The unarmed civilian he fired his shots at was the victim of the patrol led by Hutchings in June 1974. John Pat Cunningham was shot in the back and killed as he ran terrified from a British Army patrol. Back then, officialdom asked few questions: the state forces could kill who they liked and were sent on their way, armed and still in uniform, down the road of unaccountability and immunity.
It is completely understandable why the relatives of those killed during the North's violent conflict should seek prosecutions. Human emotion allows them to do little else. When relatives earnestly sought the truth they were treated with contempt as a gaggle of liars from across the political and security spectrum lined up to testify at the Ballymurphy massacre inquest. The motives of many politicians and former combatants calling for justice are suspect. For them it is about political one-upmanship, score settling, played out for the purposes of the present and wholly divested of any concern about the past. The past only matters insofar as present prosecutions are a means of vengeance today for the transgressions of yesteryear.
Hutchings even lost an attempt to be tried by a jury. The judicial system is so rooted in the past that he was scheduled to face justice in that most unjust of settings - a Diplock court. The late Lord Kerr ruled that trial by jury was not the only way to achieve a fair outcome. Well he would wouldn’t he given the number of such trials the judiciary of which he was a part presided over. Non jury trials deliver results but ones that are unjustly secured. Diplock courts were never, from the moment of their inception, meant to deliver fair trials, just instrumental outcomes. Diplock was the product of a political and judicial mindset that didn’t give one toss about people like John Pat Cunningham.
Johnny Mercer, former Tory minister and firm opponent of former British soldiers being prosecuted has in the wake of the Hutchings death demanded:
Doubtless, it is destroying lives but that alone is insufficient to halt prosecutions, considering that most trials result from lives having been destroyed by the former soldiers before the courts.
It just happens that the lives being destroyed are those of former British veterans. The destruction of other lives was evidently not a concern when the British prosecuted Ivor Bell who was around the same age as Dennis Hutchings during his ongoing prosecution and subsequent trial of facts. Yet it seems beyond denial, that the Public Prosecution Service has been demonstrably inept in pursuing legacy cases.
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Johnny Mercer, former Tory minister and firm opponent of former British soldiers being prosecuted has in the wake of the Hutchings death demanded:
a public inquiry into the Public Prosecution Service of Northern Ireland. I’ve spoken to people in the system who cannot believe these prosecutions have gone ahead. It’s destroying lives.
Doubtless, it is destroying lives but that alone is insufficient to halt prosecutions, considering that most trials result from lives having been destroyed by the former soldiers before the courts.
It just happens that the lives being destroyed are those of former British veterans. The destruction of other lives was evidently not a concern when the British prosecuted Ivor Bell who was around the same age as Dennis Hutchings during his ongoing prosecution and subsequent trial of facts. Yet it seems beyond denial, that the Public Prosecution Service has been demonstrably inept in pursuing legacy cases.
it has been confirmed that only one British soldier is still facing prosecution. The public prosecution service (PPS) in Northern Ireland said that former Grenadier Guardsman David Holden, 51, faces charges of gross negligence manslaughter in connection with the killing of Aidan McAnespie, 23, in 1988. He was shot at a border checkpoint in Co Tyrone.
If that is what passes for truth retrieval, it is as ersatz as the faux political concern driving it. The lives of those in advanced years are being destroyed and disrupted for no tangible results. Any other public service chalking up that rate of inefficiency and failure would be be consigned to the stocks for wasting public money and undermining public confidence.
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