I CANNOT allow your report 'Lawyers are the villains, says 'tec,' September 28, representing the views of Detective Inspector Hargreaves, to pass without reply.

It is the hallmark of the police state that the citizen is locked away on the basis of police suspicion and without evidence.

In Great Britain, a person is innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt before a court.

It is the job of the highly paid and professional police force and Crown Prosecution Service to do that.

In a civilised society, the accused is provided with a lawyer at public expense (if he is unable to meet the cost himself) to defend the charges brought.

The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 was an Act of Parliament passed to protect the public from the excesses of a minority of the police, which had resulted in the now infamous miscarriages of justice which had so damaged the reputation of the police.

It was intended to prevent a detective who 'rigorously interrogates' a suspect to obtain 'a confession' and to rely instead upon professionally and properly gathered and presented evidence.

It is, and always will be, the professional obligation of defence lawyers to do their best for their client; to do something less because a policemen believes that someone to be guilty would be to deny justice.

Finally, in reply to the offensive suggestion that lawyers being paid on Legal Aid is 'an obscene spectacle.'

Of course, defence lawyers are paid from public funds, so are the police. Legal Aid pay rates (there are no allowances or overtime) did not increase at all from1992 to 1995.

The basic pay (ie without allowances and overtime) of a senior police inspector increased during that time from £24,510 pa to £30,081 pa, an increase of more than 22 per cent.

Your readers can draw their own conclusions on who is doing best from public funds.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.