‘Standing with Soldier F’: Bloody Sunday, disrupting the degradation ceremony and the court of public opinion

Abstract

This article merges the literatures on crime and punishment, law and performance and transitional justice to critically examine how high-profile prosecutions for historic state violence become contested in societies attempting to address the legacy of prolonged conflict. Drawing empirically from the case study of the prosecution of Soldier F for the 1972 Bloody Sunday killings in the North of Ireland, it demonstrates how legacy case prosecutions become a proxy for wider societal and political disagreement over the causes and consequences of past violence. It argues that when the legal basis for prosecution becomes obscured by extra-legal factors the expressivist function of punishment and criminal law is fundamentally undermined. By concentrating on these extra-legal factors rather than focusing on the legal semantics of the case, certain constituencies can challenge the legitimacy of the prosecution, question whether it is helpful to a post-conflict society that needs to ‘move on’ and prevent the accused being ‘othered’ as an ‘outsider’. In disrupting the expressivist logic of criminal prosecution like this, it is concluded the accused can be reframed by sympathetic audiences as a victim who needs solidarity and support rather than a victimiser who needs to be denounced and punished.