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Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take anything of value by force, threat of force, or by use of fear. According to common law, robbery is defined as taking the property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive the person of that property, by means of force or fear; that is, it is a larceny or theft accomplished by an assault. Precise definitions of the offence may vary between jurisdictions. Robbery is differentiated from other forms of theft by its inherently violent nature ; whereas many lesser forms of theft are punished as misdemeanors, robbery is always a felony in jurisdictions that distinguish between the two. Under English law, most forms of theft are triable either way, whereas robbery is triable only on indictment. The word "rob" came via French from Late Latin words of Germanic origin, from Common Germanic raub "theft".
In the English and British tradition, the royal prerogative of mercy is one of the historic royal prerogatives of the British monarch, by which they can grant pardons to convicted persons. The royal prerogative of mercy was originally used to permit the monarch to withdraw, or provide alternatives to death sentences; the alternative of penal transportation to "partes abroade" was used since at least 1617. It is now used to change any sentence or penalty. A royal pardon does not overturn a conviction.
David Harold Eastman is a former public servant from Canberra, Australia. In 1995, he was wrongfully convicted of the murder of Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Colin Winchester and was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. A 2014 judicial inquiry recommended the sentence be quashed and he should be pardoned. On 22 August of the same year, the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory quashed the conviction, released Eastman from prison, and ordered a retrial.
Winston Silcott, a British citizen of Caribbean (Montserrat) parents, was wrongfully convicted in March 1987, as one of the "Tottenham Three", for the murder of PC Keith Blakelock on the night of 6 October 1985 during the Broadwater Farm riot in north London – despite not having been near the scene. The convictions of all three individuals were quashed on 25 November 1991 after scientific tests suggested the men's confessions had been fabricated.
Rough Justice is a British television programme that was broadcast on BBC, and which investigated alleged miscarriages of justice. It was broadcast between 1982 and 2007 and played a role in overturning the convictions of 18 people involved in 13 separate cases where miscarriages of justice had occurred. The programme was similar in aim and approach to The Court of Last Resort, the NBC programme that aired in the United States from 1957–58. It is credited with contributing to the establishment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 1997.
Oscar Joseph Slater was the victim of a miscarriage of justice in Scotland. Wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death, he was freed after almost two decades of hard labour at Scotland’s HM Prison Peterhead through the efforts of multiple journalists, lawyers, and writers, including Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Babes in the Wood Murders were the murders of two nine-year-old girls, Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway, on 9 October 1986, by a 20-year-old local roofer, Russell Bishop in Wild Park, Moulsecoomb, Brighton, Sussex, England. Bishop was tried and acquitted in 1987. The case remained open until 10 December 2018, when Bishop was found guilty of the murders in a second trial. The investigation into the two girls' murders is the largest and longest-running inquiry ever conducted by Sussex Police.
Sam Hallam, from Hoxton, London, is one of the youngest victims of a UK miscarriage of justice after an appeal court quashed his murder conviction in 2012.
Thomas Charles McAnea, also known as Hologram Tam, was a Scottish master counterfeiter, regarded as one of the most skillful in Europe with regard to banknote security holograms.
Robert Brown is a Scottish man who spent 25 years in jail for a crime he did not commit. In January 1977, Annie Walsh was beaten to death in her home in Manchester, Brown signed a confession and was found guilty at trial. He maintained his innocence throughout his prison sentence even going so far as denying himself parole by not admitting to the crime. He was released on appeal in 2002
On the morning of 26 July 2016, a Burmese maid Piang Ngaih Don was found tortured, starved and beaten to death in a flat in Bishan, Singapore.
Alan Hall was convicted of murdering 52 year old Arthur Easton in 1985 in what has been described as one of New Zealand's worst miscarriages of justice. In August 2023, the Government agreed to pay him $5 million in compensation, the largest payout for wrongful conviction in New Zealand history.
