Robert Henderson
Emma West was due to stand trial at Croydon Crown Court for two racially aggravated public order offences arising from her complaint about mass immigration and its effects made on a Croydon tram in November 2011 . The trial has been delayed yet again and she will now (allegedly) stand trial on 10 May.[1]
The authorities are extracting the bodily fluids if they expect the general public to believe there is a legitimate reason for the delay. The 10 May will be the sixth (yes, that is the sixth) trial date Ms West has been given since she was arrested . By 10 May she will have been waiting to be tried for just short of eighteen months. The delay is patently unreasonable.
The latest excuse given for the inordinate delay are “legal reasons”. The only likely reasons are political ones, namely, her trial will challenge to politically correct status quo. This is because unlike virtually everyone else who has been charged with these type of offences she has made it clear she will be pleading NOT GUILTY. The authorities simply do not know what to do with her.
There is an added complication. When the previous re-scheduling happened the charges of assault against two police offices during the investigation of her case were also delayed -they were originally due to be held on 3 March and were re-scheduled for 15 April.[2]
It will be interesting to see if these cases (to be heard in a magistrates’ court) go ahead on the 15 April or are put back yet again. The authorities may have decided they want these cases to be heard before the racially aggravated public order offences. That could be to her disadvantage not just because it would taint her with a criminal conviction before her Crown Court trial, but even more dangerously because a criminal conviction for violence could provide the local social services with grounds for removing or threatening to remove her young son. That might well be used as a lever to persuade her to plead guilty. It is all too easy to imagine the cant the social services could come out with: “If you show remorse, Emma, it may be possible to let you keep your child because it shows willingness to change. But if you stubbornly stick to your not guilty plea we may have to take your son away from you because you are an unfit mother.”
The other possibility is that if the assault charges are heard on 15 April and she is found guilty, she might be sent to prison. This would be very unusual for common assault cases, but the fact that the alleged victims are police officers might give the magistrates grounds for doing so. If that happened her son would probably be taken into care. Whether she would ever get him back is a moot point. This scenario could of course also be used to frighten her in pleading guilty.
