Wednesday, November 11, 2015
It's Murder Out There
I see from the media that there has been a recent murder quite near my courthouse. It appears that someone has been arrested, so when I sit later this week there is a small possibility that I shall see him or her. Once upon a time these cases routinely turned up on the magistrates' list, for a decision on bail before the inevitable committal to a higher court. We no longer have the job of deciding on bail in these cases so the whole business is over in a few minutes. Serious cases come on first, to allow the jailers downstairs to get the defendant on his way; the only unusual feature is a full press bench and perhaps a few more police than usual. Anticlimax reigns.
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Whilst we might be considered competent to decide on bail in anything other than a murder case, we don't even have to make that decision any longer but what's the betting it goes before a DJ, and not a bench?
ReplyDeleteThere is absolutely no reason for it to go before a DJ and for the court lists to be altered and the DJs know that as well. I had similar some years ago on a Saturday morning and we had a 'circus' of press and TV for the appearance. All over in 3 minutes and we all went home.
ReplyDeleteWe are not permitted to do Saturday Courts anymore - only DJs in our area.
ReplyDeleteYou challenge that with your JC. No reason to exclude you from Saturdays.
DeleteI would think there would be an uproar in my local justice area if DJs were told they had to sit on a Saturday morning!!
DeleteI always look forward to a Saturday morning sitting. Usually lots of variety, with no council tax courts , dog mess or litter and no feet-on-seats or fare dodgers to process. It also helps with not having to take time away from work.
I can well remember the morning - a little over 10 years ago when in one courtroom in our smallish provincial town we saw three separate murder cases come before us. Two of the accused came in and left by the public door - they were on bail pending committal. Very unusual but it illustrates Bystander's point about how much more involvement we had with such serious cases in the past.
ReplyDeleteI have had six murder cases passing through my court over last decade, most memorably a Monday-morning two-hander which attracted a half-dozen national newspaper reporters and their briefs putting forward legal arguments as to why we should not make a Section 49 reporting restriction not to name one of the accused whose name had been splashed all over the Sunday newspapers. The process took more than two hours, with the accused sitting in the dock, and yes, we still made the order.
ReplyDeleteI did the same five minutes on a murder many years age, a Saturday night drunken moment of stupidity, and I will never forget the ashen, totally sober faces of the young men involved that cold Monday morning, in a courtroom filled with the weeping relatives and friends of both victim and accused.
ReplyDeleteI remember seeing a murder-defendant one Saturday morning when we could still grant bail, and we heard that there was going to be an applciation. The deceased and the defendant were of the same ethnic origin and so were the fifteen stern-visaged young men in the public seats.
ReplyDeleteThe defendant was brought up from the cells - looked round the court - summoned his brief - spoke to him for a moment - and there was no application for bail.
I think he felt safer where he was. The clerk told me later that he would not have got out of the precincts alive.