Lady Justice is blind, they say, but to some it must seem as if she has double-vision. Thursday’s paper contained two stories about criminal cases in which there also had been non-penal proceedings. One concerned a police officer who
was given a suspended prison sentence of 12 months for illegal arms possession. However, the Council of Appeal in civil service cases had earlier reversed a decision of a lower court to dismiss him from the Police Force.
It was even argued during the recent criminal case that a conviction could – again – lead to his dismissal. But due to the conditional nature of the punishment he reportedly is allowed to return to the Force, albeit with a two-year probationary period.
The second article involved a man accused of embezzling from his employer to the tune of NAf. 272,000. This suspect denied the charges, but already had been ordered to pay the money back in a civil case.
The latter ruling should not have any influence on the current penal case, as the two proceedings are, of course, completely separate, but for laymen it must be a little hard to understand how one court could see the same act much differently from the other.
Something similar occurred with, for example, the infamous O.J. Simpson murder trial in the US. He originally was found not guilty, yet sentenced to pay damages to the victim’s family in a lawsuit.
A way to prevent this apparent contradiction might be to wait until the criminal case has been completed before entertaining civil proceedings on such matters. However, in practice this would take too long and in a certain sense violate the rights of the plaintiffs, whose interests may be disproportionately compromised by a long delay.
Attorneys are obviously used to all this and probably don’t see an issue, but to the common man it can be a bit confusing at times. One also could argue that this is precisely one of the reasons why people need lawyers in the first place.
