transcription, транскрипция: [ ˈʌnˈseɪf ]
adjective (People and Society) Of a conviction or verdict at law: open to appeal, liable to be challenged or overturned. Especially in the phrase unsafe and unsatisfactory. Etymology: Formed by adding the prefix un- to safe in its legal sense, which is in turn related to the more general sense 'sure in procedure, not liable to fail'. History and Usage: This term has been in use in the law for many decades, but acquired popular currency in the late eighties, especially as a result of the controversy over the allegedly unsafe convictions of a number of people for terrorist crimes in the UK in the seventies. In the case of the 'Guildford Four', four people convicted of IRA bombings at Guildford and sent to jail in 1975, the discovery that the convictions were in fact unsafe eventually led to their release in October 1989. This case helped to suggest a distinction between unsafe and unsatisfactory: in the opinion of the Appeal Court judges, the convictions were unsafe because they were founded on a prosecution case which was later shown to have been unreliable (evidence vital to the defence had been suppressed and false confessions obtained). The convictions therefore had to be quashed regardless of whether they were unsatisfactory (in other words, without regard to the original question of the guilt or innocence of the people concerned). In his judgment, Lord Lane said: Any evidence which casts real doubt on the reliability or veracity of the officers responsible for the various interrogations has to mean that the whole foundation of the prosecution case disappears, and the convictions will be unsafe. However, this distinction was once again questioned in the courts in early 1991 in connection with the appeal and eventual release of the 'Birmingham Six' (another group of people jailed for terrorist bombings in the seventies), and the legal conclusion seemed to be that no court had ever separated the two entirely and that the distinction between them might anyway be impossible to draw. The manner in which the inquest was conducted by the coroner...made the jury's verdict...unsafe and unsatisfactory. Financial Times 30 Mar. 1983, p. 14 While agreeing that the verdict was unsafe and unsatisfactory, he said that the judgment made no finding about whether the new evidence justified the conclusions of deliberate fabrication. Guardian 18 July 1989, p. 24