Losing Your Home, Crawford Style

[Burnaby49]

In the US at least, not only do we not have juries at the appeals level, ever, parties are not in almost all cases allowed to introduce evidence on appeal. An appeal is not a retrial of the original case, it is in effect a trial of the fairness of the trial. Also, it is very common for appeals in the USA to be decided totally based upon the written motion, the court often feeling no need to hear any oral argument at all.

I had just assumed the UK was like this. If it is, even remotely the way your courts work, Tom is more screwed than he even knows...

Our system doesn't have juries either and I can't see how an appeals court could work using them. The function of an appeals court is not to review the verdict, it is to review the hearing and judgment for mistakes in law and mistakes in the understanding of the facts. Errors in law are reviewed on a correctness standard, errors of facts on a palpable and obvious error standard which is very hard to reverse. An error in the trial judge's charges to the jury, where the judge instructs the jury on the law (which the jury is strictly ordered to follow) can result in a verdict being quashed or changed. As the Federal Court of Appeal in Canada often phrases it in a successful appeal they are giving the verdict the trial judge should have given had he interpreted the law or facts correctly.

A jury can't review law for correctness. They don't know the law, they are told it. They are really there to review the facts then determine if the facts resulted in a violation of the law as the law has been given to them by the judge. That's why I said in the Porisky discussion regarding his appeal;

The only possible avenue for appeal that I can see is to contest the judge's charges to the jury, the instructions regarding law that they had to follow while making their deliberations. They (Porisky and Gould) might appeal on the basis that the judge did not allow them to argue mistake in law (that they tried to comply with the law but misunderstood it) or to explain the Paradigm theory to the jurors. Both arguments are losers but he has to come up with something if he plans to actually try and work through the appeals system.

viewtopic.php?f=50&t=10485&start=40

[Hercule Parrot]

VICTORY!!! Tom Won, A finding of Guilty (Meanig a definitive ruling he doesn't own the house any more), the imposition of costs, a suspended 6 month sentence, and a restraining order banning from ever returning to Fearn Chase, or from making any contact with the new owners, or their son. 100% VICTORY, anyway you spin it

From the comments in the local paper -



Whoever it was, behave yourself....

[NYGman]

So, question, if the appeal goes forward, and is heard by a Judge, what does he expect to happen. He already stated he didn't want to win his case, but if he wins on appeal, what good will that do. I know the likelihood of an appeal succeeding is lower than Zero, but humor me.

Are there any outstanding question of Fact that need to be reviewed? [No]
Are there any issues in Law that the lower could could have got wrong? [No]

Even if he were to succeed, would it not go back to the lower court for reconsideration, and even if a trivial mistake occurred, he will still lose. Even if he wins after the appeal, so what, how does that help him one Iota? He said he didn't want a win in the lower court anyway. I don't see how he can have his cake and eat it too.

So posit, there was a mistake, maybe the judge erred in the law, even if sent back, will the outcome change? Let's say there isn't enough to convict after the appeal, what does that show? It isn't a ruling that he owned the home, so didn't commit the crime. I am sure the court took judicial notice of the land registry, as to who owned the property, and as a criminal court, it isn't their job to question that, I would think....

[littleFred]

Tom and Amanda have been clear: a not-guilty verdict would have taken them nowhere. They wanted a guilty verdict so they could appeal it.

Then what? The same argument, I suppose. They will want another guilty verdict, so they can appeal to a yet higher authority. Via the Supreme Court and Europe to God, perhaps.

I think they will get their wish, that Tom will retain his criminal status. If, perchance, he was ever declared not guilty he would simply do something even more criminal.

Is there such a thing as "vexatious criminality"?

[Normal Wisdom]

So, question, if the appeal goes forward, and is heard by a Judge, what does he expect to happen. He already stated he didn't want to win his case, but if he wins on appeal, what good will that do. I know the likelihood of an appeal succeeding is lower than Zero, but humor me.

Are there any outstanding question of Fact that need to be reviewed? [No]
Are there any issues in Law that the lower could could have got wrong? [No]

Even if he were to succeed, would it not go back to the lower court for reconsideration, and even if a trivial mistake occurred, he will still lose. Even if he wins after the appeal, so what, how does that help him one Iota? He said he didn't want a win in the lower court anyway. I don't see how he can have his cake and eat it too.

