totally innocent, this is established in the investigation and no trial is brought.

That said, if he really had nothing to do with these women then it is terrible that he has been put through these events.

manoirdelourde

"I am also fairly sure does not mean he has been 'cleared', the allegations have not been 'proved to be false', nor has he been proved innocent."
And where in British law does anyone need to prove their innocence?

Coach H

manoirdelourde wrote:

"I am also fairly sure does not mean he has been 'cleared', the allegations have not been 'proved to be false', nor has he been proved innocent."
And where in British law does anyone need to prove their innocence?

I don't think it does and I don't think they do. But plenty of others on here and multiple other social media think thats exactly what has happened.

manoirdelourde

I think most people will understand that there is a big difference in Not Guilty and Proven Innocent.

I am not defending Roache by any means, but if the evidence was poor there was only one verdict that was possible given the 'beyond all reasonable doubt' requirement.

antfly

If you are not guilty then you are cleared and innocent of the charges, end of. From the evidence that has been made public so far it's the only possible verdict here. Not proven is a verdict in Scottish law only, btw.

apreading

If you are found 'not guilty' then you must be considered and treated as innocent - proven or not. Having said that, the unfortunate (if he really didnt do any of these things) outcome is that there will always be a cloud over his name. Hence the serious effort that he and his people are putting into making as much mileage from the verdict as they can. If he and his reputation can ever recover is not known, but he will always be tarred by this in the public eye.

I did read that another of the alleged victims testified that Mike Baldwin had warned her about Bill Roach while she was working on the show, only for it to be shown that Mike Baldwin wasnt working on the show at the time, to which she changed her testimony to say it was someone else who warned her... Coupled with witnesses who couldnt remember anything happenning, the jury really had little choice. If the police had more solid victims than these then they wouldnt have used these as witnesses, so I can only assume that none of the other victims was any more convincing...

Garry H

apreading wrote:

Hence the serious effort that he and his people are putting into making as much mileage from the verdict as they can. If he and his reputation can ever recover is not known, but he will always be tarred by this in the public eye.

His odious views on the matter of rape won't have helped his cause much either...

bdu98252

Given his previously stated views on rape do we think that the individuals brought him to court to teach him a lesson with spurious allegations? Given one lady has no recollection of the incident and one other can't even remember who warned her off Roache. I find it hard to believe that a individual who makes contact with a well known TV star and then possibly has or does not have a sexual relationship would not know the other cast members by face and hence name.

Whilst I may not agree with the mans views I do defend his right to have them. We should be considering protecting the anonymity of all concerned in these trials. It is funny how the snippets of evidence have come out to be a joke but yet we do not see the ladies faces in the papers who are telling these tales to the police. I have not sat through the trial so maybe there was evidence to justify getting the man in court.

I had a mate who was accused of rape by an ex partner only for the police to find out that the dates and times given were patently false as he had good alibis. This lady was found to have lied but was never prosecuted. He was lucky others my not be so lucky. False claims harm justice and therefore women's rights as in the main it is women who are on the receiving end of rape. The drive for 100% conviction rates for sexual offences in the media is nuts.

Garry H

You're confusing him being found not guilty with them being found to have lied

owenlars

Garry H wrote:

You're confusing him being found not guilty with them being found to have lied

There is no such thing in law as 'found to have lied''.

The jury have to be certain beyond all reasonable doubt in order to convict, otherwise it is not guilty. He has been found not guilty, end of.

bianchimoon

I bet DLT is a tad happier this morning, my gut feeling (not that i've taken much interest in any of the celebrity trials) is he'll be found not guilty

antfly

There was a bit of a celeb witch hunt after Saville, DJs and comedians and Corrie stars, it seems that the cps have been a bit too keen to bring charges at times, but how come no pop or rock stars have been arrested? There must be plenty of underage groupies, we all know about Bill Wyman for a start, that would be an open and shut case ? I am sure if he was a disc jockey..

pblakeney

antfly wrote:

There was a bit of a celeb witch hunt after Saville, DJs and comedians and Corrie stars, it seems that the cps have been a bit too keen to bring charges at times, but how come no pop or rock stars have been arrested? There must be plenty of underage groupies, we all know about Bill Wyman for a start, that would be an open and shut case ? I am sure if he was a disc jockey..

The Bill Wyman case is interesting as it would be a an open and shut case, but Mandy Smith does not wish to prosecute.
Can the CPS prosecute without her cooperation?

antfly

They can, but they obviously don't want to. She has to co-operate as a witness.

Garry H

owenlars wrote:

Garry H wrote:

You're confusing him being found not guilty with them being found to have lied

There is no such thing in law as 'found to have lied''.

The jury have to be certain beyond all reasonable doubt in order to convict, otherwise it is not guilty. He has been found not guilty, end of.

My point was that the flip side of Roache being found not guilty isn't that the women made up stories, therefore, their anonymity should remain. I'm well aware of what a "not guilty" verdict means.