Stephen Lawrence Trial

[Sandino]

Norris gets 14 years and 3 months and Dodson gets 15 years. Chilling footage of them talking about skinning people alive last night on TV last night!

[Bingo]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8985208/Stephen-Lawrence-murder-inside-the-violent-racist-world-of-gang-led-by-self-styled-Krays.html

Good summary piece on the case and Dobson/Norris here.

[LeoMc]

And it has emerged too during the mitigation hearing that one of them were done for racist abuse a few years ago and the other is serving a sentence (or something like that) for drugs charges.  The jury weren't allowed to know this.  Sorry for the sketchy info.

Hardly the nicest people in the world both of them.  Anyone see the secret video footage taken at their home?

Why is their inconsistency with this during trials - in the Arlene Arkinson trial all of Robert Howards attrocious crimes were not allowed to be made known to the jury too.  Yet recently in the Robert Black trial the court was allowed to be informed of his past after 7/8 days of the trial, information that in all probability got him convicted more than anything else offered by the prosecution.

AFAIK the prosecution has to prove the offences are relevant before they can be admitted. These arguments will take place in Chambers away from the Jury.
With Robert Black a history of driving round  kidnapping and murdering little girls is relevent where he is being tried for kidnap and murder of a little girl.
With the Stephen Lawrence trial neither verbal abuse nor drugs offences directly equate to racist murder. I am not sure what Robert Howards history was.

Howard molested boys and girls and was convicted of murdering and burying a girl in England.  He was on trial for the murder of Arlene Arkinson, and he was the last person to see her on the night she disappeared as he gave her a lift.   

The law regarding evidence of bad character was changed in the 2003 Criminal justice act and so there may have still been some legal interpretaion around it by the time of Howards trial so if the CPS had enough evidence they may not have wanted to leave any potential for appeals due to later rulings on what was allowable. (my theory).