So posit, there was a mistake, maybe the judge erred in the law, even if sent back, will the outcome change? Let's say there isn't enough to convict after the appeal, what does that show? It isn't a ruling that he owned the home, so didn't commit the crime. I am sure the court took judicial notice of the land registry, as to who owned the property, and as a criminal court, it isn't their job to question that, I would think....

Tom has long believed that if he could only get in front of a jury they would assuredly pronounce that he has been right all along and he still owns the house (and probably instruct the police to arrest everyone that has been concerned with the case to date). He was unsuccessful in that aim with his little bit of criminal damage but was encouraged that the judge clearly recognised the unsatisfactory nature of the case. Reluctantly, he has accepted that an appeal won't be heard in front of a jury either but clings to the belief that a more senior court will be willing to pronounce more forcefully on the fraud to which he has been obviously subjected and he will be yet another step closer to moving back to Fearne Chase.

[notorial dissent]

What I'm wondering is how they are going to fund their little exercise in futility. The transcript is going to cost them a pretty penny and then the costs of doing the actual appeal, which will end up with the same result.

[Burnaby49]

Tom and Amanda have been clear: a not-guilty verdict would have taken them nowhere. They wanted a guilty verdict so they could appeal it.

Then what? The same argument, I suppose. They will want another guilty verdict, so they can appeal to a yet higher authority. Via the Supreme Court and Europe to God, perhaps.

I think they will get their wish, that Tom will retain his criminal status. If, perchance, he was ever declared not guilty he would simply do something even more criminal.

Is there such a thing as "vexatious criminality"?

There certainly is in both England and Canada. We call them Dangerous offenders and they can, if the court accepts that designation, be tossed in jail for an indeterminate period regardless of the sentencing range of whatever they are being tried for. But the bar is very high and Tom is too old and tired to get enough offenses under his belt to meet the stringent requirements.

In Canada and England and Wales, certain convicted persons may be designated as dangerous offenders and subject to a longer, or indefinite, term of preventive detention in order to protect the public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangerous_offender

[PeanutGallery]

Tom's plan, which seems to be to lose and then keep losing, is the stuff of legal fantasy. Nobody (well nobody sensible) believes in losing your way to victory or advocating it as a legal strategy. The issue Tom is going to face is firstly going to be getting permission to appeal, even if he clears that hurdle he's going to need to do what is factually impossible.

The offence which is made out under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 is :

Code: Select all

(1) A person who without lawful excuse destroys or damages any property belonging to another intending to destroy or damage any such property or being reckless as to whether any such property would be destroyed or damaged shall be guilty of an offence.

In order for Tom to have been found guilty of this, the court was convinced beyond reasonable doubt that Tom, being a person, had no permission or any other reason to destroy and damage the roof of the Bungalow at Fearn Chase which the court is absolutely certain belongs to another.

Tom cannot win the appeal without overturning a decision made in the civil courts (and even then I still wouldn't think he had good prospects (as at the time of the offence Fearn Chase did belong to another)) and he can't overturn that decision in the criminal courts because that venue is neither interested in looking at the civil decision nor capable of changing it.

I also do take issue with Tom saying that he was planning to lose, because I believe it to be a lie. Tom wanted to win and get his house back. That was why he made the lonely protest and why he plead not guilty. Tom's plan was to have the eviction reviewed in a criminal court, where he hoped the criminal behaviour would come to light, and when the court did look at the facts it found Tom to have acted in the manner of a common criminal.

[noblepa]

So now they are aware that they won't get a jury. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when the penny dropped.

From ETFOTB

Di Gregg
Brilliant. Hoped for result. Now trial by jury of his peers. At last some hope for real justice.

Amanda Pike
No not a jury they are denying him that but 2 magisrraights and 1 high court judge all together x

Di Gregg
Oh no. How do they justify denying him his right to a trial by jury? I thought that was the whole idea.
Rob Metcalfe

It's no wonder we all get screwed over with a justice system that is so blatantly corrupt.......oh you can't have a jury of normal people because they're far too likely to be just as disghusted as we all are with so called justice........so they determine that your fate can be decided by hand picked judges who , as you've experienced more than your fair share of, have been told to give a verdict that quite clearly has been determined before you even get to court and any evidence has been seen.
Tom you are a great man to put yourself through this for the sake of many others.
To all the trolls, judges, court staff,bank staff, bailifs and police ......a cast of thousands......who are witness to this blatant corruption......you are no better than Hitlers brown shirts.......following orders is no excuse whatsoever and if you carry on turning your back the situation will only get worse and at some point affect your family.