On 13 March 1997, at one of the HDB flats in King George's Avenue, Kallang, 53-year-old Sivapackiam Veerappan Rengasamy was discovered dead in her bedroom by her son. Sivapackiam was found to have been stabbed three times in the neck and she died from the wounds. During police investigations, Sivapackiam's tenant Gerardine Andrew, a 36-year-old prostitute, told police that on the day of the murder, she returned to the flat and saw three people attacking her landlady and robbing her, and they threatened her to leave after briefly holding her hostage.
Michael Weir is a British double murderer and serial burglar who was the first person in English legal history to have been convicted of the same crime twice. In 1999, he was jailed for the murder of 78-year-old war veteran Leonard Harris. Weir's conviction was quashed a year later at the Court of Appeal on a technicality, only for him to be re-convicted in 2019 in a 'double jeopardy' case after new evidence was found. Weir was also convicted in 2019 of the murder of 83-year-old Rose Seferian, who was also killed during a burglary five weeks after Harris, which made additional history as the first time a second murder charge was added to a double jeopardy case. Upon Weir's conviction at the Old Bailey in December 2019, judge Justice McGowan told the jury that they had made "legal history".
Donald Banfield was a British man who disappeared from his home in Harrow, London in suspicious circumstances on 11 May 2001. His case is notable for being a rare case in which a murder conviction was secured without a body, and for this conviction being subsequently quashed on the grounds that a joint enterprise conviction in such a case where no body was found was not viable, though the defence themselves remarked that the "likelihood" was that "one or other" of the two suspects in the case had murdered him.
Simon Hall was a British murderer who was the subject of a lengthy campaign by miscarriage of justice activists to overturn his conviction, only for him to go on to confess to the murder he was convicted of. Hall stabbed 79-year-old pensioner Joan Albert to death in her home in Capel St Mary, Suffolk in 2001, and was convicted of her murder two years later. Subsequently, the high-profile miscarriage of justice programme Rough Justice took up his case and aired a programme campaigning for him. Several MPs, Bristol University's 'Innocence Project' campaign group, his mother and his girlfriend Stephanie Hall were also involved in campaigning for him, and the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred his case to the Court of Appeal in 2009. However, the appeal court dismissed the appeal and he subsequently confessed his crime to prison authorities in 2013, before committing suicide in prison in 2014. His case was said to have gravely undermined the claims of many prisoners who claim their innocence and embarrassed miscarriage of justice activists, having proved that they had campaigned for a guilty man.
Life imprisonment is a legal penalty in Singapore. This sentence is applicable for more than forty offences under Singapore law, such as culpable homicide not amounting to murder, attempted murder, kidnapping by ransom, criminal breach of trust by a public servant, voluntarily causing grievous hurt with dangerous weapons, and trafficking of firearms, in addition to caning or a fine for certain offences that warrant life imprisonment.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Rough Justice man returns to jail". BBC News. 24 June 2009. Retrieved 19 August 2022.
- 1 2 3 4 "Rough Justice man kills neighbour". BBC News. 1 September 2008. Retrieved 19 August 2022.
- 1 2 3 4 5 "Killer left victim to bleed to death from 47 injuries". Glasgow Evening Times. 2 September 2008. Retrieved 19 August 2022.
- ↑ "9 years for Glasgow man who attacked neighbour". Glasgow Evening Times. 24 June 2009. Retrieved 19 August 2022.
- ↑ "Man freed after TV probe admits killing neighbour". Daily Record. 2 September 2008. Retrieved 19 August 2022.
- ↑ "Man freed after miscarriage of justice jailed for savage killing". Daily Record. 25 June 2009. Retrieved 19 August 2022.
- 1 2 "Rough Justice: Evidence in Camera". BBC Programme Index. 17 December 1987. Retrieved 19 August 2022.
- ↑ "A nation held its breath... but for Ernest Barrie the roughest of justice was only hours away". The Free Library. 21 June 1998. Retrieved 19 August 2022.