"A man accused of killing his six-year-old daughter in a violent
outburst has likened his fight for justice to the plight of the
Hillsborough families. Ben Butler, 36, told a jury at the Old Bailey his trial was a repeat
of a miscarriage of justice he suffered in 2007 when he was arrested and
subsequently jailed for assaulting his then seven-week-old daughter
Ellie. After being accused by the prosecutor of deflecting all the blame for
Ellie’s death away from the evidence and on to anyone but himself,
Butler told jurors: “I was watching the Hillsborough thing the other
night,” he said in reference to a BBC documentary on the disaster in
which 96 people lost their lives. “The families in it [the documentary], they were fighting for justice
just like we were, and a lady came on and said, ‘The problem you don’t
see is the ripple effect and that one action has on everyone’s life,’”
said Butler. “That 2007 [injury to Ellie] had a ripple effect on everyone’s lives,” he told jurors. Ellie died when she was at home alone with Butler in October 2013; a
postmortem showed that she had a fracture almost the entire length of
her skull with injuries likened by experts to those in a high-speed car
crash. Butler has told jurors it was an accident and admitted covering up her death by not calling the ambulance for another two hours. He said he had suffered “unbelievable loss and pain” and that at
times he “hated” his partner Jennie Gray because of the illness she
suffered as a direct consequence of the miscarriage of justice and the
absence of Ellie from their lives. “There were times I’m having to pick her up off the floor every day
because she’s drunk and drinking, she’s trying to kill herself … putting
pills in her mouth and me trying to get them out,” he said. Under
cross-examination Butler admitted to past violence including assaulting
a man in a kebab shop in 2004. He also accepted a caution for hitting
his ex-girlfriend in 2005 but told jurors on Wednesday that she had
“walloped him harder than any man ever did”. He denied concocting “a sophisticated charade” on the day Ellie died. He was questioned repeatedly about his failure to call 999
immediately after he said he found his daughter lying on the floor
unconscious. He told jurors he knew he would be blamed for her death because of the earlier conviction for assaulting her.........Butler said (Prosecutor) Brown had got it all wrong and he needed to accept that
he had not assaulted Ellie when she was seven weeks old, but had “saved
her life”. “I rushed my daughter to hospital, I probably saved her life that day
and all of a sudden I’m in a seven-year court battle,” he said in
reference to his appeal followed by a battle to be reunited with Ellie
in the family courts. Butler denies murder. He and Gray deny another charge of child
cruelty relating to an allegedly untreated broken shoulder that was
discovered in Ellie’s postmortem."
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/18/ben-butler-likens-his-fight-for-justice-to-that-of-hillsborough-families
Is The Age of Progressive Prosecutors Over?
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