I am an American, and I am not a lawyer, so I am not an expert in UK law by any means.

However, in the US, it is my understanding that there is NEVER a jury for an appeal. This is because, a jury decides the facts.

The judge decides the legal issues.

Absent any demonstrable bias, you can not appeal on the basis that the jury got it wrong. You appeal because the judge or prosecutors made a mistake in law. The appellate court will find either that the lower court was correct or incorrect.

The appellate court may order a retrial, if the lower court is found to be in error. The appellate court will not declare the defendant not guilty, although that may be the effect, if the lower court declines to go to a second trial.

Tom may think that an appeal will be a second bite at the apple, but it will not. It will merely decide if his first bite was done properly. The appeals court may decide to give him a second bite, but I doubt it.

[notorial dissent]

As PeanutGallery so correctly points out, the ONLY way Tom could have been found NOT GUILTY would have been for him to have actually owned the property he was vandalizing, and the ONLY way that could come about was if the civil verdict was set aside, and that boat already done sunk. His appeal have been denied and it is now past time to do anything further about it. So teh old fool is SOL at this point.

Or as happens in some cases, the Appeals court decides that the trial court erred in sentencing, too much or too little and orders it back to them with instructions as to what the appropriate sentence SHOULD be. Sometimes things are best left alone.

It still amazes me the level of ignorance about how the court system works and what the difference is between them. Then again, maybe it doesn't considering some of the other mind numbingly stupid things these people get up to.

[doublelong]

As mentioned the needed to loose to win does not make any sense at all it is just a way to justify the loss and save face. Also Amanda is again stating that they have still not disclosed all there evidence that will blow the case wide open And the last handful of supporters believe this to be true

[#six]

As mentioned the needed to loose to win does not make any sense at all it is just a way to justify the loss and save face. Also Amanda is again stating that they have still not disclosed all there evidence that will blow the case wide open And the last handful of supporters believe this to be true

That's hilarious. New evidence can only be heard if that evidence is new to the defendant either through the procecution withholding it or other ways out of the defendants control. If the defendant already had access to the evidence and withheld it themselves at trial then the judge will just ignore it.

[rumpelstilzchen]

The undisclosed evidence is probably a freetard youtube video about mortgages which explains how the bank doesn't really lend any money.

[NYGman]

And please someone explain, if you have all this great evidence, that will prove your case beyond any doubt, why FFS have you not provided it before? Why have you not publically laid it out for all to see? Why have you not gone to the Media with this Bomb Shell, would they not want to write about this injustice?

I just don't understand, as it just defies logic, that you would not get this evidence out there for all to see. If it really is the "dogs bollocks" why keep it hidden for so long? To consistently tell people about this evidence, and never presenting it simply foolish. No one wants to keep litigating, if there is a silver bullet, fire the frekin' gun already.

They still have yet to explain why a loss and an then a victory at an appeal beats winning first time out,or how even if they win on appeal how that will affect their ownership rights, which have now well and truly gone forever. Even if found not guilty, it isn't necessarily because he owned the house. Perhaps there was an evidentiary cock up (there wasn't) or something else that causes an appeal to succeed. It will never prove he owns the house.

So to close, if Tom has this magical document that will get him his house back, show it to all, let us see the Pièce De Résistance. Heck if it is that good, and presents undeniable evidence Tom paid his house off in full, including all capitalized interest and principal, I will pay for a Lawyer to help him get his house back. However, as we all know, Sue stopped paying the Endowment, and there was no principal paid by Tom, so what could they possibly have?

[TheNewSaint]

Tom's approach reeks of an attempt at jury nullification, as the FMOTL crowd presents the concept. It would explain why he's so focused on getting proceedings to a jury, with no regard to what legal procedure it is, or what that jury could even decide.

I think he has latched onto the idea that he if can get the case before a jury instead of some mean ol' judge, he can get the jury to nullify the law on his behalf, give him the deed to Fearn Chase, arrest everyone at Bradford & Bingley for treason, and so forth.

Of course, even if he somehow succeeded at this, the most the jury could do is find him not guilty of vandalism. They can only rule on the matter placed before them, and it wouldn't establish any kind of legal precedent he could use later. If he weren't already a vexatious litigant, of course.

