Hicks: guilty means guilty, sort of ...

It is notoriously difficult to get reliable data on how many innocent people plead guilty as a result of such pressures. The best data comes from research carried out in the United Kingdom for the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice, which suggests that up to 11 per cent of people who plead guilty claim innocence.

Of course these figures are likely to be inflated given that accused have an interest in protesting their innocence. Yet, as the Royal Commission noted, the risk of innocent people being pressured into pleading guilty “cannot be avoided and although there can be no certainty as to the numbers ... it would be naive to suppose” that it does not happen.

There are sound pragmatic reasons for maintaining the sentencing discount for offenders that plead guilty. It saves taxpayers the cost of running expensive trials and spares victims the turmoil of reliving their experiences in court.

But there are no principled reasons for not compensating accused people who beat criminal charges for their legal fees and time served in custody. People wrongly charged with serious criminal offences in Australia will continue to have undue pressure applied on them to plead guilty until legislation is introduced in all jurisdictions remedying this situation.

And as for Hicks, the speculation about his actual guilt is pointless. He is guilty - certainly no less than accused people in Australia who plead guilty to serious criminal offences.