Gerry,
I see what you mean but I still don't think it's as straightforward as that.
I suppose we all want the 'right' result although we might not agree what that was. Justice involves a series of interdependent stages: an incident occurs which may be a crime; it may or may not come to the notice of the police; their investigation may be more or less thorough; the CPS will make a decision; there may be a court hearing; that may result in a conviction and sentence, which may vary in severity.
If we assume that virtually all road collisions which result in death are dealt with by the police, the first couple of stages do not affect us here. We might assume that the more resources the police devote to investigations, the better they will be in the sense that they will be more thorough. That might exonerate a few suspects, but less likely than in other cases. As I mentioned before, we can now disregard the CPS dropping cases they think the police should not have charged. Perhaps the biggest negative factor here is that the thoroughness of police investigations is likely to be influenced by the type of cases the CPS have not prosecuted previously. On to the CPS and they are first governed by the quality of what they get from the police - although they can request more evidence if they think that points need to be better covered. The second stage for the CPS is to consider the public interest and a big part of that has to be the likely attitude of the court. (Something the Inland Revenue signally overlooked when they gave Ken Dodd a run in Liverpool where juries are notorious for their unwillingness to convict.) The judge is required to ensure a fair trial and the more weak cases brought by the CPS, the more will be stopped by judges. If we accept the 'innocent till convicted' argument, then putting somebody up for trial unnecessarily is unfair, even cruel -it is at the very least expensive, both in money, but also the time of witnesses. Finally, even if more cases do lead to conviction, there will then be some where the defendant can advance strong mitigation and get a 'soft' sentence - a source of bewilderment and outrage to many bereaved people. In one recent case the bereaved described the court as a
circus. On the other hand, it has often been argued that a common reason for jury acquittals is a feeling that the likely punishment may be too harsh in a particular case.
I'm suggesting there is quite a lot of anticipation at certain stages about what will happen higher up the chain. It might be argued that if everybody got on with there own jobs things would be better. There is a limit to public money, and there is no point wasting it on futile cases.
We do see quite a lot of academic research published which shows, for example, that a particular Crown Court is somehow soft, when it may just be that the police or nowadays the CPS in that area are more ready to prosecute, and so on. I'm not saying that research is bound to fail, just that it requires a lot more analysis of individual cases if it is to mean anything.
I should still say that if what we really want is better behaviour on the roads which would in turn lead to fewer deaths, then much greater emphasis on road traffic policing, and a government policy statement that bad driving was a matter of serious public interest would have the greatest effect.
Incidentally, I've no brief on behalf of the CPS and I'd not suggest they are perfect, but they do get blamed for weaknesses elsewhere.