Tom's interest in jury nullification has come to our attention before:

viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11057&start=360

[PeanutGallery]

The problem with trying to get a Jury to nullify a verdict is, aside from it being stupidly rare, is that because Juries don't give the reasons behind their decision a not guilty verdict does not mean the law has been nullified. In this case it would simply mean that Tom was not guilty of criminal damage to 3 Fearn Chase.

People can be not guilty for all manner of reasons, it might be that the Jury did not believe, in Tom's case, that a man like Tom could have gotten onto the roof or that he sawed through the beams or that the damage was already present. The court doesn't ask the Jury to say what that reason was, this is one of the reasons why nullification is so rare a phenomena. We don't know if a person has been found not guilty because the Jury didn't believe they did it or because the Jury didn't believe the law was right to prosecute (admittedly I would hope that mostly Juries follow directions and make decisions based on the facts, but much like Vegas, what happens in the jury room stays in the jury room). When a jury gives it verdict, all the court will hear is the result, they don't want to know why.

Consequently even if a jury found Tom not guilty, which isn't going to happen for a whole lot of reasons (which obviously includes the whole Appeal courts don't use Jurors, they would only come into play if their was a re-trial), it wouldn't and couldn't change the civil verdict.

[NYGman]

Here is the thing, even if the warrant was invalid, even if they didn't post the fee to find the case, even though the reward was monetary (not that it means anything, a a monetary reward when you hold a lien against the home results in a lost home) it all is IRRELEVANT. Fact is, Tom didn't pay his principal back, And stopped paying interest based on bad advice. This resulted is a judgement against him. Having no intent or means to pay, what did he expect would happen. Even if the warrant was invalid, the claim never was. If need be, a valid warrant would have been sourced and he would still be out. If no fee paid, then pay the fee, still out. It's monetary, so pay the cash amount. Can't, hmmm, I wonder what secure the loan and may have value, let's sell the home...

Either way, all complaints are trivial, just like the tid bits of judges words TC takes out of context, even if mistakes were made left and right, he didn't pay back the loan. What other logical result could there be?


I should add, I am not advocating fragrant disregard for procedure, bit mistakes happen, if the end result is the same then did it really matter. I guess when you have experts with legal wins on this exact point, you should know better. Remember, equitable.....

[SteveUK]

VICTORY!!! Tom Won, A finding of Guilty (Meanig a definitive ruling he doesn't own the house any more), the imposition of costs, a suspended 6 month sentence, and a restraining order banning from ever returning to Fearn Chase, or from making any contact with the new owners, or their son. 100% VICTORY, anyway you spin it

From the comments in the local paper -



Whoever it was, behave yourself....

I couldn't help myself, sorry!

[notorial dissent]

Tom took out an interest only mortgage with an endowment that wasn't sufficient to ever pay off the mortgage and then (his wife) canceled the endowment, was given several opportunities to remedy the situation and didn't, he defaulted on the mortgage at least once before he finally defaulted for real, cause reasons, he was declared in default by the lender and eventually gotten in to court where he was declared in default and the property awarded to the lender according to the loan terms, the lender eventually got a warrant for possession that went through several fits and starts until they finally did get Tom & Co all out on their ears. The jury found against him, the judge(s) found against him, and he was denied appeal. Whether or not there was some real or imagined defect in the appeal or paperwork, the fact remains, that the court FOUND AGAINST HIM. The told him why he'd lost. HE LOTS!! He has been denied appeal on the civil matter and it is past time to appeal. That bell cannot be unwrung. The criminal matters depend on the outcome of the civil matter, he no longer owns the property, and that is not going to change. I can't see that he has any (successful) grounds for appeal of the criminal charges, and all they'll look at if he does ONLY at the legal issues of the criminal matter AND THAT IS ALL.

[AndyPandy]

The whole purpose of this 'on the roof' stunt is to 'get the case to the Crown Court' in front of a JURY, without EVER realising that an appeal to the Crown Court from the Magistrates Court is only ever heard by a Judge NEVER a Jury.

He's now hamstrung by the Restraining Order - which if he ever breaches will only ever be dealt with by the Magistrates Court.

He would now have to do something SIGNIFICANTLY stupid to the property at Fearn Chase to get a trial in the Crown Court.