Thursday, June 29, 2006



More on the right to silence

After a week of hysterical coverage, the Herald has finally got around to pointing out that it is not a crime not to speak to the police, and that the right to silence is fundamental to our criminal justice system.

Meanwhile, Labour's Russell Fairbrother appears to believe that effectively representing your clients and advising them of their rights is unethical behaviour, and that the Kahui family's lawyer should be struck off. I'd have thought that the reverse was true, and that a lawyer who failed to advise their clients of something as basic as the right to silence was guilty of gross negligence. But I guess standards are different when there are votes on the line...

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