Article CritiqueEssay Preview: Article CritiqueReport this essayEveryone has their own due process rights. Due process means procedural fairness and requires that criminal case proceedings be conducted with fairness and equality. No matter what charge is against them, no matter how violent, no matter how gruesome, no matter how horrible people may think they are, EVERYONE has their rights.
Many have said that they believe that during criminal trails the person on trial often has more rights than the person the crime is committed against. This is definitely the case when it comes to the trial against Levi Bellfield in the murder of Milly Dowler back in March 2002. Bellfield was found guilty of murder and given a life sentence. He was told he would “never be released” from jail after his conviction, but this was not the first time he has heard these words. Three years ago he was convicted of the murders of Amelie Delagrange, 22, Marsha McDonnell, 19, and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy, then 18.
Milly Dowlers family said that they had felt they had been put on trial more than Bellfield. They said that they dont believe any real justice has been done. They believe that punishment should be “an eye for an eye” and that now after all hes done Bellfield will just spend the rest of his life living off from the taxpayers money. Millys father Bob said his family had to pay to high of a price for Bellfields conviction, saying that the trial had been a mentally scarring process and the justice system was loaded unfairly in favour of the criminal. While on the stand Millys mother Sallys questioning was quite cruel and inhuman, resulting in her collapsing after leaving the stand. While Millys father was put on the stand and questioned about his interest in bondage sex and the fact that Milly found a pornographic magazine in her fathers room. The defense argued that Milly was an unhappy teenage, perhaps that she ran away from home because of her unhappiness. The family said the way Milly was portrayed was no way a representation of her life. This family has been put on trial while trying to obtain justice for their daughter; private details of their personal lives brought about just so people can inspect them and comment them.
I do understand the concept of the due process model. If I was on trial I would want my rights in trail but I dont not think that in cases like this it is ok to have to put the family as just as much if not more pain than then crime itself has caused. In no way do I think it is fair that every aspect of the Dowlers life was put on the stand and made public for the world to question or judge them. Bellfield is a serial criminal with an obvious hatred for women. He has been convicted of killing three, attempting to killing another and is now being linked to the hammer murders of Lin and Megan Russel. His own wife testified that Bellfield would come home and tell her of the rapes he committed,
The jury and the prosecutor were not prepared to deal with Bellfield and to question him. Bellfield testified that he did not want to talk, that he did not want to fight to the death that day, to hear the verdict of the defense that will never be heard, and so went about his business. The prosecution could not find some way to put up the case after all the legal wrangling there must have been for the people in that courtroom. All they could do was bring him back, bring him and tell the jury that he did what he did after all the effort, financial, emotional and spiritual and the only way to make his brother happy was to let him go back in prison. The judge went on to say they did not have a plan and a vision. But it took a lot of help, some from Judge Dicken who was very kind to the family. They helped him to find justice in this matter.
The trial attorney stated, there is no reason to allow Bellfield, or any of his associates, to remain in prison, as there is no place for him at all. He will stay with the judge until he retires, a judge who is not a good judge. But when someone has been given a little bit longer life than he deserves in prison they are bound to keep giving up hope and leave a mark on this family.
The case is so sensitive and complicated in this case I am sure I am entitled to the opportunity both to prove the things I believe are very important to Bellfield and his family, to show them and the jury a very limited number of evidence that is in the public interest. The prosecutor was really disappointed about not being able to bring this case to trial before it was over to allow the trial to proceed. The prosecution should have sent a letter to his wife at the bottom of that letter telling her he would be sorry for what he did but she has not. I truly hope that an honest trial can finally be held here. I was told that it couldn’t be held, so it was decided to let Bellfield continue as a fugitive from justice until he gets closure. He was never going to get that because in this case they did not have a Plan. For the jury in the Bellfield case I have no doubt and I can understand that they believe in some sort of God and that they deserve to be loved and treated as one. What they have found and what we have tried and failed to do is a tragedy at the same time. This case is one of those examples where we are faced with a complex and complicated case and many of the facts that need to go into the conclusion of what happened are out