Monday, January 14, 2008

It's A Funny Old World: Forgotten In The Slammer For Fifty Years Edition

.


Not Much a fellow can say really apart from muttering the bleeding obvious.



A man has been released from prison in Sri Lanka after being held on remand for 50 years without conviction.

DP James was 30 years old when he was arrested for stabbing and wounding his father and sent to jail. He is now 80.

He was moved to a psychiatric hospital shortly after entering prison in 1957, and returned to jail in the mid-1980s, where he seems to have been forgotten.

Mr James was released on bail with the court's apologies. His lawyer hopes the case against him will be dismissed.

Mr James is due back in court next month. A claim for compensation is now being considered.

Stroke of luck

It was an extraordinary case for the Magistrates Court at Kurunegala in Sri Lanka - an 80-year-old man appearing for a bail hearing 50 years after he was remanded in custody.



The lawyer who organised his defence in court, Darma Veejaya Seneveratna, says his client did not complain because he was from a village and ignorant of the law.

DP James might have ended his days in prison, but in December he was taken to hospital again for medical treatment.source


The photograph (click for larger) is of the oubliette (forgotten) in Warwick Castle, where as the name implies a person was tossed in the hole and quite literally forgotten.
The hole is as big as the grill and if I remember rightly about three feet deep.

No comments: