Not For Me, Thanks

We heard a case a week or two ago in which the facts were depressingly familiar. One-thirty in the morning, milling crowds of young men; much drink taken. The young men concerned repaired to the local minicab office, all buses and trains having finished service for the day, and there was then a violent incident or two. No serious injury was inflicted, but tension and fear reigned. The facts and result of the trial don't really matter, but what I find depressing is the fact that the bad-tempered and drunken squabble happened in a place that I used to haunt as a teenager when I was a pupil at the local school.

Now that I am in comfortable middle age, living in a quiet and pleasant area, I have, like so many people, arranged my life to avoid places like this one unless I am passing through at 30 mph in a car with the doors securely locked. The local residents bar their doors and windows, and the richer of them arrange for electric gates to seal them off from the disaffected and the inebriated.

The scene of the crime was in the middle of an area where the entry price of a three-bed house is about £300,000. The protagonists in the case that I tried were employed, and of previous good character.

No social class has a monopoly on drunken and yobbish behaviour. One of today's witnesses admitted to drinking seven to nine pints of strong lager, but said that he was not drunk. Questioned, he defined not drunk as being able to remain on his feet for long enough to speak to a police officer. Whom he then called a cunt.

Effing CPS

I'm sorry to get back to the CPS again, but today we were buggered about time and again, once or twice due to stubborn and inflexible policy, but mostly due to simple incompetence and sloppiness.

I can't be too detailed, but to give you a flavour:-

Defendant in court in custody. Bail application. CPS has no papers so can't make any representations. Two hours to sort it out - fortunately we have other work to get on with.

CPS prosecutor turns up two hours late, leaving bench, clerk and staff twiddling their thumbs.

CPS ordered last month to review 18-month old case that is as full of holes as a Swiss cheese. Court direction ignored, no review, case put off yet again (Thirteenth listing!!). We wanted to kick it into touch but for legal reasons we could not.

Prosecutor entirely misses vital (and well-known) piece of case law that says that we have to send a certain case up to Crown Court, and looks shocked when we do so.

Defence asked for Police Incident Record Books (IRBs) in respect of old matters as they have a bearing on the defence case. Request made last May. No books, no idea where they are. Case stalled.

The CPS talk a good story at the top level, but day to day admin, such as getting files to court, warning witnesses, and filtering out hopeless cases are a shambles.

There, I feel better now. Where's the gin bottle, darling?

Juries

Since the rules on jury service were tightened a while ago it has become almost impossible to get out of it, and the most that one can hope for these days is a deferment. At the same time the rule preventing judges lawyers and magistrates sitting on the jury was abolished. and quite a few from these groups have now served on juries. Of course the proceedings in the jury room are sacrosanct, but there is some anecdotal evidence that those with experience of the courts are often, but not invariably, elected as foreman. The head of the criminal department in our largest local firm of solicitors was called and spent exactly one half-day in the jury box in a fortnight.

I was strongly in favour of the rule change because under the old system the busy middle classes usually got themselves excused, leaving juries stuffed with the retired and the unemployed. One ironic definition of a juror was 'someone who is too stupid to get out of jury service'.

There are a few problems though. For one thing, an employer who allows one of his staff 15 or 20 days off a year to sit as a JP is going to be pretty fed up if they then take another 14 days to sit as a juror. If the judge in a case is junior to the one who is on the jury, the latter will presumably have to keep quiet about it to his jury colleagues. In a tight-knit profession like the Bar there is a strong likelihood that the juror will know one or more of judge, prosecution or defence counsel. And what should I do when the defendant is giving evidence and his counsel fails to ask him if he has any convictions? That is a sure-fire pointer to the fact that he has: should I tell my fellow jurors about it?

Nevertheless, juries should be as balanced as is reasonably practicable. The common folk of the jury are a safeguard that any of us might need one day.

Just Another Day In Paradise

A few bits and pieces from today, suitably sanitised:-

Forged Insurance Certificate
Drink Drive
Criminal Damage (domestic dispute that got out of hand)
Theft (handbag nicked from counter of chip shop)
Theft by employee (elected for Crown Court)
Possess offensive weapon (knife)
Fraud with bus pass
Credit-card skimmer (use of)
Handling of stolen goods (£1500)
Drive without licence and insurance
Drive Disqualified
Threats to Kill
Shoplifting
Drink drive
Exposing genitals (male def)
Assault
Possess offensive weapon plus bladed article.
Drink drive
Burglary dwelling
Drink drive
Drink drive again
Drink drive (refuse test)
Drunk in Charge (not-guilty plea)
Deception (on CV in job application)
Seize proceeds of crime x 3
Drink drive
Drink drive
TWOC
Shoplifting

Then the extra cases, about as many as above.

Then an application for legal aid.
Then a ditto.

A couple of late arrests, bail applications to decide.

The above is a mixture of remands, pleas, sentences, and all sorts.

Finished 4.40 p.m. In pub by 5 p.m.

Tired.

Lawyers Again

Rollonfriday.com is the numero uno website among young solicitors, and the word on the street is that the site owners are doing a deal better than they did (or do) in the law. They have just offered free beer if and when England win the Ashes. Just look at these for exclusion clauses:-

"Just print out this email and take it along to RollOnFriday Towers, 9 Carmelite Street, London, EC4Y 0DR to claim your can. We're about 50 yards down the road from Freshfields. We'll get a couple of crates in, and when it's gone it's gone. Only one bevvie per person, so don't send your trainee down for a dozen. This invitation only applies whilst stocks last and may be withdrawn without notice. Officers and employees of RollOnFriday Limited and their families and pets are not eligible. Subject to terms and conditions. Terms subject to conditions and conditions subject to terms. Additional terms may be applied to conditions, in which event conditional terms may apply. Applicable conditions may terminate. Terminable terms may apply. For the avoidance of doubt, terminable conditions and applicable terms may apply or terminate without notice. Your house is probably not at risk."

Careful lads! Speaking with your tongue so firmly in your cheek can lead to inadvertent lingual trauma.

Naughty But Nice

Sometimes I am overwhelmingly tempted to tease a lawyer who is appearing in front of me. I tend to stick to those I know, although I have occasionally picked on complete strangers.

The other day I was dealing with a couple of hopeless rheumy-eyed shambling drunks. They had made a nuisance of themselves yet again, and had been charged with a handful of public order offences between them. They were obviously pissed in the dock, as they are for most of most days, and occasional burblings and giggles emanated from their direction. We dealt swiftly with the offences on the sheet, imposing fines that we deemed served by their detention in the police station. It is hopeless to expect fines on these people to be paid, and community penalties are out of the question.

Then the big one - we made an ASBO, after pruning the requested conditions down to a reasonable and lawful level. I didn't suppose for a moment that they understood what I was on about, so on concluding my required pronouncement I said :- "Mr. Cxxxxxxx, your lawyer, will be delighted to explain what this order means. In fact if you have any queries at all you should ask him, as he has plenty of time to answer your questions".

Mr. Cxxxxxxx gave me a look that combined the rueful and the venomous, and went outside to await the arrival of his clients.

Straight From The Horse's Mouth

Anyone who wants to know more about the court process can have a look at the Judicial Studies Board's website where they will find the current Bench Book. Every magistrate has a copy, and there is always one on the bench in every courtroom. It is a hefty document (a 381 page pdf file) and from about page 95 you will find the current sentencing guidelines. These will enable you to score 100% in any future quizzes that I put in the blog.

I have put a link to it in the sidebar here. I would be very interested to hear your views, but in view of the size of the document, I appreciate that they may take some time to appear.

Family Business

Not everyone is aware that magistrates play a key part in family law, dealing with matters of child care and custody, finance, and other things. I have never been involved in this, but I do know that to sit in the family court one has to do lots of extra training and submit to a selection and appraisal process.

The family courts are being rearranged under Her Majesty's Courts' Service and the idea is to have centres for each area where magistrates, District Judges and, very rarely, Circuit Judges sit. Cases will be allocated to the appropriate level depending on their complexity.

I finished my court early the other day, and I found a colleague sitting in the corner of our pleasant retiring room just staring out of the window. He looked drained, so after I had fetched him a coffee I asked him about his morning's work. He told me that he had just finished chairing a four day child care case, at the end of which the court ordered that the two small children of a heroin and alcohol addicted couple should be taken from then and placed for adoption with no further parental contact. This couple had been through similar proceedings five years ago, and had two earlier offspring taken away.

The law provides that the child's interests are paramount, and to that end a posse of lawyers attended, each representing one of the parties involved, including local authority, parents, child, and so on.

My colleague was so emotionally drained after his case that he just needed a quiet sit down and a bit of space.

These cases are hugely important to parents family and above all the children involved, and I have the greatest respect for my colleagues who take this work on.

A Personal Note

One of my dearest friends picked up his new car today, resplendent in its new '55' number plate. It cost him the best part of £40,000 and is an exquisite piece of machinery.

Unfortunately, it is so laden with technology that it will take him sometime between a long time and never to get to grips with it. He has grown old earning the kind of money that he needed to buy this toy. The SatNav alone should confuse him for a month or two, and I sternly advised him not to touch it while driving.

Youth is wasted on the young, is it not?

Si la jeunesse savait, si la vieillesse pouvait!

Emotional Claptrap

Harriet Harman, the Department forConstitutional Affairs minister, is launching a consultation paper today on plans to allow relatives of homicide victims to address the court, either in person or through a representative, post-conviction but before sentence.

Well, if she cares to consult me, I shall tell her that this is nauseating tabloid-driven claptrap. What a field day the Sun will have as tear-stained relatives (especially if they are from Liverpool) sob out their grief, and call for the heaviest punishment for the defendant. The interviews on the court steps are bad enough as it is - "How do you feel about the sentence?" "Oh great, it was about spot on and the judge took account of the Sentencing Guidelines Council's latest circular". Why does no one ever answer "What a stupid question?"

What is the judge supposed to do, faced with this appalling freakshow? Is he meant to ratchet up the sentence in response to emotional pressure? Do we want a legal system where the killer of a wide-eyed moppet goes down for longer than if he had offed Billy No-Mates? Perhaps after the relatives' contribution the trial could adjourn for a few days while a TV phone-in poll decides the sentence - at premium rates of course.

Harriet Harman is a lawyer and she used to be a liberal (NCCL and all that). Surely she knows in her heart of hearts that this proposal is wrong, disgusting, and counter to all of the principles of impartial justice.

And next time I hear someone say:- "He'll come out of prison one day - it's us that are serving a life sentence", I shall throw up.
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Later: I found this from the editorial on the Sun's website:-

A New law will be unveiled today that could result in killers getting the sentences they deserve.
Relatives of victims are to be allowed to address courts once a guilty verdict is returned.
For the first time the full emotional damage of the crime of murder will be laid bare.
Too often in the past, courts have heard only a sob-story cooked up on behalf of the defendant.
Justice will be better for this law.
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I rest my case.