Link: Jean Charles de Menezes shooting: Inquest begins - Telegraph.

According to the Telegraph today

The Metropolitan police's firearms and surveillance teams have hired separate lawyers and it is understood they may attack each other over aspects of the failed operation.

In criminal law circles (as these police officers will know) this is called "the stiletto defence." That's when two or more accused hire separate lawyers so they can try to blame the others for the crime. It almost always results in juries convicting all of them.

This is an inquest, not a criminal trial. The analogy is imperfect. But if the inquest finds that Jean-Charles was unlawfully killed one can hope that the Crown Prosecution Service might finally do its job. If not, we shall finally know that we ordinary citizens' lives are worth less in the eyes of the British law than those of the state's agents.