{"id":1516,"date":"2010-04-14T11:49:55","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T10:49:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/?p=1516"},"modified":"2010-04-14T11:51:49","modified_gmt":"2010-04-14T10:51:49","slug":"criminal-evidence-witness-act-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/?p=1516","title":{"rendered":"Criminal Evidence (Witness) Act 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"img alignleft size-full wp-image-1517\" style=\"width:80px;\">\r\n\t<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/old-bailey.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/old-bailey.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"80\" height=\"124\" \/><\/a>\r\n\t<div>Old Bailey<\/div>\r\n<\/div>The <strong>Criminal Evidence (Witness) Act 2008<\/strong> survived its first test when two amateur assassins were jailed for life for murder, last month.  They gunned down a successful wheel clamping firm owner, Charles Butler outside his home.<\/p>\n<p>The case hit complications following a ruling by the Law Lords which restricted anonymous witnesses.  A CCTV system the victim had installed recorded the shooting.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Butler\u2019s wife and stepdaughter offered the men \u00a35,000 to have him killed, claiming he had sexually abused the stepdaughter<\/p>\n<p>Mr Butler remained alive in hospital for nine months before succumbing to his injuries.<\/p>\n<p>Four witnesses had already given evidence from behind screens with their voices distorted, and the ensuing chaos caused the judge to stop the trial.<\/p>\n<p>The legislation rushed through by Justice Secretary Jack Straw reintroduced witness anonymity which enabled a second trial to go ahead, but a deadlocked jury could only agree on convicting Johnson for perverting the course of justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Old Bailey The Criminal Evidence (Witness) Act 2008 survived its first test when two amateur assassins were jailed for life for murder, last month. They gunned down a successful wheel clamping firm owner, Charles Butler outside his home. The case hit complications following a ruling by the Law Lords which restricted anonymous witnesses. A CCTV [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1516"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1519,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions\/1519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}