It took years to work out what cases she [Farak] had worked on. How is this possible? ibid. defense guy
They [the state] argue they [victims] can all be retrialled one at a time. How to Fix a Drugs Scandal IV, news report
There were thousands and thousands of criminal cases whose convictions are probably invalid. ibid. defence dude
She [Farak] was definitely a drug addict. And my natural tendency is to really sympathise with drug addicts, and feel like they are suffering. ibid.
Judge Carey issued his decision – the Carey Report – it vindicated Luke Ryan and found that Anne Kaczmarek and Kris Foster had committed ‘a fraud upon the court’. ibid.
Judge Carey dismissed the charges against Rolando Panate ‘with prejudice’. After 5 years in custody, Rolando was released. Rolando was among the last defendants to be released from prison because of tainted drug evidence from the Amherst lab. ibid. caption
But there were still tens of thousands of people with felony convictions on their records based on drug evidence tested by Sonja Farak or Annie Dookhan. ibid.
The largest mass dismissal of criminal convictions in US history. ibid.
No period in Chicago’s history was more violent than the years of prohibition. Call Northside 777 1948 starring Jimmy Stewart & Richard Conte & Lee J Cobb & Helen Walker & Betty Garde & Howard Smith & Moroni Olsen & J Kerrigan & John McIntire & Paul Harvey et al, director Henry Hathaway, opening remarks
Shocking new evidence about a national scandal: we reveal how the Post Office ruined hundreds of lives. The Post Office knew its computer system could make money go missing but they accused staff of stealing anyway. And postmasters were jailed because bosses kept the truth from coming out. Panorama: Scandal at the Post Office, BBC 2021
One of biggest miscarriages of justice in British history: the Post Office prosecuted hundreds of postmasters over missing money. ibid.
557 Postmasters took the Post Office to court … The Postmasters were proved right. ibid.
‘It amounts to the 21st century equivalent of maintaining that the Earth is flat.’ ibid. Bates v Post Office
On 15th August 1998 Omagh in Northern Island was hit by one of the worst single atrocities ever to hit the province. A five-hundred pound bomb exploded in a small market town on a busy Saturday afternoon. Twenty-nine people and two unborn children were murdered when an incorrect warning was given. Crimes that Shook Britain s3e2: Omagh Bombing, CI 2012
The Real IRA had claimed responsibility but no individuals were held accountable. ibid.
Why had such crucial evidence not been shared? ibid.
250 victims have been injured. ibid.
One man Colin Murphy is on trial. ibid.
The Ombudsman also found some of the Special Branch officers uncooperative. ibid.
Five years later his [Murphy] sentence would be quashed altogether. ibid.
The families sued those responsible. ibid.
Not one criminal conviction has yet been successful. ibid.
The past record of the British police in catching and honestly convicting the real perpetrators of bombings in the UK is appalling. Instead, in numerous cases it has been shown that police deliberately tampered with evidence, forced confessions out of suspects and withheld information that would clear them ... The Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, the Maguire Seven, Judith Ward, Danny McNamee … Ludicrous Diversion: 7/7 Bombings
In the most extraordinary and draconian expansion of their powers ever seen in the UK, the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act came into power in 2005. The provision you may have heard about in the media was Section 132: the restriction to demonstrate within one kilometre of Parliament Square, obviously an essential tool in fighting organised crime. The first conviction under the Act was in December 2005 after Mia Evans was arrested for reading out the names of British soldiers killed in the Iraq War under the Cenotaph without permission. Since when was peaceful protest a serious organised crime? But the more important Section of the Act, and one that was barely mentioned by the mainstream media, was the changes made to the powers of arrest used by the police. From New Year’s Day 2006 the police can now arrest you for any offence at all, including dropping litter or not wearing a seatbelt. Indeed, according to the actual wording of the Act, the police can even arrest you ‘to enable the name of the person to be ascertained’. ibid.
Hillsborough: Britain’s worst sporting disaster: 97 men, women and children died, hundreds injured, thousands are traumatised. 15-year-old schoolboy Kevin Williams was one of the youngest children killed. His mother Anne was to go on to be one of the most prominent individuals of the Hillsborough campaign. This ordinary housewife spent 25 years fighting the English establishment. In one of the longest fights in British legal history the whole of Merseyside joined Anne and other grieving families to expose a monumental miscarriage of justice. 97 were unlawfully killed but not one conviction for killing them. The Real Anne: Unfinished Business ***** ITV 2022
But as the city and families mourn, the police rush to deflect blame saying drunk and ticketless Liverpool fans forcing their way into the stadium caused the tragedy. ibid.
Astonishingly, the coroner’s ruling meant that the quality of the emergency response was barely interrogated. Was it good enough? Could more lives have been saved? ibid.
For the first time an official report confirmed police statements had been changed to deflect blame. ibid.
Finally, the families have the truth. But they now want the Accidental Death verdicts quashed. They want justice. ibid.
With the 1991 Coroner’s Inquest overturned and a fresh Inquest ordered, a criminal investigation begins. And the Independent Police Complaints Commission examine the allegations of a cover-up. But it’s a bitter-sweet victory. Anne is dying from cancer. ibid.
In the late ’90s, 16 children were removed from their parents and never came back. There ensued 16 years of controversial trials also known to the press as ‘the Devils of Lower Modena’. Veleno: The Town of Lost Children, captions, Sky Documentaries 2022
A paedophile ring organised parties and took pictures. ibid. television news
In 2015 journalist Pablo Trincia stumbled on the case and after years of investigations, he produces the podcast Veleno. ibid. caption
Satanic rituals inside graveyards: the adults were sentenced to dozens of years of jail and never saw their children again. ibid.
‘I was blindfolded when they did those things. They had masks. They wore the mask of a devil and the robe of a monk.’ Veleno: The Town of Lost Children II, girl
It was really strange that a little girl in another department with another colleague was telling and describing similar scenarios. ibid. therapist
Following the seven convictions in the first trial in early 1998 social services were informed of new allegations of child sexual abuse. ibid. commentary
If social workers could do what they wanted, then the threat to your children felt like the breath on your neck of a ferocious beast chasing you. ibid. mother
In the following months, investigations continued at full speed. In a protected place and without the knowledge of their families the children participated in a series of filmed meetings with the therapists appointed by the judge for the preliminary investigation. ibid. commentary
There was confidence in the community that this was a judicial error. So this community voiced its conviction. ibid.
What pained me most was to know they were in the hands of scum. Those people were scum. Veleno: The Town of Lost Children III, mother
According to the prosecution, Don Giorgio is the leading figure of the group of alleged paedophiles. ibid.
I don’t know why they are accusing me. I do not even know the children. ibid. Don Giorgio
I felt the therapists were more powerful than the magistrates. Can this be a fair trial? I would say no. ibid. woman
The police never noticed anything. In this process there was talk of ritual murders. No child’s body was ever found, not a trace of blood. There was talk of unearthed caskets. Not a square centimetre of unearthed soil was ever found. ibid. Don Giorgio’s lawyer
All the defendants were convicted including for the charges of ritual cemetery abuse. ibid.
June 9th 2010: Convicted in the first degree, acquitted on appeal overturned sentence for two parents from Modena accused of abusing their four children. ibid. television news